Zeppelin were petty thieves, but not in this case. It truly is a very commonplace, centuries-old device. A cliche, even.
It’s my understanding that it’s not even the members of Spirit who’ve brought this suit, but the trustee for the estate of one of the members. Is that correct?
I remember a similar case. Representatives for Huey Lewis and the News claimed Ray Parker Jr. sole a part of “I want a New Drug” and used it in “Ghostbusters”. Ironically a guitar riff from “Purple Haze” was heard in the Huey Lewis tune.
I take it they don’t have copies of Spirit’s play lists during the time they were opening for the Zep.
I recall watching a youtube video where they compared about 7 Zep songs to earlier, original tunes from other artists and they were all a spot on match. Zep stole a bunch of material.
The only thing that comes to mind is background music on a discovery channel show about space
The Taurus song is beautiful and StH does share some similarities. However, if they are claiming that StH copies from Taurus, then Taurus is guilty of copying from Bach’s harpsichord concertos.
Led Zep stole lots of stuff - but in this case I don’t see it. They stole a riff, not a song. Is the riff separately copyrighted?