"
Stairway to Heaven" is a song by the English
rock band
Led
Zeppelin. It was composed by guitarist
Jimmy Page and vocalist
Robert Plant for the band's fourth unnamed
studio album, (see
Led Zeppelin
IV (1971)). The song was voted #3 in 2000 by
VH1 on their list of the 100 Greatest Rock Songs. It was
the most requested song on
FM radio
stations in the United States in the 1970s, despite never having
been released as a single there. In November 2007, through download
sales promoting Led Zeppelin's
Mothership release, "Stairway to
Heaven" hit #37 on the UK Singles Chart.
Song construction and release
The
recording of "Stairway to Heaven" started in December 1970 at
Island Records' new Basing Street
Studios
in London. The song was completed by the addition of
lyrics by Plant during the sessions for Led Zeppelin IV at Headley Grange
, Hampshire, in
1971. Page then returned to Island Studios to record his
guitar solo.
The song originated in 1970 when
Jimmy
Page and
Robert Plant were spending
time at
Bron-Yr-Aur, a remote cottage in
Wales, following Led Zeppelin's
fifth American
concert tour. According to Page, the instrumentals were written
by him "over a long period, the first part coming at Bron-Yr-Aur
one night". Page always kept a
cassette
recorder around, and the idea for "Stairway" came together from
bits of taped music.
Led Zeppelin bassist
John
Paul Jones explained that, following the song's genesis at
Bron-Yr-Aur, it was presented to him:
[Page and Plant would] come back from the Welsh
mountains with the guitar intro and verse.
I literally heard it in front of a roaring fire in a
country manor house!
I picked up a bass recorder and played a run-down riff
which gave us an intro, then I moved into a piano for the next
section, dubbing on the guitars.
In an interview he gave in 1977, Page elaborated:
I do have the original tape that was running at the
time we ran down "Stairway To Heaven" completely with the
band.
I'd worked it all out already the night before with
John Paul Jones, written down the changes and things.
All this time we were all living in a house and keeping
pretty regular hours together, so the next day we started running
it down.
There was only one place where there was a slight
rerun.
For some unknown reason Bonzo couldn't get the timing right on the
twelve-string part before the solo.
Other than that it flowed very quickly.
The song's opening guitar arpeggios are strikingly similar to the
guitar line from the instrumental track "Taurus" by the American
band
Spirit, for whom Led Zeppelin
toured as support act in 1968.
The first
attempts at lyrics, written by Led Zeppelin vocalist Robert Plant
next to an evening log fire at Headley Grange, were partly spontaneously improvised and Page
claimed, "a huge percentage of the lyrics were written there and
then". Jimmy Page was strumming the chords and Robert Plant
had a pencil and paper. Plant later said that suddenly,
"My hand was writing out the words, 'There's a lady is
sure , all that glitters is gold, and she's buying a stairway to
heaven'.
I just sat there and looked at them and almost leapt
out of my seat."
Plant's own explanation of the lyrics was that it "was
some cynical aside about a woman getting everything she wanted all
the time without giving back any thought or
consideration.
The first line begins with that cynical sweep of the
hand ... and it softened up after that."
The lyrics of the song reflected Plant's current reading. The
singer had been poring through the works of the British antiquarian
Lewis Spence, and later cited Spence's
Magic Arts in Celtic Britain as one of the sources for the
lyrics to the song.
In November 1970, Page dropped a hint of the new song's existence
to a music journalist in London:
It's an idea for a really long track....
You know how "Dazed and Confused"
and songs like that were broken into sections?
Well, we want to try something new with the organ and
acoustic guitar building up and building up, and then the electric
part starts....
It might be a fifteen-minute track.
The complete studio recording was released on
Led Zeppelin IV in November 1971. The
band's record label,
Atlantic
Records was keen to issue this track as a single, but the
band's manager
Peter
Grant refused requests to do so in both 1972 and 1973. The
upshot of that decision was that record buyers began to invest in
the fourth album as if it were a single. In the US, Atlantic issued
"Stairway to Heaven" as a 7" promotional single in 1972.
Music
The song consists of several distinct sections, beginning with a
quiet introduction on a finger picked 6 string guitar and three
recorders (ending at 2:15) and gradually
moving into a slow electric middle section (2:16-5:33), before the
faster
hard rock final section (5:34 to
the end). Page stated that the song "speeds up like an adrenaline
flow".
