'Stairway' Trial To Hear Closing Arguments

Robert Plant, Jimmy Page

Robert Plant took the stand Tuesday in the copyright trial over his band Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” recounting for the jury how the iconic song was created.

The LA Times reports Plant’s story of how the song came about is an important element to the defense he and Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page are mounting against accusations they stole the song’s famous opening guitar chords from a song by Spirit, an L.A. band that gained some notoriety in the late 1960s.

Speaking in a soft, high-pitched voice and dressed in a trim, two-piece navy suit with his long hair pulled back in a ponytail, Plant recalled an evening sitting with Page by a fire at a rural rehearsal and recording retreat more than 45 years ago, when Page played for him the opening notes of what would eventually become the eight-minute epic.

Under cross-examination, the lawyer for the estate of Spirit guitarist Randy Wolfe prodded Plant about whether the band performed other artists’ songs in the early years before they more fully developed their own musical repertory.

Plant readily acknowledged that they had, saying pointedly, “I don't have any problem with that.”

Jurors listened to recordings made of the band’s first rehearsals of “Stairway” at the Headley Grange recording retreat, and heard Page describe how he worked to create a song that builds from the gentle acoustic guitar opening through his titanic electric guitar solo leading into Plant’s high-register vocal climax.

Closing arguments are scheduled Wednesday before the case is handed to the four-woman, four-man jury.