Jimmy Page Tells the Story of “Stairway to Heaven”: How the Most Played Rock Song Came To Be

Walk into any gui­tar store, any­where in the world, and you’re like­ly to hear the strains of one, or both, of two songs: Guns n’ Ros­es’ “Sweet Child O’ Mine” and Led Zeppelin’s “Stair­way to Heav­en.” (Some gui­tar shops sup­pos­ed­ly banned the lat­ter sev­er­al years ago.) Why are these so pop­u­lar with bud­ding play­ers? Per­haps it’s because they have two of the most mem­o­rable gui­tar intros in rock his­to­ry.

But only one of those intros might be lift­ed almost whole­sale from anoth­er song, at least if you ask the estate of Randy Cal­i­for­nia. Heirs of the late gui­tarist and co-founder of the band Spir­it have claimed for years that the del­i­cate acoustic melody that opens Zeppelin’s song came direct­ly from California’s tune “Tau­rus.” The law­suit is ongo­ing, and maybe not with­out some mer­it.

But all that aside (and what song, after all, doesn’t at least ref­er­ence anoth­er?), “Stair­way” is a phe­nom­e­nal piece of song­writ­ing, with its Celtic folk under­tones and orches­tral crescen­dos. So how, apart from some bor­row­ing, did Zep­pelin gui­tarist Jim­my Page come to write it? You can hear the sto­ry from the man him­self above. Page talks about the use of recorders in the song’s “exposed acoustic” intro to give it a “slight­ly medieval feel.” Giv­en the num­ber of Lord of the Rings ref­er­ences in Robert Plant’s lyrics, this seems only fit­ting. Mul­ti-instru­men­tal­ist bass play­er John Paul Jones came up with the idea for the recorders, Page tells us, and played them him­self. (Page would have gone with “the tex­ture of elec­tric piano”).

Page offers many oth­er fas­ci­nat­ing tid­bits on the moody, lay­ered “Stair­way.” To hear what it sound­ed like at first, before the sto­ried album version’s cav­ernous pro­duc­tion, lis­ten to the ear­ly acoustic demo above. Page and Plant com­posed the rudi­ments while vaca­tion­ing in Wales at a cot­tage called Bron Yr Aur (now a famous pil­grim­age site for fans). Record­ing ses­sions took place in 1970 and 71 at Bas­ing Street Stu­dios in Lon­don and Headley Grange in Hamp­shire, where the band lived at the time. Zep­pelin debuted “Stair­way” live at Belfast’s Ulster Hall on March 5, 1971, with Page play­ing his many parts on a Gib­son dou­ble-necked gui­tar. You can hear that first per­for­mance, and the some­what tepid audi­ence response, in the muf­fled record­ing below.

Accord­ing to John Paul Jones, the crowd was “all bored to tears wait­ing to hear some­thing they knew.” Nonethe­less, “Stair­way to Heav­en” became the band’s “most request­ed song ever played on Amer­i­can radio” and was “includ­ed at every sub­se­quent Zep­pelin show.” Though it may be the most over­played song of all time, “Stair­way” has cer­tain­ly earned it sta­tus as a rock ‘n’ roll mile­stone. As Page says at the top, the record­ing cap­tures the band in their most inspired moment, a time when they did “noth­ing but eat, sleep, and make music.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

‘Stair­way to Heav­en’: Watch a Mov­ing Trib­ute to Led Zep­pelin at The Kennedy Cen­ter

Delet­ed Scene from Almost Famous: Mom, “Stair­way to Heav­en” is Based on the Lit­er­a­ture of Tolkien

Zep­pelin Took My Blues Away: An Illus­trat­ed His­to­ry of Zeppelin’s “Copy­right Indis­cre­tions”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness