Stairway to Heaven
"Stairway to Heaven" is a song by English rock band Led Zeppelin, released in late 1971 by Atlantic Records. It was composed by the band's guitarist Jimmy Page with lyrics written by lead singer Robert Plant for the band's untitled fourth studio album (commonly known as Led Zeppelin IV). The song is widely regarded as one of the greatest rock songs of all time.[3][4][5][6][7]
This article is about the song by Led Zeppelin. For other uses, see Stairway to Heaven (disambiguation)."Stairway to Heaven"
8 November 1971
December 1970, January 1971, February 1971[1]
Island Studios, London; Rolling Stones Mobile Studio, Headley Grange, Hampshire[1]
7:55[2]
Jimmy Page
The song has three sections, each one progressively increasing in tempo and volume. The song begins in a slow tempo with acoustic instruments (guitar and recorders) before introducing electric instruments. The final section is an uptempo hard rock arrangement, highlighted by Page's guitar solo and Plant's vocals, which ends with the plaintive a cappella line: "And she's buying a stairway to heaven".
"Stairway to Heaven" was voted number three in 2000 by VH1 on its list of the 100 Greatest Rock Songs,[8] in 2004 Rolling Stone magazine ranked "Stairway to Heaven" number 31 on its "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list.[9] It was the most requested song on FM radio stations in the United States at the time, despite never having been commercially released as a single in the US.[10] In November 2007, through download sales promoting Led Zeppelin's Mothership release, "Stairway to Heaven" reached number 37 on the UK Singles Chart.[11]
Writing and recording[edit]
The song originated in 1970 when Jimmy Page and Robert Plant were spending time at Bron-Yr-Aur, a remote cottage in Wales, following Led Zeppelin's fifth American concert tour. According to Page, he wrote the music "over a long period, the first part coming at Bron-Yr-Aur one night".[12] Page always kept a cassette recorder around, and the idea for "Stairway to Heaven" came together from bits of taped music.[13] The first attempts at lyrics, written by Robert Plant next to an evening log fire at Headley Grange, were partly spontaneously improvised and Page claimed, "a huge percentage of the lyrics were written there and then".[13] Jimmy Page was strumming the chords, and Robert Plant had a pencil and paper.
Led Zeppelin began recording "Stairway to Heaven" in December 1970 at Island Records' new recording studios on Basing Street in London.[14][15] The song was completed by the addition of lyrics by Plant during the sessions for Led Zeppelin IV at Headley Grange, Hampshire, in 1971.[16] Page then returned to Island Studios to record his guitar solo.[10]
The complete studio recording was released on Led Zeppelin IV in November 1971. The band's record label, Atlantic Records, wanted to issue it as a single, but the band's manager Peter Grant refused requests to do so in both 1972 and 1973. As a result, many people bought the fourth album as if it were the single.[10]
Composition[edit]
"Stairway to Heaven" is described as progressive rock,[17][18] folk rock,[19] and hard rock.[19] The song consists of three distinct sections, beginning with a quiet introduction on a finger-picked, six-string acoustic guitar and four recorders[20] (ending at 2:15) and gradually moving into a slow electric middle section (2:16–5:33), then a long guitar solo (5:34–6:44), before the faster hard rock final section (6:45–7:45), ending with a short vocals-only epilogue. Plant sings the opening, middle, and epilogue sections in his mid-vocal range; he sings the hard rock section in his higher range, which borders on falsetto.
Written in the key of A minor, the song opens with an arpeggiated, finger-picked guitar chord progression with a chromatic descending bassline A-G♯-G-F♯-F. Page used a Harmony Sovereign H1260 acoustic guitar and a Fender Electric XII 12-string electric guitar played directly into the board for the rhythm parts.[21] John Paul Jones contributed overdubbed recorders (probably soprano, alto, tenor, and bass)[22] in the opening section (he used a Mellotron and, later, a Yamaha CP-70B Grand Piano and Yamaha GX1 to synthesise this arrangement in live performances)[23] and a Hohner Electra-Piano electric piano in the middle section.
