About The Song
Every legendary artist has that one track that’s bigger than themselves – a song as influential a rock cornerstone as it is an albatross around their legacy. For Led Zeppelin, it’s “Stairway to Heaven” – a cut that was to FM radio what The Godfather was to cinema: an epic unrivaled in its grandeur and incalculable in its influence. Released on their 1971 LP, Led Zeppelin IV, “Stairway” isn’t necessarily the greatest song the band ever wrote, but it’s unequivocally the most significant – a signature staple that plays like a trailer for their entire discography.
In seven minutes and 55 seconds, “Stairway” traversed all the sonic hallmarks that defined Led Zeppelin’s sound – from fairytale acoustic folk, to sex-laden swampy grooves, and, ultimately, braying, blues-based hard rock – and delivers them with dire, Tolkien-worthy, medieval urgency. In those same eight minutes it set the stage for just about every stadium-sized cliché since, taking the genre to new, unprecedented levels of ridiculous rock and roll audacity.
Before there was yelling “Freebird” at a concert, there was playing “Stairway” at the guitar shop. Before Pentecostal parents accused Ozzy Osbourne and Judas Priest of pulling Kevorkians on their kids with back-masked subliminal messages, they cited “Stairway” – in reverse, of course – as the smoking gun.
For generations of teens, “Stairway” has been the soundtrack to countless bong rips, slides into second base and roadside fatalities. It popularized the double-neck guitar, yielding lifetimes of back problems for shredders worldwide. Every time you flick your Bic to illuminate a dark arena into a rock and roll galaxy, you’re praising “Stairway’”s legacy. And while the hackneyed jokes and Wayne’s World references that punctuate that legacy are more than earned by its overwrought cadence of foggy mysticism, loose social commentary, feigned depth and interminable live performances, at the time of its release, the song was no laughing matter.
Never officially released as a single, “Stairway” prevailed as rock radio’s most requested song of the ’70s, thus priming the airwaves for every subsequent torch-cuing opus, from “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “War Pigs” to “The Wall” and “Freebird.” “Stairway” ushered in the era of album-oriented rock and, for better or worse, paved the way for prog. It’s probably singularly responsible for Rush’s entire oeuvre, as well as every eye-rolling Iron Maiden lyric, to boot.
As the song itself notes, “Sometimes words have two meanings.” The meaning behind “Stairway’”s words seem, if nothing else, infinite. Lyrically, the tune has dazed and confused many a mind-altered listener with its vague take on duality for the better part of a half-century. But, more often than not, lyrics say more with how they feel than what they really mean, and while “Stairway” is seemingly a song about the inevitability of death that’s really a song about fear but actually a song about greed… or something… Plant communicates its sweeping vagaries with a passionate, pensive and ultimately primal delivery that convinces the listener he knows exactly what he’s singing about. And, really, that’s enough.
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Lyrics
There’s a lady who’s sure all that glitters is gold
And she’s buying a stairway to Heaven
When she gets there she knows, if the stores are all closed
With a word she can get what she came for
Ooh, ooh, and she’s buying a stairway to Heaven
There’s a sign on the wall, but she wants to be sure
‘Cause you know sometimes words have two meanings
In a tree by the brook, there’s a songbird who sings
Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven
Ooh, it makes me wonder
Ooh, makes me wonder
There’s a feeling I get when I look to the West
And my spirit is crying for leaving
In my thoughts I have seen rings of smoke through the trees
And the voices of those who stand looking
Ooh, it makes me wonder
Ooh, really makes me wonder
And it’s whispered that soon if we all call the tune
Then the piper will lead us to reason
And a new day will dawn for those who stand long
And the forests will echo with laughter
Oh-oh-oh-oh-whoa
If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow, don’t be alarmed now
It’s just a spring clean for the May queen
Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run
There’s still time to change the road you’re on
And it makes me wonder
Ohh, whoa
Your head is humming, and it won’t go, in case you don’t know
The piper’s calling you to join him
Dear lady, can you hear the wind blow? And did you know
Your stairway lies on the whispering wind?
And as we wind on down the road
Our shadows taller than our soul
There walks a lady we all know
Who shines white light and wants to show
How everything still turns to gold
And if you listen very hard
The tune will come to you at last
When all are one, and one is all
To be a rock and not to roll
And she’s buying a stairway to Heaven