"Stairway to Heaven", An Appreciation

This song is one of the great songs of the rock canon, whether you like it or not, and whether it succeeds or not.

What's it about?

Many things - perhaps our progress through life, perhaps travelling to a place where the physical and metaphysical collide, perhaps aspiring to things way beyond our resources.

Musically, it is a terrifically and excitingly adventurous project.

Begins with recorders, of all things, and the most delicate of classical guitar lines accompanying.

Prior to this song, the most prominent recorder lines were the Beatlesy stuff with Fool on a Hill, where the recorders would be almost deliberately out of tune.

The main thing I believe this song contributes to the rock legacy is the concept of structuring.

Both in terms of style and intensity the piece builds and builds to a climax - you have to remember that this came at a time when very little larger scale structuring was going on, and certainly in terms of songs that were released as singles.

Probably the closest the Beatles had got to it was with She's so Heavy (album track off Abbey Rd) and Hey Jude, although the latter has a highly repetitive tune and builds mainly through adding instruments.

In STH the build is timbral (we move from classical thru acoustic thru strummed electric thru surging riffs and solos, and the magical moment where the rhythm section enters denotes yet another step on the Stairway), and the melodic and harmonic material changes also.

The song effectively gets bigger, and moves from intimacy through to Grand Rock.

I have often pondered whether the change is effective - someimes it feels a little bit like the aural equivalent of a manual gear shift.

On balance it does work (1 billion Led Zeppelin fans can't be wrong!), and we have a song that made and ahook the 70s and beyond.

Lyrics are highly contentious and controversial - I won't discuss this here, because the Led Zep IV review page has already opened the debate...they are not the best set of lyrics, but they do give Robert Plant something to sink his voice into.

And if you want to know why that structuring principle is so important in this song (and later heavy rock classics), listen to how the song can be transformed with a single swoop/swipe by the comedic genius of Rolf Harris....