Written in the key of A minor, the song opens with an arpeggiated,
finger-picked guitar chord progression
with a
chromatic descending bassline
A-G#-G-F#-F.
John Paul
Jones contributed overdubbed wooden bass
recorders in the opening section (he used a
Mellotron and, later, a Yamaha CP70B Grand
Piano and
Yamaha GX1 to synthesize this
arrangement in live performances) and a
Hohner Electra-Piano
electric piano in the middle section.
The sections build with more guitar layers, each complementary to
the intro, with the drums and bass entering at 4:18. During the
interlude before the start of the guitar solo, the time signature
switches between common time and several other time signatures:
3/4, 5/4 and finally 7/8. The extended
Jimmy
Page guitar solo in the song's final section was played for the
recording on a
1958 Fender
Telecaster (an instrument he used extensively with the
Yardbirds) plugged into a
Supro amplifier, although in an interview he gave to
Guitar World magazine, Page
also claimed, "It could have been a Marshall, but I can't
remember". Three different improvised solos were recorded, with
Page agonizing about deciding which to keep. Page later revealed,
"I did have the first phrase worked out, and then there was the
link phrase. I did check them out before hand before the tape ran."
The other guitar parts were played using a Harmony Sovereign H1260
acoustic guitar and Fender Electric XII (12-string); these can be
heard on the left and right recording channels respectively. For
live versions, Page switched to a Heritage Cherry
Gibson EDS-1275 6/12
Doubleneck guitar. The final progression
is a i-VII-VI (natural minor) progression (Am-G-F), a mainstay of
rock music.
Sound engineer
Andy Johns recalls the
circumstances surrounding the recording of Page's famous
solo:
I remember Jimmy had a little bit of trouble with the
solo on "Stairway to Heaven"...
[H]e hadn't completely figured it out.
Nowadays you sometimes spend a whole day doing one
thing.
Back then, we never did that.
We never spent a very long time recording
anything.
I remember sitting in the control room with Jimmy, he's
standing there next to me and he'd done quite a few passes and it
wasn't going anywhere.
I could see he was getting a bit paranoid and so I was
getting paranoid.
I turned around and said "You're making me
paranoid!"
And he said, "No, you're making me
paranoid!"
It was a silly circle of paranoia.
Then bang!
On the next take or two he ripped it out.
According to Page, "Stairway to Heaven"
...crystallized the essence of the band.
It had everything there and showed the band at its
best... as a band, as a unit.
Not talking about solos or anything, it had everything
there.
We were careful never to release it as a
single.
It was a milestone for us.
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".
[Pete] Townshend probably
thought that he got it with Tommy.
I don't know whether I have the ability to come up with
more.
I have to do a lot of hard work before I can get
anywhere near those stages of consistent, total
brilliance.
Live performances
The
inaugural public performance of the song took place at Belfast
's Ulster Hall
on 5 March 1971. Bassist
John Paul Jones recalls that the
crowd was unimpressed: "They were all bored to tears waiting to
hear something they knew".
However, Page stated about an early
performance at the LA
Forum
, before the record had even come out,
that:
I'm not saying the whole audience gave us a standing
ovation - but there was this sizable standing ovation
there.
And I thought, 'This is incredible because no one's
heard this number yet.
This is the first time hearing it!'
It obviously touched them, so I knew there was
something with that one.
The world
radio premiere of "Stairway to Heaven" was recorded at the Paris Cinema
on 1 April, 1971, in front of a live studio
audience, and broadcast three days later on the BBC.
"Stairway to Heaven" was performed at almost every subsequent
Led Zeppelin concert, only
being omitted on rare occasions when shows were cut short for
curfews or technical issues. The band's final performance of the
song was in Berlin on 7 July 1980, which was also their last
concert for 27 years; the version was also one of the longest,
lasting almost fifteen minutes.
When playing the song live, the band would often extend it to over
ten minutes in length, with Page playing an extended guitar solo
and Plant adding a number of lyrical ad-libs, such as "Does anybody
remember laughter?", "wait a minute!" and "I hope so". For
performing this song live, Page used a
Gibson EDS-1275 double neck guitar so he would not have
to pause when switching from a six to a
twelve string guitar.
By 1975, the song had a regular place as the finale of every Led
Zeppelin concert. However, after their
concert tour of the United
States in 1977, Plant began to tire of "Stairway to Heaven":
"There's only so many times you can sing it and mean it ... It just
became sanctimonious."
