by George Case
Yet “Stairway to Heaven” can still stand as Led Zeppelin’s masterpiece. It challenges its fans and foes alike with questions of brilliant inspiration versus seat-of-the-pants expediency, of the intentions of the artist versus the expectations of the audience, and of longevity versus familiarity. The song’s power to move and thrill forty years since its release is an impressive quality in the arena of popular music, where the majority of output is valued for its instant commercialism or “catchiness” rather than any social durability—let alone any potential elevation into something like a secular hymn to be played at weddings and funerals. Like other institutions, “Stairway” may have become vulnerable to resistance and resentment, but the fundamental fact of institutions is that they command respect. “Stairway to Heaven” continues to deserve it.
Yes, There Are Two Paths: Other Rock Songs That Follow the “Stairway” Model
The success of Led Zeppelin IV throughout the 1970s and beyond inspired many artists to craft their own epics. Recurring themes and styles included the gentle opening that gradually increased in volume and bombast; the questing, proclamatory lyrics; and the soaring, virtuoso guitar solo. They’ve been called rock anthems, at first with irony and in time in acknowledgment that their words and melodies truly did seem to serve as quasi-official music for large segments of the youth population—pop songs whose cultural impact could not be measured by record sales or chart positions alone. Ann Powers in the New York Times commented in 1998 how the typical such track, also known as a “power ballad,” “offered a sense of profundity to fans who craved it… low culture insisting on its right to mimic high art.” Among the most revered rock anthems that clearly adopted the “Stairway to Heaven” template are the following.
AC/DC: “Hell’s Bells”
As close as the Thunder from Down Under come to a power ballad, their 1980 Back in Black monster opens with a solemnly tolling bell and an ominous A-minor guitar figure, then grows in intensity. There aren’t any acoustic guitars or recorders here, but the song still captures the suspense of the Led Zeppelin prototype.
Aerosmith: “Dream On”
Although the Boston badasses’ anthem took shape before Led Zeppelin IV was released in 1971, it wasn’t in record stores until their 1973 debut. Like “Stairway,” this starts with a quiet solo guitar progression and then lumbers awake with a massive drum roll, and by the end Steve Tyler is wailing a stirring message of self-belief over the band’s cycle of ascending chords. For all its familiarity, still a great moment.
Blue öyster Cult: “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper”
Ghostly, sinister, and morbidly beautiful, the BöC standard uses the A-minor, G, and F chords of “Stairway to Heaven,” at first with arpeggios and finally in a furious distorted climax. Raise your fist and kill yourself.
Boston: “More Than a Feeling”
A very pretty guitar figure intros this exuberant memoir of the mystical Mary Ann, and then a crushing minor chord run pounds the song home. Producer Tom Scholz’s melodic, expertly structured guitar spotlight is a quintessential hold-your-Zippos-high acme of classic rock.
The Eagles: “Hotel California”
The cocaine cowboys’ greatest song is a close rival to “Stairway,” with Don Felder’s immortal Spanish-style guitar intro, the memorable visuals of Don Henley’s lyrics, and the Tiffany-twisted electric soloing of Felder and Joe Walsh (like Page, Felder used a Gibson EDS 1275 double-neck to play the song onstage). This too was accused by idiots of carrying Satanic messages, in lines about steely knives that just can’t kill the beast. The song has has also received egregious FM radio overplay since its 1976 release, but justly so.
Both Boston’s “More Than a Feeling” and U2’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday” borrowed from the “Stairway to Heaven” light-and-shade musical template.
Author’s Collection
Guns N’ Roses: “November Rain”
The Gunners’ patent bid for a rock anthem is almost a parody of the style, throwing in every cliché of the arena showstopper: the tender piano intro, the gradual accumulation of electric instruments, the ecstatic guitar solo, and finally the “Layla”-like coda with a heavenly choir of voices. With a songwriting credit going alone to the inimitable Axl Rose, the 1991 video for this track (from the much-hyped Use Your Illusion double release) made its pretensions even more obvious, especially when guitarist Slash wails alone on his Les Paul at the edge of a windswept cliff. Still, the sheer sincerity and production polish of Guns N’ Roses on “November Rain” allows them to pull off the attempt with flying colors.
Journey: “Wheel in the Sky,” “Don’t Stop Believin’”
Both of these cuts became requisite concert pieces for Journey. “Wheel in the Sky” opens with a neatly done D-minor acoustic guitar figure and then becomes a heavy rocker, while “Don’t Stop Believin’” offers a positive theme of faith and confidence. Vocalist Steve Perry’s range was as majestic as Robert Plant’s, and employed with great gusto on these two.
