There walks a lady we all know
Who shines white light and wants to show
How everything still turns to gold
And if you listen very hard
The tune will come to you at last
When all are one and one is all
To be a rock and not to roll
And she’s buying the stairway to heaven …
– Songwriters: Jimmy Page / Robert Plant
IT WAS A dull day, nothing really interesting happening; just your usual political circus…ad nauseam perfectly describes it.
So what’s one to do? Get drunk or get high. Write this column or maybe have a bit of unbridled passionate sex. Perhaps all of the above.
And we did just that but the day is far from over so a glass of perfectly chilled Chablis, maybe a whole bottle, some lovely music and later another round of unbridled passionate sex.
In the midst of all that while looking among the stacks of CDs which would be the perfect music to set the mood of the rest of day…lo and behold it was Led Zeppelin IV and the carrier song of that album, Stairway to Heaven.
And what started as a dull day turned out to be an exciting and physically exhausting one. But it was definitely well worth it.
We then segue to the featured song, Stairway to Heaven, of course pun intended.
From that free online encyclopedia a.k.a. the internet:
Stairway to Heaven is a song by the English rock band Led Zeppelin, released in late 1971. It was composed by guitarist Jimmy Page and vocalist Robert Plant for the band’s untitled fourth studio album (often called Led Zeppelin IV). It is often referred to as one of the greatest rock songs of all time.
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 up-tempo hard rock arrangement highlighted by Page’s intricate guitar solo (considered by many to be one of the greatest ever accompanying Plant’s vocals that end with the plaintive a cappella line: “And she’s buying a stairway to heaven.”
Stairway to Heaven is described as progressive rock, folk rock and hard rock. The song consists of several distinct sections, beginning with a quiet introduction on a finger-picked six-string guitar and four recorders in a Renaissance music style, and gradually moving into a slow electric middle section then a long guitar solo before the faster hard rock final section ending with a short vocals-only epilogue. Robert Plant sings the opening, middle and epilogue sections in his mid-vocal range, but sings the hard rock section in his higher range which borders on falsetto.
Here’s what Jimmy Page, songwriter and lead guitarist of Led Zeppelin, has to say about his composition:
[The song] crystallized the essence of the band. It had everything there and showed us at our best. It was a milestone. Every musician wants to do something of lasting quality, something which will hold up for a long time. We did it with ‘Stairway.’
He later told Rolling Stone Magazine in 2012:
[The intro riff] was written on an acoustic guitar. I was trying things at home, shunting this piece up with that piece. I had the idea of the verses, the link into the solo and the last part. It was this idea of something that would keep building and building. I didn’t have any of Robert’s lyrics, only a sort of melody that related to the guitar parts I had. […] Originally, there was another guitar part that I had done for the ending. It was like the opening, a bit different. But I never tagged it on. The statement was there.
And here’s Rolling Stone Magazine’s comments on Stairway to Heaven:
The signature power ballad on Led Zeppelin IV towers over Seventies rock like a monolith. From the Elizabethan ambience of its acoustic introduction to Robert Plant’s lyrical mysticism to Jimmy Page’s spiralling solo, the eight-minute song is a masterpiece of slow-reveal intensity that withholds power, then ascends skyward like nothing in rock. ‘It speeds up like an adrenaline flow,’ said Page, whose on-the-spot improvisation was the perfect complement to Plant’s evocation of excess and salvation. ‘It was a milestone for us.”
If Juan Dela Cruz Band’s iconic song Himig Natin was Pinoy Rock’s unofficial anthem then Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven is the one if not the unofficial anthem of the “dazed and confused” days of the ‘70s.
Come to think of it, considering the circumstances that stimulated Moi to write about Stairway to Heaven, it seems fitting enough that composer Jimmy Page has likened the song to a sonic orgasm. (brotherlouie16@gmail.com/PN)
