After 40 years, Led Zeppelin`s masterpiece is as thrilling, fascinating

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Courtesy of Atlantic Records
ive songs into their set at the Ulster Hall in Belfast on March
5, 1971, the four members of English hard-rock band Led
Zeppelin played a song they had never before performed
on stage. The album that would contain it, an untitled effort
usually referred to as Led Zeppelin IV (see sidebar on page 29),
would not be released for months. The crowd, which had come to
hear familiar Zeppelin rockers like “Whole Lotta Love” and “Immigrant
Song,” patiently listened to the new number—one that was fully acoustic
for its first half before whipping up an electric fury in its closing
minutes. They applauded politely at the end, but reserved most of
their enthusiasm for more familiar fare like the song that followed it,
“Dazed and Confused.” Bass player John Paul Jones recalled, “They
were all bored to tears waiting to hear something they knew.”
Four decades later, “Stairway to Heaven,” the number that
Zep debuted that night in Belfast, is among the most well-known,
beloved and debated songs in the history of popular music. While
never released as a single, it has been played on American radio
more than 3 million times. It has been celebrated as a peak moment
for rock ’n’ roll, revered as a marvel of lyrical and musical poetry,
dismissed as self-indulgent nonsense, and covered both reverently
and parodically by innumerable artists. It has been venerated as an
anthem of environmentalism and condemned as an ode to Satan.
It is regularly played at both weddings and funerals. Its delicately
fingerpicked opening notes are so irresistible to amateur guitarists
that instrument stores have been known to post signs reading
“NO ‘STAIRWAY.’” Its allure can be credited as a major reason
that Led Zeppelin IV has sold more than 32 million copies around
the world. Its own creators view its legacy in very different ways—
guitarist, producer and co-writer Jimmy Page eagerly cites it among
his proudest accomplishments, while singer and lyricist Robert Plant
would just as soon never sing it again. “It was a milestone for us,”
Page said in 1975, only four years after its release. “Every musician
wants to do something of lasting quality, something which will hold
up for a long time, and I guess we did it with ‘Stairway.’”
After 40 years, Led Zeppelin’s masterpiece
is as thrilling, fascinating and
confounding as ever
LOOK TO THE WEST
“Stairway to Heaven” began as a vague notion in the mind
of Page, who, before forming Led Zeppelin in 1968, had worked
alongside Jones as a session musician in the studios of London.
“When John Paul Jones and I did studio work, the rule was always:
you don’t speed up,” Page recalled in 2001. “That was the cardinal
sin, to speed up. And I thought, ‘Right, we’ll do something that
speeds up.’” He came up with the initial guitar idea during an October
1970 writing retreat with Plant at Bron-Yr-Aur, an 18th-century
cottage in the bucolic South Snowdonia region of Wales. Page
continued to tinker with the music for nearly a year. “I’d been fooling
around with the acoustic guitar and came up with several different
sections that flowed together nicely,” he said. “I soon realized that
John Bonham, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones
it could be the perfect vehicle for something I’d been wanting to do
for a while: to compose something that would start quietly, have the
drums come in the middle, and build to a huge crescendo.”
The members of Led Zeppelin—Page, Plant, Jones and drummer
John “Bonzo” Bonham—convened with engineer Andy Johns in early
1971 at Headley Grange, a Victorian mansion in Headley, East
Hampshire, England, suggested to them by Fleetwood Mac for its
relative isolation and pleasing acoustic properties. They intended
to write, rehearse and even record most of their fourth album there,
and brought in a mobile recording truck owned by the Rolling Stones
to capture their new songs on tape. Among the pieces of music
that Page debuted for his bandmates was the basis of what would
become “Stairway.” He began mapping out an arrangement with
Jones, who cited the group’s love of classical music as an inspiration
for the song’s structure. “There’s a lot of drama in the classical
forms,” he said. “It seems natural for music to have that, as opposed
to everybody starting and just banging away and finishing.”
The following day they showed it to Bonham, and the group
began getting a handle on the epic number. “Bit difficult, really,
because it started on acoustic,” Page said, “and as you know, it
goes through electric parts. We had various run-throughs where
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listeners to impose their own meanings.
