Here is the big debate...Did Led Zeppelin steal "Stairway To Heaven" by plagiarizing the band Spirit.
The song in question is "Spirit - Taurus" which is an instrumental piece, Led Zeppelin supposedly made a full length song out of Spirit's instrumental piece. If that is true I would assume that Led Zeppelin probably didn't think "Stairway" would be so big of a hit song.
The deal with the controversy is that the song "Taurus" is an instrumental piece was released a few years before "Stairway To Heaven" came out and that Led Zeppelin even knew the band.
My opinion is that even the name "Stairway To Heaven" is plagiarized by Led Zeppelin from Spirit because the "Stairway To Heaven" would be the stairway leading to the heavens to the constellation "Taurus".
So the constellation "Taurus" from the first song is at the top of the "Stairway To Heaven" by Led Zeppelin.
Here is what the critics are saying.
That the song is a "chord progression" that Spirit wrote and that it's in all kinds of songs like a "common melody" and used in twenty five songs.
Well my opinion with examples below is that all the "twenty five songs" are also compared to Spirit are also plagiarized from Taurus if they came out after their song was released, except the "original influences" of Spirit which is a different music category from the 1930's or something. I am just approximating.
The band Spirit apparently used "older material" as influences for their song Taurus and translated that into "rock music" after that they were copied by like twenty five bands who all used their song claiming it was just a common chord progression in all music.
It isn't in my opinion, just in rock music.
Led Zeppelin was the biggest band in the category and used that to "steal their song". If you listen to Taurus the whole song is the entire background of the "symphonic sound" used in Stairway To Heaven - like a back track for their entire song.
I just used a reference video on "YouTube" that has all the arguments in it...then you can easily see how the song is plagiarized by watching the guy play them both on the guitar. All the other songs he references are also copied from Spirt except old songs from a different music category like Spirit's influences songs.
My opinion is that all the other bands including Led Zeppelin tried to steal the song from Spirit like twenty five artists all claiming it was a common chord progression in all music. It isn't.
The chord changes are not was is plagiarized, it's the "harmony", "key" and time signatures that are stolen...not the actual chords which are just music chords.
Here is how that works....they strum a chord by "picking the notes" in the chord and then proceed to the next chord and "pick the individual notes" in the same progression like four changes.
Led Zeppelin added "two extra notes" to each chord change.
Then if you listen to Taurus and Stairway To Heaven at the same time the extra Led Zeppelin notes would be the "Harmony notes" on the second guitar in Taurus.
So if you play Taurus and add a second guitar as a "harmony" with two extra notes per chord that is the song Stairway To Heaven, all the other songs that sound similar after Taurus was released are also copied from that song like twenty five other songs the guy says in the clip.
If you play Taurus on the guitar and get someone to "accompany on second guitar" and add two extra notes per chord change, that is Stairway To Heaven by adding the second notes.
Also, if you take Stairway To Heaven and then in the middle of that song "paste in" the Taurus instrumental that would sound like a "reprise" in Stairway To Heaven.
So if Led Zeppelin wrote the song Taurus, that would be Stairway To Heaven (Reprise) by "excluding" two notes per chord change in the main song progression making it a "lighter version" of Stairway To Heaven.'
The real clincher for me that Stairway To Heaven is plagiarized is the "reprise" argument. If you write Stairway To Heaven (Reprise) then that becomes the original song "Taurus" by Spirit.
When they say "plagiarized" they don't mean the chords they used and the picking of their individual notes. They mean they copied their Time Signatures, Keys, Chord Changes and Progressions....not just the notes.
Not only is Stairway To Heaven all the same chords and single note picking it is also the same key, time signature and chord progressions.
Then they only added two individual notes or chords at the end on the progression per chord change, making Stairway To Heaven like the second guitar "harmony" or it could also be considered the "lead guitar notes".
So it's like Led Zeppelin added a second lead guitar progression to Taurus with the lead notes being the added material in the same key and time signature played on one guitar.
Removing the added notes in Stairway To Heaven would make it a "reprise" or "lighter version" of Stairway To Heaven, turning it into the song Taurus and would fit anywhere when pasted into Stairway To Heaven as a "reprise" section.
The ridiculous argument that adding lyrics and vocals to a stolen song makes it not plagiarism is totally bogus and only makes the plagiarism worse by adding vocals to someone else's song to "mask" stealing the material.
Remember the plagiarism is not HOW they are doing the picking style like people are claiming but it's by COPYING the time signatures, key's and chord progressions of the original song, adding two notes per chord change to someone else's song does not make it a new song.
That is my opinion and probably NOT based on knowing all facts in this particular case because their could be other "personal" factors going on that I don't know about.
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