Stairway To Heaven’s 50th: The Events And Origin

Led Zeppelin broke the rock stereotype when they unveiled their newest number from the then-upcoming fourth album. The presence of Jimmy Page holding a double-necked Gibson EDS guitar gave fans an idea that the band was going to dish out a scathing number, but him playing the intro to the song made some scratch head as to what the song would lead itself to become.

“Stairway To Heaven” had its origins when Page retreated with frontman Robert Plant at the archaic Welsh cottage called Bron-Yr-Aur. The guitarist already had an idea in mind, wanting to replace “Dazed and Confused” with an equally-powerful number. The result was a mix of classical elements that was supercharged with a rock progression halfway through the song. Page also wanted to get out of the box that Led Zeppelin was put in by the media, wanting to show everyone that the band was way more capable than just straight rock and roll.

After extensively working on the song, he presented it to the rest of the members at Headley Grange studio, which knocked them off their socks as the song wasn’t your run-of-the-mill anthem. Page had designed it to speed up as it went, which was quite a challenging feat to execute from scratch. Layered with Plant’s mystic lyricism and the amazing instrumental and arrangement support by John Paul Jones and John Bonham, “Stairway To Heaven” was fully realized.

And while it was a commercial decision to not release the song as a single for listeners to purchase the entire album instead, but it wasn’t a hard sell because of the charm that “Stairway To Heaven” had was just oozing for fans to pick the record up.