“It’s onomatopoeic,” he said. “I was
thinking about the need for a more organic
relationship between our generation at the
time, who were living faster than fast, and our
environment.” Among his inspirations were
Edmund Spenser’s 16th-century epic poem
“The Faerie Queene” and J.R.R. Tolkien’s
Lord of the Rings novels (referenced more
explicitly in Zeppelin songs like “Ramble
On” and “Misty Mountain Hop”). Page
cited “Stairway” as a breakthrough in
Plant’s progress as a wordsmith: “I knew
at that point that he’d proved it to himself,
program,” Plant said in 1983, when rumors
over supposed hidden messages in rock
music were epidemic. “I was absolutely
drained all day. I walked around and couldn’t
actually believe it.” Plant blamed religious
figures on the college-lecture circuit for
spreading the legend. “There are a lot of
people who are making money there, and if
that’s the way they need to do it, then do it
without my lyrics,” he said. “I cherish them
far too much.” The song, he insisted, was
about “the beginning of spring. It’s when
the birds make their nests, when hope and
the new year begins.”
Courtesy of Warner Home Video
I was playing the acoustic guitar and then
jumping over and picking up the electric
guitar. That’s why it was a bit tricky to get
together in the early stages. But I had these
sections, and I knew what order they were
to go in. It was just a matter of getting
everybody comfortable with each gear
shift.” Still, the foursome quickly mastered
the complex changes. “There was only
one place where there was a slight rerun,”
Page noted. “For some unknown reason,
Bonzo couldn’t get the timing right on the
12-string part before the solo. Other than
that, it flowed very quickly.”
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Courtesy of Warner Home Video
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John Bonham on stage in New York City, 1973
Getty Imges / Rob Verhorst
a great take and you want to do it again.’
They go back down. Bonzo grabs his sticks,
huffing, puffing, muttering, ‘One more take
and that’s it.’” Bonham seethed, awaiting
what Smith calls the drummer’s “grand
entrance” halfway through the track. “And
of course when the drums come in, if you
thought the one before was good, this one
is just explosive,” Smith said. “And when
they play it back, Bonham looks at Jimmy
like, ‘You’re always right, you bastard.’”
The band moved on yet again, setting
up shop at Olympic Studios in London to lay
down overdubs. For “Stairway,” Jones added
further keyboards, strings and woodwinds,
and Page laid down his now-classic electric
guitar solo. He bypassed his usual Gibsons
for a 1958 Fender Telecaster, a gift from his
former Yardbirds bandmate Jeff Beck, played
through the Supro amplifier he had used
On stage in the Netherlands, June 21, 1980
WORDS HAVE TWO MEANINGS
As they ran through the number, Plant
sat by the roaring fireplace and listened—
and lyrical inspiration hit. “I was holding a
pencil and paper,” Plant recently recalled,
“when, suddenly, my hand was writing out
the words: ‘There’s a lady who’s sure all
that glitters is gold,
and she’s buying a
stairway to heaven.’ I
sat there and looked
at the words and
almost leaped out
of my seat.” Page
later estimated that
Plant came up with
80 percent of the lyric on the spot; rehearsal
tapes from Headley Grange find Plant
singing most of the completed lyric as we
know it, while ad-libbing nonsense syllables
where a few lines are still missing. Plant
readily admits that the finished lyric was
more impressionistic than literal, allowing
and could get into something a bit more
profound than just subjective things. Not
that they can’t be profound as well, but
there’s lot of ambiguity implied in that
number that wasn’t present before.”
That ambiguity was a blessing and a
curse. By the early 1980s, religious groups
WIND ON DOWN THE ROAD
With most of the basic tracks for Led
Zeppelin IV in the bag, Zeppelin relocated
to the more formal environs of Island
Studios in London’s Notting Hill area—and
it was there that the band tackled “Stairway
to Heaven.” Assistant engineer Richard
Digby Smith recalled
later that the basic track
was recorded with Page
playing acoustic guitar,
hidden by four tall baffles
on all sides, while Jones
sat to his right playing
a Moog keyboard bass.
