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

When our favorite musi­cians leave us, whether they die young or live to ripe old age, we’re guar­an­teed to keep dis­cov­er­ing new mate­r­i­al from them. Some­times this hap­pens through the ques­tion­able remix­ing of their unfin­ished work, and the results can be dis­ap­point­ing, if not down­right dis­re­spect­ful. More often, we’re treat­ed to hours of rough demos, home and con­cert record­ings, and alter­nate takes. And while these may not always live up to the pol­ished stu­dio ver­sions, they nonethe­less open intrigu­ing win­dows into the cre­ative process of artists we love and admire.

In the case of Kurt Cobain, we’ve heard for a cou­ple of years about unre­leased demos for a solo album the Nir­vana front­man sup­pos­ed­ly had in the works before his sui­cide in 1994. What might it have sound­ed like?

Well, it might have sound­ed some­thing like Cobain’s wife’s band, Hole—or at least like their song “Old Age,” released that same year with the sin­gle “Vio­let.” Cobain wrote the song and record­ed his own acoustic demo, which you can hear at the top. Dis­sat­is­fied, he gave it away to Court­ney Love. Just above, hear anoth­er acoustic home demo, “Do Re Mi,” that Hole co-founder Eric Erland­son told Fuse offers a hint of what might have been.

Until, if ever, the actu­al record­ings of Cobain’s planned solo album come out, we can only spec­u­late. But whether or not the noto­ri­ous­ly intro­vert­ed singer would approve, we do have many more acoustic demos and home record­ings of songs we know and songs we prob­a­bly don’t. Many of these appear on the Nir­vana box set With the Lights Out, which, in addi­tion to con­tain­ing “Old Age” and “Do Re Mi,” has acoustic ver­sions of In Utero’s “Rape Me,” “Pen­ny­roy­al Tea,” and “All Apolo­gies” (above).

What you won’t hear on the box set is the song above, “Cre­ation,” a home demo Cobain made in the late eight­ies, using a 4‑track recorder to mix his vocals with a bassline and drum­ming on suit­cas­es. This track appears on an unof­fi­cial 4 CD boot­leg set called Nir­vana: The Cho­sen Rejects along­side a good many demo tracks from Cobain’s first band, the obnox­ious­ly-named Fecal Mat­ter, which he formed with future Melvins drum­mer Dale Crover in Aberdeen, Wash­ing­ton.

“Cre­ation” presages the dron­ing, rhyth­mic melod­i­cism that became the hall­mark of Cobain’s Nir­vana song­writ­ing. But as for that sad­ly abort­ed solo album, it seems the singer may have been mov­ing into some very eclec­tic ter­ri­to­ry indeed. Cobain, says Erland­son, “was head­ed in a direc­tion that was real­ly cool. It would have been his White Album.” Alas.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nir­vana Plays in a Radio Shack, the Day After Record­ing its First Demo Tape (1988)

Nirvana’s Home Videos: An Inti­mate Look at the Band’s Life Away From the Spot­light (1988)

Hear Dave Grohl’s First Foo Fight­ers Demo Record­ings, As Kurt Cobain Did in 1992

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

We have a thing for the ear­ly days of The Ramones.

Exhib­it A: We’ve fea­tured footage of one of their ear­li­est live shows per­formed at CBGB in 1974. And then comes anoth­er from 1977.

Exhib­it B: We’ve also dug up raw demo record­ings from their debut album (1975).

Now Exhib­it C: It’s a no-bs press release that announced the arrival of the band, and what it’s all about. Writ­ten by Tom­my Ramone (the drum­mer who died last sum­mer, but only after out­liv­ing all of the oth­er orig­i­nal band mem­bers), the one-pager describes The Ramones suc­cinct­ly: “The Ramones are an orig­i­nal Rock and Roll group of 1975, and their songs are brief, to the point and every one a poten­tial hit sin­gle.” And with a lit­tle bit of humor. “The Ramones all orig­i­nate from For­est Hills and kids who grew up there either became musi­cians, degen­er­ates or den­tists. The Ramones are a lit­tle of each. Their sound is not unlike a fast drill on a rear molar.”

You can click the press release above to read it in a larg­er for­mat. Or read the tran­script below.

The Ramones are not an oldies group, they are not a glit­ter group, they don’t play boo­gie music and they don’t play the blues. The Ramones are an orig­i­nal Rock and Roll group of 1975, and their songs are brief, to the point and every one a poten­tial hit sin­gle.

