> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.jewsrock.org/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Riffed Off - URL: https://www.jewsrock.org/riffed-off/ - Published: 2005-07-02T00:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2005-07-02T00:00:00.000Z - Author: JewsRock - Tags: Words, #Import 2026-08-16 01:56, Essays *By Dave McKenna* Photo courtesy Bernice Pearl. Bernice Pearl thinks "Stairway to Heaven" is the "greatest rock and roll makeout song ever." She just wishes her son, Randy California, got some credit for crafting the melody that's soundtracked a gazillion smooches. "Led Zeppelin lifted that from Randy," says Pearl from her home in Ventura, Ca. "Stairway"? Stolen? Heaven forbid! Pearl's not without some conflicts of interest on this matter, it must be pointed out. Her primary occupation these days comes in shoring up the legacy of her offspring, Randy California, the 1960s' guitar hero and founding member of Spirit who drowned in 1997. And, well, she wouldn't be the first Jewish mother to suffer delusions of a son's grandeur. But Pearl's not the only one convinced that Zeppelin's most famous riff was flat-out filched from "Taurus," a deep cut California wrote for Spirit's debut album. "I heard Randy rehearse 'Taurus' a long time before it came out, and I didn't consider it to be one of Spirit's significant pieces at the time," says Barry "Dr. Demento" Hansen, who befriended California as a child and went on to become Spirit's first manager. "It was just another Spirit song until \['Stairway'\] came out. Led Zeppelin clearly heard Spirit's record." California, nee Wolf, was just 16 in 1967, when he composed "Taurus" to honor a girlfriend born under that astrological sign. The opening bars of the instrumental track are far more jarring to the average rock listener now than they were when California first put them to record. All because of what sure seems like a can't-be-coincidental similarity between California's guitar work and the transcendent kickoff of "Stairway." Keep in mind, Zeppelin released its opus in the fall of 1971—or more than three years after "Taurus" hit the bins. Even without this bit of alleged musical thievery or his heroic death—he drowned while saving his son from the Pacific surf off a Hawaiian beach—California's life story is the stuff of screenplays. The product of a broken marriage, California spent his formative years hanging out with his guitar at the Ash Grove, a serious L.A. music club run by his uncle. The youngster exploited family connections to meet every master of the six-string—John Lee Hooker, Mississippi John Hurt, and Lightning Hopkins among them—who gigged at the club. "I have a clear memory of having to shoe Randy out of the dressing room whenever Lightning Hopkins was in town," says Hansen, who was the primary soundman at the Ash Grove in the early-1960s. "When he was very young, Randy wanted to learn from everybody who came to the club. But part of my job was to make sure Lightning would have time to get his gin before he went onstage." When Randy was 15, his mother married jazz drummer Ed "Cass" Cassidy, who moved his new family across country to Long Island in 1966 for professional reasons. A momentous brush with greatness came during a day trip into New York that June, when he stopped by Manny's Music, a fixture on the row of guitar shops on 48th Street. "Randy was in Manny's when he met a guitar player who introduced himself as Jimmy James," recalls Pearl. "This guy liked Randy and asked him to come down that night to play with him at a club with his band." Randy accepted the offer, joining this Jimmy James fellow's band, called The Blue Flames, at the legendary Cafe Wha in Greenwich Village. James' quartet, which had a nightly gig at the Cafe, already employed one Randy, a Texan, on bass. To distinguish between his subordinates, the charismatic bandleader dubbed the young ax slinger from the West Coast "Randy California." It was at Cafe Wha in the coming months that Jimmy James was discovered by Chas Chandler, the bass player for the Animals. Chandler coaxed his prot‚g‚ to leave NY for Europe to start a solo career as Jimi Hendrix (his real surname). At Hendrix's urging, Chandler rang up Pearl and asked if she'd allow her adolescent son to rock across the water. "I told \[Chandler\]I'm not sending my kid off to some Greek Island," Pearl says. Cassidy returned the family to L.A. at the end of the summer of 1966\. That's when Randy and some friends from the neighborhood (including Jay Ferguson and Mark Andes) formed a band and began a regular Monday night engagement back at the Ash Grove, playing mainly blues. Randy's stepfather, nearly 30 years his elder, drummed for what would soon be a quintet. The combo was originally called Spirits Rebellious—a name California took from a Kahlil Gibran novel—then shortened merely to Spirit. Randy quickly ditched "Wolf" in favor of the stage name given to him in New York by the burgeoning myth now being billed as Hendrix. He brought more than a name back from the Big Apple, however: California wowed Southern California audiences with all the guitar tricks he'd learned from gigging at the Cafe Wha with Hendrix. "Randy was the first guy on the West Coast to use feedback to