One of Led Zeppelin’s most famous songs is “Stairway to Heaven,” but Robert Plant admitted he wasn’t sure if people ever understood it. Though the band has faced accusations of plagiarism over the song, they believe it is a quintessential representation of who they were as a group. It’s interesting, then, that Plant isn’t sure if people got the point of the song. Given its popularity and cultural legacy, though, does this matter?
Robert Plant recalled writing ‘Stairway to Heaven’ with Jimmy Page
“Stairway to Heaven” was the subject of a copyright infringement case, prompting Plant to defend himself and co-writer Jimmy Page by sharing the story of how they wrote it. Page was playing the opening notes to the song, which inspired Plant to write lyrics.
“That particular evening, I sat with Jimmy by the fire, and I had this first couplet that fit with what he was playing,” he said, per the Australian Broadcasting Corporation News. “I was really trying to bring the remote, pastoral Britain … the old, almost unspoken Celtic references into the piece.”
These opening lines were, “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.”
Robert Plant admitted he wasn’t sure if people understood ‘Stairway to Heaven’
“Stairway to Heaven” is one of Led Zeppelin’s most significant songs; many people likely associate this song with the group more than any of their others. Page believed it showed the group at their best.
“To me, I thought ‘Stairway’ crystallized the essence of the band,” he told Rolling Stone in 1992. “It had everything there and showed the band at its best. 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 which will hold up for a long time, and I guess we did it with ‘Stairway.’”
When asked if he thought fans understood the song, Plant admitted he wasn’t sure.
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“I have no idea. I mean, it was such a long time ago,” he told Rolling Stone in 2022, adding, “I used to say it in Zeppelin, ‘This is a song of hope.’ And it’s crazy, really, because it was gargantuan at the time.”
He admitted that much of his songwriting process was trying to write lyrics that matched the scope of the song.
“The musical construction was, at its time, something very special, and I know that Jimmy and the guys were really, really proud of it, and they gave it to me and said, ‘What are you going to do about this?’” he said. “So I set about trying to write something which I suppose drops into the same idiom as something like ‘The Rover’ later on, or maybe ‘Rain Song,’ something where there’s some optimism and reflection from someone who was really not [old]. I was 23 or something like that.’”
Does it matter if fans understood the meaning behind the song?
Plant used to say that the song was about hope. It can also be viewed as a condemnation of greed or a loosely political message.
“Everybody was reeling from Vietnam and the usual extra helping of corruption with politics,” Plant said. “There were people who were really eloquent who brought it home far less pictorially and did a much better job of reaching that point.”
Ultimately, though, it’s difficult to pin down the exact meaning of the eight-minute song. It’s likely that many listeners walk away with varying interpretations. The song’s significance can’t be doubted, though. It captured their essence as a band and cemented their place in music history. Its meaning is up for interpretation, but its influence is not.
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