This Day In History: Led Zeppelin's 4th album was released on this day in 1971. It has gone on to sell over 37 million copies worldwide.
Led Zeppelin has been such an influential band that some groups actually sound just like them. During the 80's one of these groups were Kingdom Come. The musical style on Kingdom Come's debut album was very close to the early blues-rock style of English rock band Led Zeppelin, to the point that some listeners initially thought that Kingdom Come was actually a Led Zeppelin reunion. With a sound that was thought by many to be highly derivative of Led Zeppelin's, there was a backlash from critics, with the band being dubbed "Kingdom Clone" in the press.
The biggest band to be accused to copying Led Zeppelin was Whitesnake. Tracks like "Slow an' Easy", "Still of the Night" and "Judgement Day" have been accused of copying Led Zeppelin, while David Coverdale has been accused of imitating singer Robert Plant. Responding to the claims, Coverdale jokingly stated in 1987: "I guess it's quite a compliment to be placed in a class like that." The comparison was exacerbated when Coverdale teamed up with Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page to release the album Coverdale–Page in 1993. In the press, Plant would refer to Coverdale as "David Cover-version". Coverdale denied any notion of plagiarism, stating: "I don't know how accurate the comparison is. People shouldn't forget that I worked in Deep Purple for a number of years, so my pedigree in hard rock is quite strong. I understand that bands like Whitesnake, Purple and Led Zeppelin all play a solid powerful brand of rock, but I don't think we're coming from the same place musically." Their bassist Neil Murray laid some of the blame on A&R executive John Kalodner, who he claimed began pushing Whitesnake in a more Led Zeppelin-like direction.
The latest band that sounds a lot like Led Zep is Greta Van Fleet. Even Robert Plant chimed in on them.
However, even Led Zeppelin has been accused to copying other bands. The iconic song “Stairway to Heaven” was part of an ongoing lawsuit. The band Spirit has claimed that the arpeggio opening is too similar to their 1968 song “Taurus.” "...a federal jury ruled in 2016 that Led Zeppelin’s song did not bear the burden of being 'virtually identical' to 'Spirit', as is the threshold for fairly common or simple chord progressions. This decision was then upheld by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in March 2020, and finally on October 5th, the Supreme Court of the United States declined to hear the case." Source
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