Stairway to Heaven vs Taurus - a roundup of soundalikes for the undecided "is it plagiarism" voter

I've written before on the Stairway to Heaven/Taurus plagiarism court case. One of the best posts has disappeared into the back catalogue and suffered the link rot that plagues blogs. 

Here are some of the comparisons, updated as of this week. 

I won't rehash the legal case. It turns on various technicalities in the law (like the fact that at the time, sheet music was copyright but musical performances on vinyl were not copyright) and technicalities in case law, like the "inverse ratio rule" that basically said if someone could have heard a song a lot, then you can claim he copied it by showing that only a tiny amount of his song resembled the original. Which doesn't make any sense, and it's gone now, thanks to the Stairway win. 

Instead I want to rehash the emotional case. Lots of people think Jimmy Page stole the opening bars of Stairway because a) he was a bit of a naughty boy when it came to taking credit for other people's work and b) the opening bars of Stairway do sound a lot like the post-introduction opening bars of Spirit's Taurus. 

I can't do anything about a), except to point out that wherever Led Zeppelin have been caught, they've eventually paid up, even, at last, to Jake Holmes for Dazed and Confused. 

But I can do something about b) which is to say, I can point out that the opening bars of Stairway sound like lots of things, because it's a very ordinary chord progression picked in an ordinary way (sorry Jimmy). If you normally listen to say, Death Metal or Doo-Wop, you may not have heard much of it and be susceptible, if you hear Taurus and Stairway played side-by-side, to saying a few seconds in the introduction are "the same". (Stairway is eight minutes long, and the rest of both songs are clearly different. The balance of Stairway is not 'picked in an ordinary way'.) If you've listened to other forms of music, you'll be more open to hearing they are two variations on a common theme.  Baroque music has similar progressions as does the Renaissance thingy passamezzo antico. Antico, meaning old! Another name for it is a cliché line, cliché meaning old hat!

Patrick Ball's Carolan's Dream (found via Celtic Baroque Roots of Stairway)

Or here, after the introduction. (Found via a comment in the blog above.)

Sonata di Chittarra, e Violino, con il suo Basso Continuo (at 35 seconds in)

But enough of those. What about pop music? Well, what about pop music! Here we go!

Cartoone, Ice Cream Dreams (1968) – Introduction

(Jimmy Page played on this album)

Davey Graham, Cry Me a River (1963) – introductory few seconds 

The Beatles, A Taste of Honey (1963) – arrangement and melody under "I dream of your first kiss and then I feel upon my lips again."

Johnny Rivers, Summer Rain (1968) – descending figure the orchestra plays, e.g. in the intro 

Crow,  Thoughts (1968) – introduction and guitar figure under verse 

Damnation of Adam Blessing (1969), Strings and things – all of it really

Nick Drake, Day Is Done(1969) – all of it really (he's doing his Davey Graham bit here)

(That is some great guitar playing, isn't it!)

Scott Walker, Hills of Yesterday (1969) – guitar figure

The Kinks – Shangri La (1969) – guitar figure

Jim Croce, Time in a Bottle (1970) – introduction and guitar figure under verse 

Andy Williams, Music to Watch Girls By (1967) – introduction (after first five seconds)

Led Zeppelin, Stairway to Heaven (1971) – introduction and guitar figure under first verses

(Recorded December 1970)

Spirit, Taurus (1968), 44 seconds in

Eric Clapton, Let It Grow (1974) – guitar figure under verse

Dolly Parton, We Used To (1975) – introduction, arrangement

U2, Sunday Bloody Sunday – introduction after the drums

Pink Floyd, Is There Anybody Out There? (1979) – at 1:25

Foo Fighters, The Pretender (2007) – introduction

I'm sure there's more, but you get the picture. 

A lot of these song names were transcribed from a video by ThatsSoInane, but they don't seem to exist on YouTube anymore to thank them. The video itself was taken down years ago. I bet these links rot soon too!

My neighbor has a dog called Spirit who is very yappy. I just heard him start barking and my neighbor's really loud yell, "SPIRIT!"

So maybe that's some sort of omen.