Led Zeppelin Can Exit Stairway Suit for Just $1

Lawyers suing members of rock supergroup Led Zeppelin say their client is willing to settle a lawsuit over the band's most famous song--a claim potentially worth millions of dollars--for just $1.

The catch is that band members Robert Plant and Jimmy Page would have to give dead rocker Randy California a writing credit on the iconic 1971 rock ballad Stairway to Heaven. And that's probably worth a lot more than a buck. Such an agreement by Page and Plant, the band's guitarist and singer, respectively, would head off a much anticipated copyright infringement trial scheduled for May 10 in Los Angeles federal court.

"It's always been about credit where credit is due," said attorney Francis Alexander Malofiy, who brought the suit on behalf of Michael Skidmore, administrator of the trust of the late Randy Wolfe, known as Randy California. Wolfe wrote an instrumental track called Taurus in the late 1960s for the band Spirit that Malofiy argues was the genesis of the famous Led Zeppelin ballad. He claims Page and Plant copied it in their finger-picked opening of Stairway to Heaven.

A deal on those terms would mean sharing future income from one of the most recognizable rock songs ever written. Malofiy and his co-counsel, Glen Kulik, said they would agree to such a settlement, speaking after a pre-trial hearing in Los Angeles on Monday.