The song was played again by the surviving members of Led Zeppelin
at the
Live Aid concert in 1985; at the
Atlantic Records 40th
Anniversary concert in 1988, with
Jason
Bonham on drums; and by Jimmy Page as an instrumental version
on his solo tours.
By the late 1980s, Plant made his negative impression of the song
clear in interviews. In 1988, he stated:
I'd break out in hives if I had to sing ("Stairway to
Heaven") in every show.
I wrote those lyrics and found that song to be of some
importance and consequence in 1971, but 17 years later, I don't
know.
It's just not for me.
I sang it at the Atlantic Records show because I'm an
old softie and it was my way of saying thank you to Atlantic
because I've been with them for 20 years.
But no more of "Stairway to Heaven" for
me.
However, by the mid-1990s Plant's views had apparently softened.
The first few bars were played alone during
Page and Plant tours in lieu of the final
notes of "
Babe I'm Gonna Leave
You", and in November 1994 Page and Plant performed an acoustic
version of the song at a Tokyo news station for Japanese
television.
"Stairway to Heaven" was also performed at
Led Zeppelin's
reunion show at the O2 Arena
, London on 10 December 2007.
Plant cites the most unusual performance of the song ever as being
that performed at Live Aid: "...with two drummers while
Duran Duran cried at the side of the stage -
there was something quite surreal about that."
Footage of
the song being played live is preserved on the band's concert film
The Song Remains
the Same, featuring a performance from Madison Square
Garden
in 1973, and on the Led Zeppelin DVD, featuring a
performance from Earls Court Arena
in 1975. Official audio versions are also available on
The Song Remains the Same's accompanying soundtrack,
on Led Zeppelin BBC
Sessions (a performance from London's Paris Theatre in 1971) and on How the West Was
Won (a performance from the Long Beach Arena
in 1972). There are also hundreds of audio
versions which can be found on unofficial
Led Zeppelin bootleg
recordings.
Success and influence
According to music journalist
Stephen Davis, although the
song was released in 1971, it took until 1973 before the song's
popularity ascended to truly "anthemic" status.
"Stairway to Heaven" continues to top radio lists of the greatest
rock songs, as well as topping a recent
Guitar World poll. On the 20th anniversary
of the original release of the song, it was announced via U.S.
radio sources that the song had logged up an estimated 2,874,000
radio plays - back to back, that would run for 44 years solid. As
of 2000, the song had been broadcast on radio over three million
times. In 1990 a
St Petersburg,
Florida station kicked off its all-Led Zeppelin format by
playing "Stairway to Heaven" for 24 hours straight. It is also the
biggest-selling single piece of
sheet
music clocking up an average of 15,000 copies yearly. In total,
over one million copies have been sold.
The song's length precluded its release in full form as a
single. Despite pressure from
Atlantic Records the band would not
authorize the editing of the song for single release, making
"Stairway to Heaven" one of the most well-known and popular rock
songs never to have been released as a single. It did, however,
appear as a promotional disc in the United States, pressed as a
7:55 track on each side; on an Australian acoustic EP, and in the
1990s as a 20th anniversary promo book.
The group's recording of this song also appeared as the sole Led
Zeppelin track in the 1977 Atlantic Records 2-LP promotional
sampler album,
We've Got Your Music, marking the very
first time that Led Zeppelin's "Stairway To Heaven" made its
official debut appearance in an American-released various artists
compilation collection.
In 2004,
Rolling Stone
magazine put it at number 31 on their list of the
500 Greatest
Songs of All Time. In in a January 29, 2009, article,
Guitar World magazine rated
Jimmy Page's guitar solo at number one in the publication's 100
Greatest Guitar Solos in Rock and Roll History.
Other versions
The song has been covered a number of times.
Rolf Harris's
didgeridoo-and-
wobble
board interpretation reached number seven in the
UK charts in 1993.
Rolf Harris's version was one of 25 different
versions of the song that were performed live by guest stars on the
early 1990s Australian chat show
The Money or the Gun - each being
a unique version of the song in the usually idiosyncratic style of
performance of each guest star.
Dolly
Parton released a stripped down acoustic cover of the song in
2002; Plant spoke highly of Parton's version, noting that he was
pleasantly surprised with how her version turned out.
