Robert Plant denies copying Stairway to Heaven riff
Led Zeppelin lead singer Robert Plant told a court he couldn't remember watching a band he and Jimmy Page are accused of copying when they wrote Stairway to Heaven.
The musicians are in the middle of a civil trial over claims that the opening guitar riff of their classic 1971 hit was lifted from an instrumental track called "Taurus" by US group Spirit.
A lawsuit has been filed by a trustee of Spirit's guitarist Randy - known as Randy California - who died in 1997.
But Plant, 67, told a court in Los Angeles he had no recollection of watching Spirit at Mothers club in Birmingham in 1970.
He said he had been involved in a serious car crash with his wife and only learnt from newspaper reports that he had been at Mothers club earlier that night.
Watch a YouTube musician play extracts from both songs
"I can't recall Spirit or anybody else playing there with the passing of time," Plant said.
He said his wife suffered a fractured skull in the car accident.
"Part of the windshield buried in the top of my head which was interesting," he said.
"I don't remember a thing."
Plant told the court he wrote the lyrics to Stairway To Heaven after Page had played some of the song to him at Headley Grange in Hampshire.
"I was trying to bring in the beauty and remoteness of pastural Britain," he said.
"It developed into something I could not imagine."
Plant said he did not think it was a "problem" that Led Zeppelin covered other bands, including Spirit, at their early gigs in the late 1960s.
"In the nest of rock and rhythm and blues, there has always been cross pollination," he said.
Page and Plant have attended each day of the copyright infringement trial, which is expected to conclude this week.
Page, 72, previously told the court he had not heard of Taurus until his son-in-law showed him a comparison with Stairway To Heaven on the internet a few years ago.