Judas Priest: “Beyond the Realms of Death”
Singer Rob Halford has admitted that the song, from Stained Class in 1978, is “a bit like our ‘Stairway to Heaven.’” It alternates between gentle acoustic lament and heavy metal paean to suicide. Gotta love the Priest.
Kiss: “Black Diamond”
From the band’s 1974 self-titled debut album, this number starts with a sad A-minor arpeggio and then morphs into a punchy ode to a streetwalker. “The tag at the end reminds me of early Neil Young or ‘Stairway to Heaven,’” opined Kiss’s Paul Stanley.
Led Zeppelin: “Over the Hills and Far Away”
Though Zeppelin never really tried to hit on a formula, the exploratory material from Houses of the Holy was plainly riding on momentum from the previous Led Zeppelin IV. The intricate acoustic guitar commencement that segues into a full rock show echoes “Stairway to Heaven,” and the vague lyrics that invoke a lady, the open road, wondering, and gold seem to have evolved out of the earlier cut.
Lynyrd Skynyrd: “Free Bird,” “Simple Man”
Along with “Hotel California” and Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Free Bird” is one of the only songs to challenge “Stairway to Heaven” in FM radio overplay and repeated popular demand. The comic stereotype of the rock-loving yahoo yelling out for “Free Bird” at any musical performance—of polka, reggae, techno, or a string quartet—is an indication of how loved the 1973 Skynyrd jam has become. According to guitarist Gary Rossington, singer Ronnie Van Zant wrote his lyrics to the track in less than five minutes, beating Robert Plant’s time for the “Stairway” transcription by a good half hour. “Initially it was just a slow ballad,” Rossington recalled. “Then Ronnie said, ‘Why don’t you do something at the end of that so I can take a break for a few minutes….’ Ronnie kept saying, ‘It’s not long enough, make it longer.’” Live versions of “Free Bird” could go almost fifteen minutes. “Simple Man,” also from ’73’s Pronounced Leh-nerd Skin-nerd, is arguably a better work. Like “Stairway” it is built around an A-minor key and slowly rises from quiet arpeggios to vast power chords, while Van Zant lays down one of his most compelling lessons of integrity and heartland authenticity.
Metallica: “Fade to Black,” “One”
These two early successes from the thrash gods can’t be called power ballads, but they do employ the acoustic-electric light-and-shade construction of “Stairway.” As in the Zeppelin song, their juxtaposition of solo classical guitar with amplified rock makes both styles all the heavier.
Mötley Crüe: “Home Sweet Home”
The Crüe’s big live sing-along number has a Queen-like piano intro that then grows into full power ballad mode with a screaming guitar solo from Mick Mars. Somewhat cheesy, but still moving if heard without irony.
Queen: “Bohemian Rhapsody”
Though “Stairway” often tops radio polls regarding the Greatest Songs of All Time, this epic hit has sometimes beat the Zeppelin opus to the number one spot. Indeed, Fredd
ie Mercury’s masterpiece may have even done Page and Plant’s light-and-shade structure one better, by skillfully blending rock with not the simpler sounds of folk but the extravagance of opera. The result was that “Bohemian Rhapsody,” from 1975’s A Night at the Opera, became as grand a statement as anything in popular music—daring listeners to decide whether it was a bastardization of an established highbrow art form or the logical maturing of a newer, crasser medium. While “Stairway to Heaven” certainly set the precedent for the Queen spectacular (and is the longer song by a couple of minutes), it seems almost humble by comparison. According to Queen guitarist Brian May, Mercury scored “Bohemian Rhapsody” with his private notational system that “looked like buses zooming all over his bits of paper,” and that the amount of overdubbing required to complete the work on a sixteen-track recorder nearly wore the oxide off the master track, to a point where the tape became almost transparent.
Rush: “The Trees”
The Canadian power trio have always acknowledged their musical debt to Zeppelin, and any number of their songs hark back to heavy blues style of the four Englishmen. Drummer Neil Peart’s lyrics are often literate to a fault, based on complex poetic structures and long, multipart movements that offer some deep social allegory or sci-fi dystopian vision. Both qualities owed something to Led Zeppelin IV, and this well-known song, from 1978’s Hemispheres, has the pastoral intro, hard rock launch, and sylvan imagery of “Stairway to Heaven.” The entire Rush album 2112 has much of the same soft-loud, intimate-huge, rustic-futuristic philosophical affectations.