In 1977,
Little Roger
and the Goosebumps recorded a parody of the song in which the
words to the theme song of the television show
Gilligan's Island were
sung in place of the original lyrics. Within five weeks, Led
Zeppelin's lawyers threatened to sue them and demanded that any
remaining copies of the recording be destroyed. However, during a
2005 interview on
National Public
Radio, Plant referred to the tune as his favorite cover of
"Stairway to Heaven."
The sketch comedy series
SCTV
had an elaborate spoof of the song with its spoof album
Stairways to Heaven. In the mock album, advertised in the
style of
K-tel, various snippets of cover
versions are featured, supposedly from artists ranging from
Slim Whitman to the faux-50s group "The
Five Neat Guys," as well as the original version (albeit advertised
to be a
sound-alike). This sketch, due
to rights issues, was not released on the DVDs for the show.
The London Symphony Orchestra recorded a verison Stairway to Heaven
as part of their Classic Rock series in 1980, the venue being EMI
Studio One, Abbey Road, London. It has also been arranged and
recorded by the
Hampton String
Quartet on their early album, "What if Mozart Wrote 'Born to be
Wild'."
A version by
Far Corporation was
released in 1985 and reached number 8 in the UK singles
chart.
Australian physicist and
composer
Joe Wolfe composed a set of
variations on"Stairway to Heaven." This work,
The Stairway Suite, is
composed
for
orchestra,
big
band,
chorus, and
SATB. Each variation is in the
style of a famous
composer:
Franz Schubert,
Gustav Holst,
Glenn
Miller,
Gustav Mahler,
Georges Bizet, and
Ludwig van Beethoven. For example, the
Schubert inspired variation is based on the
Unfinished Symphony, and the
Beethoven inspired variation includes vocal soloists and chorus and
resembles Beethoven's
Ninth
Symphony. Wolfe posted the full
score
of this
piece on the
Internet..
The
blog for radio
station WFMU
contains a
page with links to over 100 cover
versions of "Stairway to Heaven." The page contains
mp3 files for each version.
In 2007,
Rodrigo y Gabriela
covered this song in the album
Rhythms del Mundo Classics by the
Buena Vista Social
Club.
Taurus
It has been suggested that the song's introduction bears a close
resemblance to the 1968instrumental "
Taurus" by the group
Spirit. In the liner notes to the 1996 reissue
of Spirit's debut album, songwriter
Randy California writes:
People always ask me why "Stairway to Heaven" sounds
exactly like "Taurus", which was released two years
earlier.
I know Led Zeppelin also played "Fresh Garbage" in
their live set.
They opened up for us on their first American
tour.
Backward masking controversy
In the early 1980s, some Christian evangelists in the US alleged
that hidden messages were contained in many popular rock songs
through a technique called
backward
masking. One example of such hidden messages that was often
prominently cited was in "Stairway to Heaven." The alleged message,
which occurs during the middle section of the song ("If there's a
bustle in your
hedgerow, don't be alarmed
now...") when played backwards, was purported to contain the
Satanic references "Here's to my sweet
Satan"
and "I sing because I live with Satan".
In 1982, the Consumer Protection and Toxic Materials Committee of
the
California State
Assembly held a hearing on backward masking in popular music,
during which "Stairway to Heaven" was played backwards. During the
hearing, William Yarroll, a self-described "neuroscientific
researcher", claimed that backward messages could be decyphered by
the human brain.
Various versions of the alleged message exist. One such
interpretation reads:
The band itself has for the most part ignored such claims; in
response to the allegations,
Swan Song
Records issued the statement: "Our turntables only play in one
direction—forwards". Led Zeppelin audio engineer
Eddie Kramer called the allegations "totally
and utterly ridiculous. Why would they want to spend so much studio
time doing something so dumb?"
Robert
Plant expressed frustration with the accusations in a 1983
interview in
Musician magazine: "To me it's very sad,
because 'Stairway to Heaven' was written with every best intention,
and as far as reversing tapes and putting messages on the end,
that's not my idea of making music."
Accolades
(*) designates unordered lists.
