Jury to decide whether Led Zeppelin ripped off 'Stairway to Heaven' riff

LOS ANGELES -- Generations of aspiring guitarists have tried to copy the riff from Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven."
Starting on Tuesday, a Los Angeles court will try to decide whether the members of Led Zeppelin themselves ripped off the riff.
The band's guitarist Jimmy Page and singer Robert Plant are named as defendants in the lawsuit brought by the trustee of guitarist Randy Wolfe from the band Spirit. Attorneys for the trustee contend that 1971's "Stairway to Heaven" copies music from the Spirit song "Taurus," which Wolfe wrote in either 1966 or 1967. Wolfe died in 1997, drowning while saving his son in Hawaii.
Page, Plant and their bandmate John Paul Jones are all expected to testify at the trial, though Jones has been dismissed as a defendant in the case.

[link to www.ctvnews.ca]