Led Zeppelin, Stairway to Heaven, Spirit's Taurus

Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven vs. Spirit's Taurus: A Reckoning? - Businessweek: "... It’s no secret Led Zeppelin borrowed from blues and folk musicians in what it said was part of an organic tradition that created new, original works. Page has explained how he crafted songs with bits of others. “I always tried to bring something fresh to anything that I used,” he said in an interview for Light & Shade: Conversations With Jimmy Page by Brad Tolinski. “I always made sure to come up with some variation. In fact, I think in most cases, you would never know what the original source could be.” Zeppelin histories that address the issue seem to favor Page, calling him a transformer rather than a thief. In When Giants Walked the Earth: A Biography of Led Zeppelin, Mick Wall details the Welsh genesis of the song and writes that if Page was influenced by the chords from Taurus, “what he did with them was the equivalent of taking the wood from a garden shed and building it into a cathedral.” But songwriters from whom Led Zeppelin drew inspiration, or more, have brought legal challenges for decades, often successfully...." (read more at link above)

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