(YouTube)
Zep's reunion in 2007.
Led Zeppelin — and specifically guitarist Jimmy Page and singer Robert Plant — is defending itself against charges that it pinched the opening from its 1971 epic "Stairway to Heaven" from "Taurus" by the band Spirit.
Page and Plant are currently being sued by the estate of Spirit guitarist Randy Wolfe and will appear in court in Los Angeles next week — ironically, home to some of the most over-the-top legends from Zep's heyday.
If you want the details, read Business Insider's James Cook's post on the legal ins and outs of the case.
"This isn't the first time that Led Zeppelin have been involved with alleged copyright infringement," Cook reported. "The band previously settled with Jake Holmes over 'Dazed and Confused,' Anne Bredon over 'Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You,' Howlin' Wolf over 'How Many More Times' and 'The Lemon Song,' and Willie Dixon over 'Whole Lotta Love' and 'Bring It on Home.'"
I grew up hearing "Stairway" — from the band's fourth album — something like six times a day on the radio (I'm not kidding), so over time it began to become the musical equivalent of the wind in the trees.
But I started listening to it again recently, and I agree with Page's assessment that it's Led Zeppelin's most well-thought-out piece of music — a synthesis of hard rock, folk, English classical music, and medieval music.
It also contains Page's most disciplined and carefully considered solo, which might be why everyone has it committed to memory, but no one has been all that influenced by it — Page's wilder, looser work inspires imitation, while "Stairway" just inspires awe, not least because it occurs in the context of such a sprawling composition with pretty much all the light and shade, as Page might put it, a person could ask for.
However, during the course of getting reacquainted with "Stairway," I also relistened to the rest of the Zep catalog, and I realized that although "Stairway" is supposed to be Zep's masterpiece, it's so finely constructed that it doesn't sound quite as epic as it used to — for me, anyway.
Here are three Led Zeppelin songs that outdo it.
"Kashmir"
After the first four albums, Zep entered what I like to think of its second phase, which would run from "Houses of the Holy" in 1973 to "In Through the Our Door" in 1979. (That band broke up after drummer John Bonham's death in 1980.)
"Kashmir" was on "Physical Graffiti," released in 1975, on the eve of the punk explosion. I've always thought of it as Zep's answer to Pink Floyd: A sprawling, booming, relentless piece of high, hard-rock meditation — the thinking man's Zepic. And naturally, this is the song that got all the music critics to take Zep seriously for the first time. The band had always been interested in what we now call "world music," and "Kashmir" showed off all those influences.