Zeppelin, Zman, and the Spirit of California

There once was a guy named Randy California.

People with states as last names are almost always interesting. Joe Montana. Johnny Utah. Nathan Arizona. Ron New Mexico.  This fellow is no exception.

Born Randy Wolfe, he was christened Randy California by none other than Jimi Hendrix in the mid-1960's. There was another Randy in their band at the time (Jimmy James and the Blue Flames), bassist Randy Palmer.  That guy became Randy Texas. He was from Texas.  Randy Wolfe became Randy California.  You can probably guess why.  Jimi was a creative whiz with his guitar, but he didn't go deeply clever on nicknames.

Randy California and Hendrix parted ways, and the former formed a band called Spirit. If you don't know them, well, you probably do. Or you should. They were a late 60's/early 70's AM radio mainstay. Okay, youngsters, maybe you'd remember them if you knew they were included on Freedom Rock. Well, turn it up, man.

Spirit's radio-friendly toe-tappers included "I Got a Line on You," "Nature's Way," "Morning Will Come," "Dark-Eyed Woman," "1984," and a handful of others.  The Spirit song I knew best was "Animal Zoo," but that was simply because a band we would see back in high school would cover it. They were called Indecision and can be seen here 20 years later doing the same song with only slightly less vigor than they had in 1987.

Spotify listeners interested in hearing Spirit can go here for a big list and here for the meat of it.

Spirit's heyday was '68-'72, but the band carried on, as acts are wont to do, into the 1990's. According to a brief biography page written by Mick Skidmore, Randy California left Spirit for a short stint in the early Seventies after he "had an accident in which he fell from a horse" and was "exhibiting erratic behavior." He came back into the fold a few years later, but they were done charting. Unless you count original Spirit member Jay Ferguson's 1977 hit "Thunder Island."

Also on that loosely scribbled bio page is a note about California's reaction to the death of John Lennon:

...a poem that Randy wrote upon hearing of the death of John Lennon in 1981, applies with equal compassion to it’s[sic] author.
“Beautiful man, Questioning one. Always searching for the reason, You let us visit into your mind, your private world for a time, and what you gave will never die and I will never stop believing in you. We’ll never stop believing your dream can come true….imagine.”

The band plugged on in various iterations until Randy California died in 1997. From Wikipedia:

California drowned in the Pacific Ocean at the age of 45 while rescuing his 12-year-old son Quinn from a rip current near the home of his mother, Bernice Pearl, at Molokai, Hawaii. He managed to push Quinn (who survived) toward the shore.

It adds:

The Randy Craig Wolfe Trust was established after his death and, using royalties from California's recording contracts, financially supports the Randy California Project, an after-school music education program for underprivileged elementary school children in Ventura County.

Here's where it gets (mildly) interesting.  17 years after California died, Mick Skidmore -- the gent who wrote that biography page -- filed suit as "a trustee representing the estate of Spirit guitarist Randy Wolfe." It seems that there is a long-standing copyright grudge that needed running through legal channels.  It involved the Spirit song "Taurus," a 2:37-long instrumental album track from their 1968 eponymously titled debut.

What song allegedly ripped it off?  That one you may have heard.

Stairway to Heaven.

Oh, boy.  Where to begin.  Rock royalty wrestling over writing rights is as much a part of the tradition of the genre as is scratching out some 5th-grade-level lyrics over three quick chords in order to impress a prospective girlfriend.  Sad to say.

I can't recall if we've trod over this ground here before, but everyone from George Harrison to Robin Thicke have had some courtroom wranglings where plagiarism is concerned.  The most interesting I ever heard of was the John Fogerty case . . . when he was accused of stealing from himself.

But "Stairway to Heaven"?  The ubiquitous, overplayed-to-absolute-death, 8-minute Led Zep classic (which I still admit to loving)? Come now.

Well, for starters, Page and Plant are probably the most-accused ripper-offers in rock history. Their leveraging of blues standards into rock gold is very, very, very, very well established.

So, let's take a quick listen to this pair of songs.



Well, it's not exactly "Rubber Duckie" and "Rubber Biscuit." Sounds similar. But similar enough to justify a suit?

What Mike Skidmore & Co counted on was a legal tenet called the "inverse ratio rule."  According to the University of Michigan Library's website:

The inverse ratio rule says that when the showing that defendant had access to plaintiff’s work is very strong, the bar for showing similarity between the works is correspondingly lower. In addition, when the showing similarity between the works is very strong, the bar for showing that defendant had access to plaintiff’s work is correspondingly lower. Not all circuits follow this rule. 

Why is this relevant? According to Wikipedia, "Led Zeppelin opened for Spirit on an American tour in 1968, and also borrowed from "Fresh Garbage" in live performances of the song 'As Long as I Have You'.  Jimmy Page's use of a theremin has been attributed to his seeing Randy California use one that he had mounted to his amplifier."

Well, I guess it would be hard to say Jimmy Page hadn't heard the song.

The accusations had been around for a while. In 1997, Guitar World magazine stated that "California's most enduring legacy may well be the finger-picked acoustic theme of the song 'Taurus', which Jimmy Page lifted virtually note for note for the introduction to 'Stairway to Heaven'."

The 2014 lawsuit was denied.  According to Rolling Stone, "in September 2018 a three-judge panel on the Ninth Circuit ruled that the original trial involved 'erroneous jury instructions' and ordered a new trial."

Well, that new trial just happened.  Bad news for the estate of Randy California. Bad news for fans of the inverse ratio rule. Bad news for the underprivileged elementary school children in Ventura County and their after-school music education program.

Rolling Stone, the journalistic leader in rock and roll for several decades and that of irrelevance and red-faced, uber-liberal, fringe politicking over the last two, offered an informed take that began: “On Monday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a 2016 decision that 'Stairway' did not infringe on Spirit’s 1968 instrumental track, 'Taurus,' and in doing so upended a long-standing copyright precedent.”

I'd be curious to get a thought from Zman, Marls, or our other Gheorghe barristers.

What's my thought?  Well, as much as I root for the underdog and underprivileged, and as much as people might want to see mega-million rockers with a reputation of pilfering get smacked, I tend to think like the aforementioned John Lennon, who famously said:

All music is rehash. There are only a few notes. Just variations on a theme.

Amen, brother.  And when it was offered, "Only 24 hours in a day, only 12 notes a man can play /
Music for all, but not just one people," that wasn't a purely original thought, but it was worth saying and worth hearing. Keep the creativity flowing, people.