I should say at the outset that I’m a ride-or-die Led Zeppelin fan. I owned their posters and t-shirts and a scratchy bootleg of their last show ever. I learned how to play the drums by figuring out the beat to “When the Levee Breaks.” I even like John Paul Jones.
I’m surprised it’s taken so long for Zeppelin to get called out. They’ve covered, ripped off, appropriated and approximated the sounds of many other performers (albeit very well, imo). Like their peers at the time they shamelessly copied from black American blues music. On paper it looks kinda bad.
However, The New Yorker’s Alex Ross thinks the case against “Stairway” is shaky when you consider the influence Baroque & Renaissance music had in pop music at the time, and on bands like Spirit and Zeppelin in particular. Ross further says the “issue” began way before these two bands ever started up (I bolded a few things in here).
Classical Dark Arts 