STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN
THE BASICS
Written by: Jimmy Page and Robert Plant Run time: 7 minutes 58 seconds
Recorded at: Headley Grange, Hampshire; Sunset Sound, LA; Island, London
In a nutshell: The big one. The one even non-fans of Zeppelin know, in name if nothing else. An emotional roller-coaster of a track, and a devastating tour de force of light and shade, folk textures and hard rock. Since its release, Stairway has been immortalised by countless imitations, an infamous moment in Wayne’s World, and top spots in more ‘Greatest Songs Ever’ polls than most of us have had hot dinners. There’s also that guitar solo.
Noted cover versions by: Dolly Parton (2002), Frank Zappa (1991), Mastodon (2019), Rodrigo Y Gabriela (2006).
THE SOLO
Jimmy Page: “I would invariably do guitar solos at the end, once the finished vocals and any overdubs were already on. Under the circumstances here, there’s a bass, an electric, 12-strings, recorders, a whole manner of things. I always put the solo on at the end because you’ve really living the track by then, and being the producer you’ve already supervised all the overdubs that have already gone on.
“I basically got my Telecaster out to do that solo. Even though I’d been playing Les Pauls, I wanted to get that bite of the Telecaster on it. It was the same Telecaster that I’d played on the first album, the one Jeff Beck had given me that I’d used in The Yardbirds. A bit of a magical guitar,
