What are your thoughts/remembrances about the song "Stairway to Heaven"?
Asked by
rojo (
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August 2nd, 2015
Or do you even have any? Did you grow up listening to it? Was it played at every party and get-together? Did you learn to play guitar with it?
Were you around when the song was written or did you discover it later? Was it something that your parents listened to, perhaps making you shut up when it came on the car radio?
Here is a performance of the song by Ann and Nancy Wilson at the Kennedy Center in 2012 and Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones are in the audience.
Two questions came to mind as I watched it:
What must it be like to watch such a great performance of a song you wrote, performed and made famous? and What must the pressures be like for an artist (particularly the guitar soloist – look at Pages’ reaction) performing such an iconic song in front of the persons who gave it to the world?
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17 Answers
A good friend of mine signed my school yearbook one year by writing out a long verse from Stairway to Heaven. She loved Zeppelin. One of my most memorable concerts was seeing Robert Plant with my sister many many years ago. It was fantastic! He did some songs from Zeppelin, it was great. Also, my sister back in my 20’s taught me to play part of Stairway to Heaven on the piano.
Such an evocative piece of music! Even though I have my favorite version of it, a live one, on my iPod, I rarely listen to it anymore. But every time I do, it takes days for me to get it out of my head. I have to admit that I never really got into the lyrics, just the music and of course Plant’s magical voice.
It was the holidays: December just before my 45th birthday. I was driving to our office holiday get together when I heard on the radio that it was the 20th anniversary of Stairway to Heaven, which made me feel kinda old. So, in the hotel bar where we were having the event, surrounded by the 20 somethings that worked for me, I began relating that story. I ended with “I have the original album so I’m feeling kinda old today after hearing that.” To which one quick young thing responded with “What’s an album?” just to make me feel really old!
The first time I heard the song I was in the 9th grade at a bonfire. I was totally mesmerized by the song.
As a freshman in college in 1973, it was the one song that no one in the dorm ever complained about. I remember getting to my dorm room late one night, everything quiet, and as I settled into my bed, someone on the floor below started Stairway to Heaven at a tremendous volume, so loud it was like it was in my room.
It played all the way though, then nothing. And no one complained or yelled.
It was the last song played at every high school dance.
Before Led Zeppelin IV was released, an op-ed piece in Rolling Stone mockingly asked why Grand Funk Railroad and LZ had never been seen together, implying that they were actually the same band.
I think S2H was the axiomatic proof that LZ ≠ GFR.
Because of Jimmy Page’s celestial passages in that song, the electric 12-string guitar became my favorite instrument.
In high school one of my best friends played that again and again on his twelve-string guitar.
I remember the guitar shops around where I lived (and probably elsewhere) would have signs posted that said “no Stairway to Heaven”.
This song always brings tears to my eyes and comforts me. My brother who is 8 years older than me used to play it on his guitar. My childhood was rough, but the sound of him playing that in the room next to me, just knowing he was there, was soothing. He was and is still a good brother.
I know nothing of the song, but its title is also a slasher movie rule; people running up the stairs when being chased by murderers.
It’s Stephen Hawking’s favourite song, quite ironic when you think he’ll need a ramp to heaven :D
Eh, I think they have better songs.
Then again, I’m not a big led zep fan
One of the first songs I learned to play all the way through on a guitar as a kid. But then again.. that’s the same for any pre-teen learning guitar.
It was a part of my youth but the time it burned in my head was after my first husband’s suicide. t was the first time I left my children’s side (several days later.) It was probably the first song I heard after he died. I was driving my car, going to meet friends who had arrived in town to support me.
The other song was in my head a lot during that time was “Wish You Were Here” By Pink Floyd
I was a young adult, a music major in college, and the song was extremely popular. I thought (and still think) it was a great song, iconic even, but I refused to learn it (at that time) because everyone else was learning it.
Because of my interest in theater, I took class in oral interpretation. When we were assigned to choose a song or poem for oral interpretation, the professor banned “Stairway to Heaven” from eligibility, simply because so many students wanted to use it.
Probably this.
I was never a fan of the song.
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