Formats and tracklistings
1972 7" single (Philippines: Atlantic
45-3747)
- A. "Stairway to Heaven" [part 1] (Page, Plant) 4:01
- B. "Stairway to Heaven" [part 2] (Page, Plant) 4:01
1972 7" promo (US: Atlantic PR 175 [picture
sleeve])
- A. "Stairway to Heaven" [stereo] (Page, Plant) 8:02
- B. "Stairway to Heaven" [mono] (Page, Plant) 8:02
1972 7" promo (US: Atlantic PR-269)
- A. "Stairway to Heaven" [stereo] (Page, Plant) 7:55
- B. "Stairway to Heaven" [mono] (Page, Plant) 7:55
1972 7" promo (South Africa: Atlantic
Teal)
- A. "Stairway to Heaven" (Page, Plant) 8:02
- B. "Going to California" (Page, Plant) 3:31
1978 12" single (Brazil: WEA
6WP.2003)
- A. "Stairway to Heaven" [stereo] (Page, Plant) 8:02
- B. "Stairway to Heaven" [mono] (Page, Plant) 8:02
1990 7" promo (UK: Atlantic LZ3)
- A. "Stairway to Heaven" (Page, Plant) 8:02
- B. "Whole Lotta Love" (Bonham, Jones, Page, Plant, Dixon)
1991 20th Anniversary promo (US: Atlantic
PRCD 4424-2, Japan: Warner Pioneer PRCD 4424-2)
Chart positions
Single (Digital download)
Note: The official UK Singles
Chart incorporated legal downloads as of 17 April
2005.
References
- Dave Lewis (1994), The Complete Guide to the Music of Led
Zeppelin, Omnibus Press, ISBN 0-7119-3528-9.
- UK Music Charts | The Official UK Top 75 Singles:
Week of Mon 24 Mar - Yahoo! Music UK
- Dave Schulps, Interview with Jimmy Page, Trouser Press,
October 1977.
- Sutcliffe, Phil (April 2000). "Bustle in the Hedgerow".
MOJO, p.62
- Tolinski, Brad and di Benedetto, Greg (January 1998). "Light
and Shade: A Historic Look at the Entire Led Zeppelin Catalogue
Through the Eyes of Guitarist/Producer/Mastermind Jimmy Page".
Guitar World, p. 100-104.
- Chris Welch (1994) Led Zeppelin, London: Orion Books.
ISBN 0-85797-930-3, pp. 60-61.
- Guitar World Magazine, April 1997: "California's most enduring
legacy may well be the fingerpicked acoustic theme of the song
"Taurus," which Jimmy Page lifted virtually note for note for the
introduction to "Stairway to Heaven."
- Steven Rosen, 1977 Jimmy Page Interview, Modern Guitars, 25
May 2007 (originally published in the July 1977, issue of
Guitar
Player magazine).
- "Their Time is Gonna Come", Classic Rock
Magazine, December 2007
- "100 Greatest Guitar Solos", Guitar World Magazine, Oct
14, 2008
- Llewellyn, Sian (December, 1998). "Stairway to Heaven".
Total Guitar, p.61-62
- Tolinski, Bradllyn with Di Benedetto, Greg, (January, 1998).
"Light & Shade". Guitar World, p.98
- Songfacts: Stairway to Heaven
- Pallett, SImon (January, 1998). "Radio Dazed". Guitar
World, p.122
- Dave Lewis and Simon Pallett (1997) Led Zeppelin: The
Concert File, London: Omnibus Press. ISBN 0-7119-5307-4, p.
58.
- Los Angeles Times, 12/6/1988.
- Stephen Davis, The Hammer of the Gods, William Morrow and
Company Inc., New York, 1985, p. 150.
- Australian Broadcasting Corporation - Triple J Music
Specials - Led Zeppelin (first broadcast 2000-07-12)
- Guitar World
- Robert Plant on Yahoo! Music
- [1]
- Guitar World Magazine, April 1997: "California's most enduring
legacy may well be the fingerpicked acoustic theme of the song
"Taurus," which Jimmy Page lifted virtually note for note for the
introduction to "Stairway to Heaven."
- Sleeve notes, booklet included with CD EPC 485175
- The London Independent, 17 January 1997
- 1968 Setlist
- Arar, Yardena. (AP) "Does Satan Lurk in the Backward Playing of
Records?" St. Petersburg Independent May 24, 1982: 3A
- Billiter, Bill. "Satanic Messages Played Back for Assembly
Panel" Los Angeles Times April 28, 1982: B3
- Davis, Stephen. The Hammer of the Gods (1985) p.
335
Sources
- Led Zeppelin: Dazed and Confused: The Stories Behind Every
Song, by Chris Welch, ISBN 1-56025-818-7
- The Complete Guide to the Music of Led Zeppelin, by
Dave Lewis, ISBN 0-7119-3528-9
External links
Wikis
Quiz
Map
Misc
Search