Smith remembers the
group listening to a playback of one fullband take in particular, which Bonham
immediately declared was the best basic
track they were likely to get. “Page says
he’s convinced that they have a better take
in them,” he writes. “Well, Bonham’s not
best pleased. ‘This always happens—we get
THE PIPER’S CALLING YOU
To approximate the song’s distinctive
mixture of acoustic and electric guitars
live, Page commissioned a custom-made
Gibson EDS-1275 with two necks—one
Led Zeppelin’s 1969 debut album was self-titled, and the
follow-up was called Led Zeppelin II, itself followed by Led
Zeppelin III. Despite the logical progression, singer Robert
Plant assured a journalist in 1971 that “the next album won’t be
called Led Zeppelin IV.” And it wasn’t—sort of. In fact, the album
has no official title at
all, a reaction to the
band’s perception
that critics were not
judging its work on
the music alone. “I
put it to everybody
else that it’d be a
good idea to put out
something totally anonymous,” guitarist Jimmy Page recalled.
In place of a title, the album sported a series of four symbols,
– Jimmy Page
a six-string and one a 12-string (Gibson
released a signature series replica of the
guitar in 2007). The group kept the song
in its set following its March 1971 stage
premiere, winding its way through Europe,
North America and Japan while awaiting
the Nov. 8 release of Led Zeppelin IV. “At
the time we didn’t know it was going to
turn into something of a monster—we just
played it as part of our new album,” Jones
said. “We certainly felt it was one of our
best compositions up to that point.”
The song’s reputation began to grow
by word of mouth as the tour progressed.
Road manager Richard Cole recalled Page
telling him after a May 3 show at the KBHallen in Copenhagen, “We’ve got a real
monster on our hands. It’s one of those
songs that’s developing a life of its own.”
But the moment Page himself remembers as
each chosen by one band member to represent himself (Page
said the band members referred to it among themselves as Four
Symbols). Plant’s was a feather design associated with the
mythical Mu civilization, while Jones and Bonham chose designs
from typographic artist Rudolf Koch’s Book of Signs. Page
has long refused
to explain the
origins or meaning
of his symbol,
which resembles
the word “ZoSo.”
Some fans refer
to the album itself
as ZoSo, while
others refer to it as Runes or Untitled. Plant said a few years
ago that he calls it “just ‘the fourth album.’ That’s it.”
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in the studio since Zeppelin’s 1969 selftitled debut album. Page had the beginning
and ending of the solo set in his mind, but
improvised the rest. Cigarette dangling from
his mouth, he stepped into position between
two large Orange speakers blaring the basic
track—he chose not to wear headphones, but
to react to the music as it bounced around
the studio walls. “I did three takes and chose
one of them,” he said. “They were all different.
The solo sounds constructed—and it is, sort
of, but purely of the moment. For me, a solo
is something where you just fly, but within
the context of the song.”
SYMBOL MINDED
‘ We knew it was good, but we didn’t
realize that people would latch onto it.’
were claiming that the recording included
back-masked lyrics pledging allegiance to
the devil. When played backward, some
alleged that lyrics like “Oh, here’s to my
sweet Satan” were audible. “The first time
I heard it was early in the morning when
I was at home, and I heard it on a news
Robert Plant
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Mary J. Blige
A steady stream of cover versions of “Stairway to Heaven”
began in the 1970s and never let up, many of them calculated
to puncture the aura of majesty around the original. In the 1970s a
version appeared, credited to Little Roger and the Goosebumps,
which paired the music from “Stairway” with the lyrics from the
“Gilligan’s Island” theme. After that shot across the bow, irreverent
variations abounded. “Because of the beauty of the song, sooner
or later that has to turn around and swing the other way,” Plant
said. “Like ‘My Way’ or ‘God Save the Queen,’ after a while it’s a
great target for pointing a skeptical finger or hoots of derision.”
Not every artist who covers “Stairway” does so with tongue in
cheek—R&B singer Mary J. Blige recorded a faithful version last
year. “I’ve listened to their music since I was a child,” she said, “and
it’s always moved me, especially ‘Stairway To Heaven.’” Likewise,
country legend Dolly Parton recorded the song in a respectful
gospel bluegrass version. “It’s a very abstract song,” Parton said.
