I wanted to sing like Little Richard but with a band like Led Zeppelin. “I liked the band more than the singing, but Robert Plant was an amazing frontman. If they were playing Stairway to Heaven we knew there were too many stoners for our liking, so we’d change it. “ Stairway to Heaven makes me think about when we were touring and going to parties somewhere – in fact, anywhere – up the east coast of Australia. Jimmy Barnes enjoyed playing a few Led Zeppelin songs in the early days of Cold Chisel.
Recorded mostly at the Headley Grange studio in Hampshire, England, Stairway to Heaven was last performed live when Page, Plant, bass player John Paul Jones and Jason Bonham, the son of original drummer John Bonham, came together for 2007’s Celebration Day concert at London’s O2 Arena. Jimmy Barnes, You Am I’s Andy Kent and Ash Naylor from bands Even and The Church recall the band’s influence on their own music. Here in Australia, Hoodoo Gurus bass player Rick Grossman remembers hearing the album soon after it was released, while blues musician Kerri Simpson was among those in the early ’70s trying to imitate Page. The impact of that album, and specifically Stairway to Heaven, was felt around the world. Then the snorting of a wakened beast, the first cough of a semi-truck on a cold morning, a noise that announces something is about to occur”. The album, says Hepworth, “starts with the slurring of a tape being run back to a cue point, followed by a brief moment of silence. “At no stage did Led Zeppelin seem to accommodate the things that the market expected,” writes David Hepworth in Never a Dull Moment: 1971 – the Year That Rock Exploded.
Led Zeppelin’s fourth album was unleashed on November 8, without any words or even their name on the cover – it was simply a photo that Plant, then aged 23, had picked up in an op shop. Woman, while David Bowie, the Allman Brothers, Faces, Janis Joplin, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull and T.Rex also had new albums that year. The Rolling Stones released Sticky Fingers and The Doors released L.A. Credit:Įarlier in 1971, it was Birmingham’s rock behemoth Black Sabbath releasing Master of Reality, while The Who’s fifth album, Who’s Next, was a huge success. In what had already been a seismic year for rock ’n’ roll, 1971 turned out to be the year Stairway to Heaven and Led Zeppelin were on everyone’s lips and cranking on their stereos.Īfter positioning himself as rock ‘n’ roll’s pre-eminent vocalist, Robert Plant proved with Stairway to Heaven he could blend surprising tenderness with his famous howl, while Page used the song’s now iconic tempo shifts to build towards a guitar solo that still ranks among the greatest of all time. From left: Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, Jimmy Page and drummer John Bonham. Led Zeppelin in an undated publicity photo. However, the song’s popularity and influence grew quickly as the album that became known as IV rocketed the band to stardom. The fourth song on side one of Led Zeppelin’s untitled 1971 album, Stairway to Heaven was not released as a single, contrary to common practice. It’s the song that made countless guitarists want to shred like Jimmy Page - and 50 years later, as we wind on down the road, the impact of Stairway to Heaven is still reverberating. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size