10 Best Spirit Songs That Don’t Sound Like Zep’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’
The L.A. psych-rockers should be remembered for more than just one infamous soundalike

The band Spirit
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
L.A. psychedelic rockers Spirit have been in the news a lot lately, for flattering, if not necessarily positive, reasons. A lawyer representing the band's deceased guitarist Randy California, is claiming that Led Zeppelin stole the intro to the band's classic "Stairway to Heaven" from Spirit's "Taurus," penned by California.
While Spirit existed in various forms through to California's death in 1997, the band remains relatively unknown as well as underappreciated. Instrumentally accomplished, with a gift for unpredictable arrangements and folk melodies, Spirit were a key band in the Los Angeles' psychedelic rock scene of the late Sixties, and should be remembered for reasons other than an alleged act of plagiarism. Here are 10 of the band's best songs. By David Marchese