Led Zeppelin Win in ‘Stairway to Heaven’ Trial

Malofiy said at the time that any kind of settlement on behalf of Led Zeppelin would be a “nonstarter.” But later that month, he told Bloomberg he’d take a settlement of a dollar and a songwriting credit. The band did not take him up on the offer.

Page and Plant filed declarations to the court in March, before Klausner decided the suit should go to trial, in which they described how they wrote the song. Page wrote that while “Stairway” opened with “descending chromatic lines,” as did “Taurus,” he’d been aware of that melodic style dating back at least to 1960. Moreover, he stated that he never heard the song until 2014 when Malofiy filed his complaint. “I am very good at remembering music and am absolutely certain that I never heard ‘Taurus’ until 2014,” he wrote. He also wrote that he did not recall ever seeing Spirit live.

Page has always maintained in interviews that he wrote the song from piecing together his own melodic ideas. “I’d been fooling around with my acoustic guitar and came up with different sections, which I married together,” he once told Guitar World. “But what I wanted was something that would have drums come in at the middle and then build to a huge crescendo. … So I had the structure of it.”

Interestingly, in his declaration, Page wrote that he discovered a copy of the Spirit LP in his record collection in preparation for the trial. “[I] do not know how or when it got there,” he wrote. “It may well have been left by a guest. I doubt it was there for long, since I never noticed it before. But again I know I did not hear ‘Taurus’ until 2014.”

Plant, too, wrote that he believed he never heard “Taurus” before the lawsuit. “I do not now and have never owned a Spirit record album,” he wrote.

In April, Judge Klausner rejected all of Malofiy’s expert witnesses because they had prepared opinions based on sound recordings that weren’t admissible under copyright law. He also barred recordings of some songs that the attorney wished to present, saying that recordings of songs had to be made from existing sheet music. The judge gave Malofiy time to find more witnesses.

The judge also ruled that anything regarding Led Zeppelin’s alleged plagiarism in the past would not be allowed before a jury. Rumors about the group’s drug and alcohol use would not be allowed either; Malofiy had hoped to claim that the band’s substance abuse damaged the songwriters’ memories. 

In May, Led Zeppelin accused Malofiy of attempting to “taint the jury pool” by claiming that the band’s members would not appear in court. Page and Plant always intended to appear in court, the lawyers claimed. “[Malofiy’s] ongoing efforts to try this case in the press should be rejected,” they said in a motion.