evolucian wrote
Unfortunately its only a chord progression, and a rather common descending bass pattern used by many of the masters like Bach and Mozart and pretty much any classical and folky person. No melody was stolen. Pagey added contrary motion to this which in turn supplied the vocal melody. The little harpsichord fluffy flurry is by no means the melody to stairway, not at all. The track also has no melody that can be thought of as alike. Therefore, case dismissed as a chord progression can not be used as a basis of plagiarism. I believe Pagey worked his butt off on it...
I'm less sure about it needing to be melody and that a chord progression or riff cannot be used as the basis for a claim. I think all that got blown away with the onset of sampling.
But it'll be interesting to see what happens in court. If it gets heard. Several previous cases (not all involving Zep, there are other plagiarists on the planet) were settled out of court, which doesn't help people like Adrian who are trying to get a handle on all of this (some people are SO inconsiderate).
There was a long running dispute between Paul Simon and Martin Carthy that was nothing to do with melody and all to do with arrangement. Simon had worked the British folk circuit in the 60s (as had Bob Dylan) and several times played on the same bill as Carthy. One of Carthy's big numbers then was his arrangement of "Scarborough Fair". Simon went back to the USA and hooked up with Art Garfunkel. Eventually the
Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme album was released and there was "Scarbourough Fair" with an arrangement nearly identical to Carthy's. This was a big deal in folk music where songs are often "traditional" (IE public domain) but you can still get credit for a novel arrangement. The dispute ran for years and at one time there was considerable bad blood between Carthy and Simon. Eventually Carthy phoned Simon and said (something like) "look, we both know where you got that arrangement and it's done well for you whilst I have a mortgage that I'm struggling to pay." Simon asked Carthy how much the house had cost, Carthy told him, Simon says "Isn't that just the strangest thing! I've a cheque on my desk for that amount with your name on it." End of dispute (though Carthy never got a credit and thus cannot claim royalties in the future) and on a recent tour Simon buried the hatchet by getting Carthy to play that song during the show.
Executive summary: It's not just about the melody.
The point about the disputed chord progression being common in classical music is interesting. From what I've gleaned about the Satriani/Cold Play case two of the factors that would have been examined where how Cold Play could have got access to the Satriani recording and the "uniqueness" of the composition (or part thereof). This is why nobody's going to get sued for recording a 12-bar, and it may have a bearing on this case if Page asserts that he'd been listening to lots of Bach. "Whiter Shade of Pale" is derived from a Bach piece, and whilst there was a dispute over authorship it was within the band and not between the band and an external party.
