John Paul Jones' Stairway To Heaven Trial Transcript Goes Online

(Classic Rock) A transcript of John Paul Jones' evidence given at the recent Led Zeppelin Stairway To Heaven plagiarism trial has been published online. The bassist and keyboardist gave his testimony at the trial in a California court in June. The band were then cleared of having copied the opening chords of Spirit song Taurus, which was released three years before the Led Zeppelin classic.

The full transcript has been published by Rolling Stone and follows earlier publications of testimonies from vocalist Robert Plant and guitarist Jimmy Page.

The evidence quashed the long-held narrative that Plant and Page had came home from Bron-Yr-Aur cottage in the Welsh mountains with the opening sequence to Stairway To Heaven written to show the rest of the band in 1970.

But the legal argument centred on the suggestion that the chord sequence in question had been in use for three centuries. That, and other points, led to the case being found in Jimmy Page and Robert Plant's favour - though they lost their bid to recoup almost $800,000 in legal fees after they were cleared.

Lawyer Francis Malofiy, who represented Spirit has launched an appeal against the jury's verdict, insisting that Led Zeppelin had "won on a technicality" and the ruling wasn't "legally correct or logically sound." Read more including the transcript here.

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