The sections build with more guitar layers, each complementary to the intro, with the drums entering at 4:18. The extended guitar solo in the song's final section was played for the recording on a 1959 Fender Telecaster given to Page by Jeff Beck (an instrument he used extensively with the Yardbirds)[23] plugged into a Supro amplifier,[24] although in an interview he gave to Guitar World magazine, Page said, "It could have been a Marshall, but I can't remember".[13] Three different improvised solos were recorded, with Page agonising about which to keep. Page later revealed, "I did have the first phrase worked out, and then there was the link phrase. I did check them out beforehand before the tape ran." He has likened the song to an orgasm.[25] The Am–G–F–G chord sequence in the third section of the song, centred on A minor, is typical of a chord progression in the Aeolian mode.[26]
According to Jean-Michel Guesdon and Philippe Margotin:[1]
Sunset Sound mix[edit]
A different version of this song by Led Zeppelin is featured on the remastered deluxe two-CD version of Led Zeppelin IV. Titled "Stairway to Heaven (Sunset Sound Mix)", it was recorded on 5 December 1970, at Island Studio, No. 1, in London with engineer Andy Johns and assistant engineer Diggs. This version runs 8:04, while the original version runs 8:02.[32]
Success and legacy[edit]
"Stairway to Heaven" is often rated among the greatest rock songs of all time.[3][4] According to music journalist Stephen Davis, although the song was released in 1971, it took until 1973 before the song's popularity ascended to truly "anthemic" status.[33] As Page recalled, "I knew it was good. I didn't know it was going to become like an anthem, but I did know it was the gem of the album, sure."[34]
"Stairway to Heaven" continues to top radio lists of the greatest rock songs, including a 2006 Guitar World readers poll of greatest guitar solos.[35] On the 20th anniversary of the original release of the song, it was announced via US radio sources that the song had logged up an estimated 2,874,000 radio plays.[10] As of 2000, the song had been broadcast on radio over three million times.[36] In 1990, a Tampa Bay area, Florida station (then WKRL) kicked off its all-Led Zeppelin format by playing "Stairway to Heaven" for 24 hours straight.[37] It is also the biggest-selling single piece of sheet music in rock history, clocking up an average of 15,000 copies yearly.[23] In total, over one million copies have been sold.[36]
Despite pressure from Atlantic Records, the band would not authorise the editing of the song for single release. Page told Rolling Stone in 1975, "We were careful to never release it as a single",[38] which forced buyers to buy the entire album.[39]
In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine put it at number 31 on their list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time", and was re-ranked at number 61 in 2021.[40] An article from 29 January 2009 Guitar World magazine rated Jimmy Page's guitar solo at number one in the publication's 100 Greatest Guitar Solos in Rock and Roll History.[41]
In 2001, the New York City-based classic rock radio station WAXQ conducted a listener survey to create a countdown of 1,043 rock songs (the number corresponding with the station's position on the dial at 104.3 FM). "Stairway To Heaven" garnered the most votes from listeners. WAXQ has conducted the survey annually since then; in each subsequent countdown that has followed, including the most recent in November 2023, "Stairway To Heaven" has been the top-ranked song.[42]
Plant once gave $10,000 to listener-supported radio station KBOO in Portland, Oregon during a pledge drive after the disc jockey solicited donations by promising the station would never play "Stairway to Heaven". Plant was station-surfing in a rental car he was driving to the Oregon Coast after a solo performance in Portland and was impressed with the non-mainstream music the station presented. When asked later for the reason why, Plant replied that it wasn't that he didn't like the song, but he'd heard it before.[43]
"Stairway to Heaven" was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry in 2023, based on its "cultural, historical or aesthetic importance in the nation’s recorded sound heritage."[44][45]
Spirit copyright infringement lawsuit[edit]
Page's opening acoustic guitar arpeggios bear a resemblance to the 1968 instrumental "Taurus" by the Los Angeles-based rock band Spirit, written by Spirit guitarist Randy California.[12][46] In the liner notes to the 1996 reissue of Spirit's self-titled debut album, California wrote: "People always ask me why 'Stairway to Heaven' sounds exactly like 'Taurus', which was released two years earlier. I know Led Zeppelin also played 'Fresh Garbage' in their live set. They opened up for us on their first American tour."[47][48]
