Story of the song: Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin

From The Independent archive: Robert Webb on the birth of rock’s national anthem

John Paul Jones, John Bonham, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant in front of their private airliner, The Starship, in 1973 (Getty)

There’s a scene in the Wayne’s World movie in which the protagonist gains the attention of a guitar-shop salesman by playing the opening notes of “Stairway to Heaven”. The salesman stops him and points to a sign on the wall: “No Stairway”. Such is the song’s reputation. It has been the yardstick for every budding rock guitarist for more than 50 years and is the biggest-selling piece of sheet music in rock history. It may not be the first choice of the diehard Zep fan but, in the popular consensus, it is rock’s national anthem.

The first tread of “Stairway” was laid in 1970, at Bron-Yr-Aur, the Welsh stone cottage where the band had decamped to work on material for their third album. On his acoustic guitar, Jimmy Page traced a loose chord progression – one that faintly echoed Davy Graham’s 1962 folk-baroque instrumental “Angi”. As the band knuckled down later in the year to record Led Zeppelin III at Headley Grange Studios, the new song took shape between sessions.

Lounging before an evening fire in the decrepit Hampshire manor house, Page pieced together the segments that make up the song, building the basic theme from the breezy opening into an electric storm. Meanwhile, the vocalist, Robert Plant, sat in the corner and scratched out some lyrics. He drew inspiration from reading Magic Arts in Celtic Britain, by the antiquarian Lewis Spence, which brims with references to May queens and mystical pipers. When pressed on his lyrics’ meaning, though, he has been evasive: “It’s the beginning of spring; it’s when the birds make their nests, when hope and the new year begins,” is his most coherent explanation.

With III in the can, the band entered Island Studios early in 1971 to record “Stairway”, destined for their monumental fourth album, Led Zeppelin IV. John Paul Jones blows a bucolic recorder over the intro (reproduced on Mellotron in live performances), before pounding his bass guitar into the song’s solar plexus. Plant’s vocal rises from listless whisper to banshee scream.

Page’s mountainous solo was chosen from three different takes. “It showed the band at its best,” commented Page. “It was a milestone for us. Every musician wants to do something of lasting quality, something that will hold up for a long time, and I guess we did it with ‘Stairway’.”