Songs have a certain span in all our lives – we fall in love with them, listen to them repeatedly, and (sometimes) decide to forget all about them. Musicians are the same, even with their own creations – and Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant knows that better than anyone.
A musician responsible for crafting a catalogue that sits as the crucible of rock music, he’s come to be known as a harsh judge on his younger work. People change, naturally, and the music Robert Plant is creating in 2024 is radically different than the music he made in 1974, say.
Looking back over his time in Led Zeppelin, the singer actually has refreshingly few regrets – but there’s one song he says he now “can’t relate to”.
Remarkably, it’s ‘Stairway To Heaven’. A bona fide classic, the song became the fulcrum of their epic live shows, even appearing in the band’s sole 21st century performance – a 2007 celebration of Atlantic founder Ahmet Ertegun.
“Lyrically, now, I can’t relate to it,” he said, “Because it was so long ago. I would have no intention ever to write along those abstract lines any more.”
In one interview, Robert Plant even called it “that bloody wedding song” and said that he would break out in hives if he had to perform it live again.
Yet at one point, ‘Stairway To Heaven’ was an unimpeachable rock document. Initially released in 1971, it’s bewitching intro has been repeated so many times in guitar shops across the land that some even have ‘No Stairway’ signs – something riffed on in the Mike Myers’ film Wayne’s World.
The song has been there in Robert Plant’s life time and time again, performed at an incredible number of shows. In one interview, he noted that the most unusual performance was Led Zeppelin’s ill-fated Live Aid reunion, “with two drummers (Phil Collins and Tony Thompson) while Duran Duran cried at the side of the stage – there was something quite surreal about that.”
One more time, here’s the original.
