Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant showed his support with the new Tool album Fear Inoculum set for release on August 30th, releasing a photo with two fans wearing Tool shirts. Jimmy Page revealed an embarrassing Led Zeppelin photo a couple of days ago.
For the last few years Led Zeppelin have been caught up in a lawsuit over “Stairway to Heaven” with the band being accused of ripping off Spirit’s “Taurtus’ by the trustee of Randy ‘California’ Wolfe’s estate, Michael Skidmore. Robert Plant and Jimmy Page have even been called to testify, with a federal appeals court overturning the jury’s decision last year that the Zeppelin classic was not a ripoff. Now members of Tool and Korn are volunteering to testify on Led Zeppelin’s behalf.
A new amicus brief states, “The briefing reads: “[We], whose music entertains and enriches the lives of countless people worldwide, will therefore undoubtedly be affected by…the outcome of this critically important case.”
“There was no evidence presented at the Led Zeppelin trial that the otherwise unprotected elements that appeared in ‘Taurus’ were presented in such an original pattern or compilation as to garner copyright protection. Instead, the ‘evidence’ of the purported ‘selection and arrangement’ in ‘Taurus’ that also appeared in ‘Stairway To Heaven’ merely consisted of random similarities of commonplace elements, such as the existence of a descending chromatic scale and two-pitch sequences in different melodies that were scattered throughout the beginning of the songs.
After filtering out the generic elements or musical commonplaces identified in ‘Taurus’ under the extrinsic test, what remains are two completely different songs. More specifically, both songs start with chords that, according to both sides’ experts, are ‘commonplace.’ In fact, both songs include an ‘arpeggio,’ which means ‘breaking’ chords so their constituent pitches are heard separately rather than simultaneously, which, again, both sides’ experts agree is ‘commonplace.’
Both experts also agree that these ‘broken’ chords’ pitches are played in a different order in ‘Taurus’ than in ‘Stairway To Heaven’, which makes the two songs’ melodies different. In fact, the two songs’ melodies’ lowest pitches are a descending chromatic scale, which is nothing more than the white and black keys of a piano, played in order, right to left. This is not original.” Could we see Maynard James Keenan testify? We’ll have to wait and see. Keenan unloaded on new Tool album backlash a couple of days ago in a new interview.
.@RobertPlant and our superstar tech crew tonight. What a show!! pic.twitter.com/sJBOVETpY7
— The Everyman (@EverymanCork) July 22, 2019