sustain notes," recalls Hansen. "He started doing that, and jaws started dropping all over L.A." Hansen was at that time the leaseholder on a group house that doubled as Spirit's rehearsal space. By default, he became the band's original manager and producer. In June 1967 he brought them into a local studio to record what would be Spirit's first demo. A tape of those sessions got to Lou Adler, a powerhouse manager and fledgling industry mogul who had a hand in launching the recording careers of Carole King and the Mamas and the Papas. When Adler wanted to bring Spirit into his stable at Ode Records, Hansen politely stepped aside. The blues the band favored at the Ash Grove gave way to a jazzy brand of psychedelia by the time Spirit released its eponymous debut. Pearl says her son, who briefly went to Hebrew school, rarely dwelled on his Jewish roots: "Randy was interested in all cultures," she says. "He just happens to have a Jewish mother and father." Yet he nevertheless threw a bone to his religious heritage by titling a song "Jewish," for Spirit's second LP, the 1969 release, "The Family That Plays Together." Pearl says that when Spirit recorded the tune, the band's gentile lead singer, Jay Ferguson, mangled the Yiddish phrases that open it. A Washington Post review of Spirit's January 1969 performance at the Alexandria (Va.) Roller Rink called "Jewish" a "stop-and-go tune with the obvious stamp of Jewish liturgical music." Spirit's commercial high-points came with the singles "I Got a Line on You"(1969) and "Nature's Way" (1971), neither of which broke theTop 10\. But the band never overcame dubious management decisions—legend holds that Spirit declined an invitation to be a part of the Woodstock festival on the advice of Adler—and was done in by its failure to craft hit singles. By the time Zeppelin released "Stairway," Spirit was all but defunct. California wasn't yet 20 years old when Spirit recorded its most critically hailed album, 1971's "The 12 Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus." Spirit split after its release. In the years following the breakup, Ferguson and Andes founded Jo Jo Gunne, a decidedly non-psychedelic hard rock combo. California tried to exploit his guitar hero reputation to kickstart a solo career, but found that promoters would only give him work if he let them use his old band's name. None of the faux Spirits gained any traction, and California's own spirit soon seemed broken. Plagued by poor mental health and bouts with substance abuse—cocaine and LSD became a big part of California's diet, say former bandmates—he began behaving erratically. A low point came in London in the spring of 1973, after a van holding all the equipment he'd need for a planned tour of Europe was stolen. California, already regarded as damaged goods by those around him, jumped into the Thames River off the Chelsea Bridge. He survived the plunge with only minor injuries, but the leap furthered his reputation as a loose nut. That rep was etched in stone by the time California literally threw celebrity guest Neil Young off the stage during a Spirit reunion gig in 1976. Having the biggest rock band on the planet use your riff as the foundation of the greatest rock and roll makeout song of all time seems enough to send any musician, particularly an unemployed guitarist, over the edge. But if the strong scent of "Taurus"that permeates "Stairway" was what put such a bustle in California's hedge row or in any way inspired the jump into the Thames, he never let on. In 1996, writing in the liner notes of a CD reissue of Spirit's debut disc, California referenced that he was aware of the musical mimicry of his song by Led Zep. He also reminded fans that Zeppelin served as an opening act for Spirit during a U.S. tour in December 1968. But, Pearl says, that was the extent of his fussing over the lick infringement. "After `Stairway to Heaven' came out, Randy knew they took what he had written -- everybody talked about that," says Pearl. "But when people would ask Randy about it, he used to always say, 'Let it go.' There should have been at least one telephone call from Led Zeppelin, some sort of `Thank you.' Something. But it never came." Nobody from the Led Zeppelin camp has ever commented publicly on the likenesses between their iconic tune and Spirit's relatively anonymous work. But the libretto of the offending Led Zep tune contains what could be taken as a nod to California, as Robert Plant croons, "...And his spirit is crying for leaving." Forget leaving; by rights, all these years and millions of "Stairway" airplays later, California's spirit should be crying for royalties. But, California, wherever his own spirit now dwells, should get pleasure knowing that kids to this day walk into Manny's Music and any other place six-strings are sold, pick a Stratocaster off the wall and take their first baby steps as guitarists by plucking a riff found on both Spirit's debut and Led Zeppelin IV. That enduring ritual inspired the "No Stairway!" sign that hangs in the music shop in the feature film, "Wayne's World." If there's a rock and roll heaven, that warning should read "No Taurus!" --- *Dave McKenna is a staff writer at Defector, and previously wrote for Deadspin and Washington City Paper.*