Styx: “Come Sail Away”
From 1977’s The Grand Illusion, this remains the most popular song from the oft-derided AOR kings, getting under way with some very pretty piano runs and sensitive lyrics about being free, then blasting into outer space with aliens. Their earlier “Suite Madame Blue” is another FM anthem that was doubtless inspired by the enigmatic female of “Stairway to Heaven.”
Tesla: “Love Song”
The highly underrated Tesla always stood apart from their era’s pack of spandex hair metal bands, and produced this beautiful power ballad, heard on 1989’s The Great Radio Controversy. Guitarist Frank Hannon’s heroic solo is as impressively lyrical as Page’s on “Stairway,” and he even performed it on a Gibson double-neck for some live shows.
U2: “Sunday Bloody Sunday”
Though U2 were not a band to copy anything in the Zeppelin format, they still came up with a stadium-rousing powerhouse that had the same effect on audiences as “Stairway to Heaven”—and with the same benefit to their long-term career.
Remember Laughter? “Stairway to Heaven” Banned from Guitar Shops
This urban legend got a wide airing in the 1992 comedy Wayne’s World, where Mike Myers’s title character attempts to play the song on a display Stratocaster but is quickly stopped by a sales clerk. Shown the “No Stairway to Heaven” sign, Wayne is bummed out: “No ‘Stairway’! Denied!” (Copyright rules prevented even Myers’s fragmentary “Stairway to Heaven” from being heard in most TV and video releases of the movie.)
Though fictionalized in Wayne’s World, the scene is based on the real saturation of music store employees by countless amateur versions of well-known rock songs. Anyone who has worked around guitars has heard untrained people, mostly young males, try to play at rock stardom with valuable instruments and other professional equipment that they aren’t really qualified to handle. “Customers” ask to try Gibsons or Fenders they have no intention of purchasing, and then proceed to regale bystanders and staff with what little they know of “Stairway to Heaven,” Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water,” Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man,” the Beatles’ “Blackbird,” or Van Halen’s “Eruption.” The problem is that, as familiar as such pieces are to the rock audience, most neophyte guitarists have no idea how the songs are accurately played, and their faltering approximations are difficult to listen to—especially for the twentieth time in a shift.
“Stairway” in particular was a pretty advanced guitar sequence in 1971 and still requires some preliminary experience. For players whose repertoire consisted of three-chord songs like “Twist and Shout” or “Louie Louie,” the leap to Jimmy Page’s A minor (V position), then A minor (add 9) / G-sharp, C/G, D/F-sharp and then F major 7 was almost impossible to finger and pick with a natural, confident rhythm; consequently most guitar shop performances of the famous intro were painfully awkward. But because guitar heroics look and sound so cool to newbies, many youthful guitarists have attempted to musically run before they can walk, distracted by the range of instructional materials that teach simplified or tablature notation for tunes first played by talented pros with solid groundings in fingerboard theory and mechanics—e.g., the members of Led Zeppelin. The “No Stairway” rule, though hardly enforceable by law, was a common joke for patrons and personnel of music retailers who just wanted to discourage untutored wanna-bes from getting in over their heads, embarrassing themselves and annoying everyone else. In February 2005 Guitar World magazine’s regular “Dear Guitar Hero” column presented Page himself with a variety of readers’ questions, one of which was “Have you ever gone into a guitar shop and played ‘Stairway to Heaven’?” This drew a laugh from the Magus, at least. “No, I haven’t,” he said. He may be the only guitarist who hasn’t.
Timeline
1978
March 15: Massive oil spill off French coast.
May: Led Zeppelin rehearse in Clearwell Castle.
July 25: First test-tube baby born, London.
September 18: Camp David peace talks between Israel and Egypt.
October 13: Sex Pistol Sid Vicious charged in death of girlfriend Nancy Spungen.
October 23: Pope John Paul II inaugurated.
November 29: More than 900 die in mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana.
November–December: Led Zeppelin record In Through the Out Door, Stockholm.
December–January: “Winter of Discontent” in UK as strikes cripple the country.
Movies: Grease; National Lampoon’s Animal House; The Deer Hunter; Midnight Express.
Music: Van Halen, Van Halen; Rush, Hemispheres; the Rolling Stones, Some Girls; Willie Nelson, Stardust; Paul Simon, “Slip Slidin’ Away”; the Bee Gees, “Stayin’ Alive”; Alicia Bridges, “I Love the Nightlife.”
