Bloomberg is reporting that lawyers suing members of rock supergroup LED ZEPPELIN say their client is willing to settle a lawsuit over the band’s most famous song – a claim potentially worth millions of dollars – for just $1. The catch is that band members Robert Plant and Jimmy Page would have to give dead rocker Randy California a writing credit on the iconic 1971 rock ballad ‘Stairway To Heaven’.
Jimmy Page and Robert Plant have said that they would not attend the upcoming lawsuit that is due to take place on May 10th in Los Angeles.
A federal judge in Los Angeles has ruled that a jury must decide whether LED ZEPPELIN borrowed the opening licks of ‘Taurus’, which was recorded by a band named SPIRIT.
The lawsuit was brought in 2014, 43 years after ‘Stairway To Heaven’ was released, on behalf of the late Randy California, SPIRITS’s guitarist and the composer of ‘Taurus’.
A trust created by his mother and administered by a former rock journalist alleged in the complaint that Page lifted the opening acoustics ‘Stairway’ from an instrumental that California had written in 1966 for his girlfriend. According to trustee Michael Skidmore, Page had asked California to teach him the chords to Taurus in 1969, when the two groups would sometimes tour together.