“The Ballad of Gilligan’s Isle” is surely one of the most significant TV themes of all time, and not just due to its widespread popularity.
For some reason the beloved theme has endured multiple music-related debacles and courted controversy ever since the moment show creator Sherwood Schwartz and songwriter George Wyle brought it into existence.
First off, recording the “Gilligan’s Island” theme song was as slapstick as the show itself, with a hurried studio session at director Melville Shavelson’s house which took place at the same time he and his wife were hosting a large charity event. “The Ballad of Gilligan’s Isle” then underwent an overhaul for the second season of the CBS sitcom. Whereas the first season featured a version of the tune performed by folk group the Wellingtons and which omitted the names of the Professor (Russell Johnson) and Mary Ann (Dawn Wells), the second season debuted with a brand new iteration, this time sung by pop quartet The Eligibles, with all the cast members’ names included
TELEVISION
COMEDY SHOWS
The Gilligan’s Island & Stairway To Heaven Mashup That Survived Led Zeppelin’s Legal Threats
BYÂ JOE ROBERTS
APRIL 20, 2025 11:30 AM EST
CBS
“The Ballad of Gilligan’s Isle” is surely one of the most significant TV themes of all time, and not just due to its widespread popularity. For some reason the beloved theme has endured multiple music-related debacles and courted controversy ever since the moment show creator Sherwood Schwartz and songwriter George Wyle brought it into existence.
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First off, recording the “Gilligan’s Island” theme song was as slapstick as the show itself, with a hurried studio session at director Melville Shavelson’s house which took place at the same time he and his wife were hosting a large charity event. “The Ballad of Gilligan’s Isle” then underwent an overhaul for the second season of the CBS sitcom. Whereas the first season featured a version of the tune performed by folk group the Wellingtons and which omitted the names of the Professor (Russell Johnson) and Mary Ann (Dawn Wells), the second season debuted with a brand new iteration, this time sung by pop quartet The Eligibles, with all the cast members’ names included.
But these weren’t the only strange occurrences produced by this famous TV theme song. Years after the series went off the air, the “Gilligan’s Island” theme sparked a bizarre lawsuit that saw it weaponized by a Laguna Beach resident who was locked in an ongoing dispute with his neighbor over a lawn sculpture. Schwartz surely wasn’t counting on his sea shanty being used for psychological warfare but that’s exactly what happened. Just in case that wasn’t enough absurdity for one theme song, there was also the time a pop group created a “Gilligan’s Island”/”Stairway to Heaven” mash-up and managed to almost get sued into oblivion by the English rock legends.
The Gilligan’s Island theme song almost resulted in yet another lawsuit
Even “The Ballad of Gilligan’s Isle” isn’t as famous as “Stairway to Heaven,” though it’s probably one of the only TV theme songs that could rival Led Zeppelin’s 1971 classic. Still it’s hard to imagine why you might want to mix the two but for whatever reason, one little-known pop group did exactly that with “Stairway to Gilligan’s Island.”
As music journalist Eric Alper recounts in a post chronicling the creation of this unnecessary mash-up, “Stairway to Gilligan’s Island” was “created” by San Francisco band Little Roger & The Goosebumps, who released the song as a single in 1978. You can hear “Stairway to Gilligan’s Island” here but it’s pretty much exactly what you’d imagine: the music of “Stairway to Heaven” with the lyrics of “The Ballad of Gilligan’s Isle.”
As a cynical attempt at courting attention, the stunt seemed to work — at least somewhat. “Stairway to Gilligan’s Isle” remains the song for which Little Roger & the Goosebumps are best known, with the band reportedly producing the single to pad out their sets during a grueling touring schedule. According to the book “Led Zeppelin and Philosophy: All Will Be Revealed,” Little Roger & the Goosebumps did at least recreate everything themselves, playing the parts and maintaining the melody of the original Zeppelin song while still managing to include every one of Sherwood Schwartz’s original lyrics for “The Ballad of Gilligan’s Isle” — though the lyrics used were actually from the first season’s theme which referred to the Professor and Mary Ann as “the rest” before their actual names were added for season 2.
Considering the single debuted in May 1978 on the band’s own Splash Records label, they could have easily used the more comprehensive season 2 lyrics, though it wouldn’t matter either way as it took less than a month for Zeppelin’s lawyers to threaten legal action unless all remaining copies were destroyed — an order the band dutifully followed. Almost 50 years later, it’s odd to think that had this lawsuit gone ahead, it wouldn’t be the weirdest one to have arisen from “The Ballad of Gilligan’s Isle