23
I Got Something I Think You Oughta Know
Led Zeppelin Behind the Scenes
Friends: The Personal Dynamics of Led Zeppelin
Sting of the Police once admitted to an interviewer that “a band is an artificial alliance most of the time.” A few rock groups are comprised of friends who became musicians, but most are musicians first and only grow companionable once they have been working successfully together for a while. In the case of Led Zeppelin, the four men all genuinely liked each other, and they are the rare group whose ultimate breakup was due to the death of one member rather than personal estrangement between several. That said, the players’ relationships were based more on their musical compatibility and professional respect than on any natural affinity between them.
“Jimmy and I got along well with Jonesy and Bonzo,” Robert Plant told Rolling Stone in 1988, but Jimmy Page has qualified that, “We all lived in different parts of the country, so when we came off the road we didn’t really see each other…. We really only socialized when we were on the road.” John Paul Jones has added, “We were never a band that socialized. We wouldn’t see each other after we got off the road until we’d start recording again.” “We got together when we needed to and then did our own thing,” Peter Grant said to Dave Lewis in 1993. “We didn’t live in each other’s pockets.” Part of Zeppelin’s strength, indeed, was in the four musicians’ independence from each other and their freedom from the forced fishbowl intimacy that frustrated more publicity-hungry acts.
Robert Plant and John Bonham were buddies from their teenage years, having grown up in the same city and played with many of the same people; they were e
ven bandmates in the Band of Joy before they shared a stage in Led Zeppelin. These two were probably the closest members of the group. They were guys from England’s Black Country taken up into an international rock ’n’ roll sensation when they were both only twenty years old, and the adventure made their bond secure. “It was a bit like being on a space shuttle, in a way,” Plant said to Mick Wall. “So we did grow together, although we were never really particularly similar. But we had common ground which we began to share and we realized as time went on that we had to make this thing work.” It was Bonham who came to support Plant after the death of his son in 1977 (neither Page nor Jones attended the boy’s funeral), and it was Bonham who could best bring the singer down to earth. “It was an honest relationship, where he would say, ‘Look, you can’t sing, but just go out and look good and I’ll look after everything else behind you,’” Plant remembered in his 1988 Rolling Stone chat. “We always had this antagonistic relationship—and I miss that…. Every time I got a bit like, ‘Hey, I’m the star,’ he’d be back there in the middle of a concert growling, ‘You’re fucking hopeless! But don’t forget, I’m here.’”
Page and Jones, by contrast, were slightly older Londoners who’d already reached the higher levels of the pop music industry, Page as a session vet and member of the hit-making Yardbirds, and Jones also as a studio whiz who’d rubbed shoulders with the likes of the Rolling Stones, Dusty Springfield, and Donovan. “Jonesy was a bit… not withdrawn,” Plant looked back on their first meeting in 1968, “but he stands back a little and shoots the odd bit of dialogue into the air. It’s good stuff, but an acquired taste, really…. [Page] had a demeanor which you had to adjust to; it certainly wasn’t very casual to start with.” The guitarist and bassist-keyboardist had known and occasionally worked with each other for years, but were not ones to hang out together. They were colleagues, not pals. “I knew [Page] well from the session scene, of course,” Jones confirmed to Dave Lewis. “He was a very respected name.” For this pair Led Zeppelin was not an adventure but a project, a creative and commercial undertaking that they began with clear ideas and no illusions. “My reasons for joining up with Led Zeppelin were purely musical,” said Jones. He admired Bonham’s drum work (“He was just such an exciting musician to work with…. He really kept you on your toes as a musician and a listener”) and was usually on good terms with his rhythm section partner. “Sometimes you’d say the wrong thing and he’d take it the wrong way, but we were still pretty close,” Jones told Chris Welch, author of John Bonham: A Thunder of Drums. The most musically disciplined man of the act, Jones took a while to gravitate to Robert Plant. (“He never knew what to make of me,” Jones was quoted in When Giants Walked the Earth.) He did reveal to Dave Lewis that by 1978 he and Plant were the two “relatively clean” Zeppelin players, and their mutual more-or-less healthy condition brought them closer together. “Led Zeppelin was a very strange, four-quadrant marriage,” Plant told Chuck Klosterman. “When we were kids, Bonham and I were the toughest guys around…. So when he passed, I really didn’t want to stay with the southern guys—the two guys from London.”