The quar­tette con­sists of John­ny, Joey, Dee Dee, and Tom­my Ramone, John­ny, the gui­tarist, plays with such force that his sound has been com­pared to a hun­dred how­itzers going off. Joey, the lead singer, is an arch vil­lain whose lanky frame stands threat­en­ing cen­ter stage. Dee Dee is Bass gui­tar and the acknowl­edged hand­some one of the group, and Tom­my is the drum­mer whose pul­sat­ing play­ing launch­es the throb­bing sound of the band.

The Ramones all orig­i­nate from For­est Hills and kids who grew up there either became musi­cians, degen­er­ates or den­tists. The Ramones are a lit­tle of each. Their sound is not unlike a fast drill on a rear molar.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent

Hear The Ramones’ Raw Demo Record­ings For Their Debut Album (1975)

Hear Joey Ramone Sing a Piece by John Cage Adapt­ed from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake

Pat­ti Smith Plays Songs by The Ramones, Rolling Stones, Lou Reed & More on CBGB’s Clos­ing Night (2006)

If you heard Sun Ra’s Christ­mas-day radio broad­cast of poet­ry and music we fea­tured on, well, Christ­mas day, per­haps it inspired you to cre­ate some­thing — music, poet­ry, radio — your­self. More than twen­ty years after his death, the flam­boy­ant jazz vision­ary con­tin­ues to inspire all kinds of cre­ative acts on the part of his lis­ten­ers. Sure­ly he played no small part in moti­vat­ing the pro­duc­tion of Big Music, Lit­tle Musi­cians, an album by the fourth‑, fifth‑, and sixth-graders of music teacher Randy Porter’s class­es at Chabot, Mont­clair, and Thorn­hill ele­men­tary schools in Oak­land, Cal­i­for­nia. The album offers not just 43 (!) com­po­si­tions by these ele­men­tary school­ers, but, 42 tracks in, their inter­pre­ta­tion of Sun Ra’s “Plan­et Earth” (in its orig­i­nal form the open­ing cut from 1966’s Sun Ra and His Solar Arkestra Vis­its Plan­et Earth):

You can hear the entire­ty of this out-of-print 1994 release (inci­den­tal­ly, the year after Sun Ra took his leave of plan­et Earth) at Ubuweb. “With as lit­tle as a cou­ple months of expe­ri­ence under their belts,” say the notes there, the ten‑, eleven‑, and twelve-year-old stu­dents “are encour­aged to impro­vise and com­pose and this disc doc­u­ments it.” And admit­ted­ly, “while some may cringe at some of the tech­ni­cal prob­lems young, inex­pe­ri­enced play­ers are bound to have, the cre­ativ­i­ty exhib­it­ed is unde­ni­able. It is also refresh­ing to hear such unabashed, ego­less joy as we have here. Many a sea­soned play­er could stand to give this a lis­ten.” It puts me in the mind of not just the grade-school­ers who sang David Bowie’s Space Odd­i­ty but the Portsmouth Sin­fo­nia, an ama­teur orches­tra at the Portsmouth School of Art that com­pen­sat­ed for each mem­ber’s shaky grasp of their instru­ment (includ­ing, at one point, none oth­er than Bri­an Eno’s on the clar­inet) with its sheer size and the famous­ness of its selec­tions.

Just above, you can hear a few orig­i­nal cuts of intrigu­ing­ly named big music from these lit­tle musi­cians: “Ghost Train,” “Tom Fool­ery,” and “Help! I’m Drown­ing in a Sea of Har­mo­ny.” See­ing as these kids would be the same age as me today, it would cer­tain­ly inter­est me to hear how they’ve turned out; such an ear­ly and strong dose of Sun Ra cer­tain­ly could­n’t make one’s life less inter­est­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Sun Ra Christ­mas: Hear His 1976 Radio Broad­cast of Poet­ry and Music

Sun Ra’s Full Lec­ture & Read­ing List From His 1971 UC Berke­ley Course, “The Black Man in the Cos­mos”

The Cry of Jazz: 1958’s High­ly Con­tro­ver­sial Film on Jazz & Race in Amer­i­ca (With Music by Sun Ra)

Ele­men­tary School Kids Sing David Bowie’s “Space Odd­i­ty” & Oth­er Rock Hits: A Cult Clas­sic Record­ed in 1976

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.