“I always thought it was about somebody trying to save their soul.”
the breakthrough was the reaction the song
inspired during an August 1971 show at the
Los Angeles Forum: “I remember we got a
standing ovation from a considerable amount
of that audience, and we went, ‘Wow!’ We
knew it was good, but we didn’t realize that
people would latch onto it.”
As radio stations began spinning a
promotional advance copy of “Stairway”—
some have attributed the song’s early radio
popularity to the fact that its length allowed
disc jockeys a chance to use the bathroom
or smoke a cigarette—Led Zeppelin’s U.S.
label, Atlantic Records,
pushed the group to
release it as a single
to stores. “I said,
‘Absolutely not,’” Page
recalled. “The whole
thing was, we wanted
people to hear it in the
context of the album.”
He cannily argued to the label that if the song
were kept unavailable as a single, fans would
have to shell out more money for the fulllength album—a strategy that would become
standard industry practice by the 1990s. But
for Page, the bottom line was preserving the
song’s integrity—he knew that once a single
was greenlit, Atlantic would demand an edited
version. “I wasn’t having that, no way,” he said.
“One thing I would never have entertained
was messing around with that song.”
innocence in the lyric. “It’s a great song,
written at the time for all the right reasons,
but try singing it 10 years later and it’s so
sanctimonious,” he said in the early 1980s.
“If you want to sing it for the next 10 years,
you can—but I’m not.” By then the point was
moot. Bonham, 32, had died in his sleep on
Sept. 25, 1980, a victim of his notoriously
extreme alcohol consumption. The band
announced its breakup on Dec. 4. Page
returned to the stage in the early 1980s,
performing “Stairway” as an instrumental—
with the audience inevitably singing the lyrics
Ryan Miller/Capture Imaging
Markus Klinko and Indrani
THE SONG RETAINS THE NAME
Dolly Parton
as the quintessential Zeppelin song. (Plant
and Page did perform a truncated acoustic
“Stairway” for Japanese television on a whim
during a 1994 promotional tour.) Plant had
made his feelings about the tune known in
a 1990 solo number, “Liar’s Dance,” which
denounced the idea of profiting from his
past: “Just leave it to the lady who’s sure/
She won’t be back again.” Plant himself
gave in to the song’s charms yet again when
Zeppelin reunited (again with Jason Bonham
on drums) for a 2007 concert honoring
Atlantic founder Ahmet Ertegun—but insisted
it be played mid-set rather
than as an encore to keep
it from overshadowing the
other songs.
After 40 years of
near-constant radio airplay,
countless cover versions,
endless dissections of its
music and meaning, it will
never again be possible to listen to “Stairway
to Heaven” in the pure and unjaded way a
couple thousand Led Zeppelin fans did
in Belfast on March 5, 1971. Never again
will Jimmy Page step onstage and play
those opening notes without hearing them
smothered in a joyous wave of applause and
shouts. Never again will Robert Plant sing
the closing line all by himself, as he did in
Belfast that night; today the audience would
sing along lustily with every syllable. And
perhaps that is as it should be—love it or hate
it, “Stairway to Heaven” belongs to the world.
So all together now, one more time: “And
she’s buying a stairway … to heaven.” M
‘It’s about the beginning of spring,
when hope and the new year begins.’
EVERYTHING STILL TURNS TO GOLD
Plant soon began to tire of “Stairway,” saying
that he could no longer relate to the youthful
- Robert Plant
anyway. “Nobody could sing it but Robert, it
wouldn’t be right,” he said.
Over the following decade Plant would
grudgingly sing the number at a couple of oneoff Zeppelin reunions: first at 1985’s Live Aid
benefit concert with drummers Phil Collins
and Tony Thompson filling in for Bonham,
then at Atlantic Records’ 40th-anniversary
celebration in 1988 with Bonham’s son
Jason behind the drum set. But when Page
and Plant reunited to tour and record during
the mid-’90s, performing “Stairway” was out
of the question. The centerpiece of their duo
shows was instead 1975’s “Kashmir,” which
Plant had long championed over “Stairway”
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