In May 2014, Spirit bassist Mark Andes and a trust acting on behalf of California filed a copyright infringement suit against Led Zeppelin and injunction against the "release of the album containing the song" in an attempt to obtain a writing credit for California, who died in 1997.[49] A lack of resources was cited as one of the reasons that Spirit did not file the suit earlier; according to a friend of California's mother, "Nobody had any money, and they thought the statute of limitations was done ... It will be nice if Randy got the credit." If the Spirit lawsuit had been successful, past earnings due to the song—estimated at more than US$550 million—would not have been part of the settlement, but the publisher and composers might have been entitled to a share of future profits.[50][51]
On 11 April 2016, Los Angeles district judge Gary Klausner ruled that there were enough similarities between the song and the instrumental for a jury to decide the claim, and a trial was scheduled for 10 May. The copyright infringement action was brought by Michael Skidmore, a trustee for the late guitarist, whose legal name was Randy Wolfe.[52] On 23 June, the jury ruled that the similarities between the songs did not amount to copyright infringement.[53] In July, Skidmore's attorney filed a notice of appeal against the court's decision.[54][55][56] In March 2017, the verdict was appealed, with a main argument being that the jury should have been able to hear a recorded version of "Taurus".[57][58] On 28 September 2018, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit allowed the appeal, vacating in part and remanding to the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California for a new trial on several evidentiary and procedural issues.[59] On 10 June 2019, the Ninth Circuit granted rehearing en banc, meaning the case would be reheard by a larger panel of eleven judges.[60][61]
A Bloomberg Businessweek article shortly after that decision noted that a Ninth Circuit judge's interpretation of the laws implied that key elements of many classic rock songs, including "Stairway to Heaven", that were recorded prior to 1978 were not protected by copyright to begin with. The panel declared that the scope of copyright for those songs is limited to what was included in the deposit copy of the song's sheet music provided to the Copyright Office; at trial Page had testified that the deposit copy included neither the intro that was under dispute nor his guitar solo. Bloomberg reporter Vernon Silver found that the deposit copies of other classic rock songs from that era, such as "Hotel California", "Born to Run" and "Free Bird", include only the song's basic chords, lyrics and melody, without any solos or other distinctive musical touches. Copyright law experts could not say whether those elements are copyrighted or not; Led Zeppelin's lawyers have argued they are even if not included in the deposit copy. Silver made an electronic mashup of several of these elements from different songs and included it with the article.[62]
On 9 March 2020, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, California, ruled in favor of Led Zeppelin, in that "Stairway to Heaven" does not infringe on the copyright of "Taurus". The full Ninth Circuit used their decision to overturn the controversial "inverse ratio rule" upon which it had relied over the past several decades in past copyright rulings, stating "Because the inverse ratio rule, which is not part of the copyright statute, defies logic, and creates uncertainty for the courts and the parties, we take this opportunity to abrogate the rule in the Ninth Circuit and overrule our prior cases to the contrary."[63][64] This verdict immediately applied to pending cases within the Ninth: a long battle over Katy Perry's "Dark Horse" in which a jury had found against her for US$2.8 million was overturned a week after the Ninth's verdict in "Stairway to Heaven", in part of the Ninth's new finding and that in the case of "Dark Horse", the similarity argument weighed heavily on the inverse ratio rule.[65] On 5 October, the Supreme Court of the United States denied to grant certiorari to Andes and the trust, leaving the Ninth's circuit ruling in place in favour of Led Zeppelin.[66] The court's decision precludes further appeals, thus ending the copyright dispute.[67]