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“I think it was the Moroccan dope,” Plant joked. Plant, the least nostalgic member of Zeppelin, somewhat dismissively called it a “nice, pleasant, well-meaning, naive little song.” He wrote the lyrics quickly and almost instantly, according to Page, reversing from a cynical first line to a mysterious but optimistic tale of reflection and rejuvenation. The song “crystallized the essence of the band,” Page said. “Stairway” is an eight-minute episodic jaunt that starts with acoustic guitar and Jones playing the recorder – a few different parts, harmonized – and climaxes with an electric roar. “Bonham is fuming at this point,” said recording assistant Richard Digby Smith, and on the second take, “he’s beating the crap out of his drums.” The second take was the keeper. And then ‘Stairway’ became what they knew.” (Plant, too, initially saw “people settling down to have 40 winks” when “Stairway” arose in Zeppelin’s set.)Įveryone at Headley Grange thought the first take was perfect – except Page, a taskmaster when he wasn’t stoned to the brink of unconsciousness, who hinted that it could be better. “The first time we played ‘Stairway’ live,” said Jones, “it was like, ‘Why aren’t they playing “Whole Lotta Love”?’ Because people like what they know. “Stairway to Heaven” is probably the most-played rock song of all time, but initially, Zeppelin’s audience was skeptical about it. It’s another travelogue, in which Plant leaves behind a “woman unkind” and seeks a girl “with love in her eyes.”īetween the concrete bookends of “Black Dog” and “When the Levee Breaks,” one song merges the dark and the light. The latter, which Plant later termed “hippie-dippy,” is a mischievous tale of being offered drugs in a park where people have “flowers in their hair,” an idyllic, Aquarius-era image that recurs in the plaintive, acoustic “Going to California,” inspired by Page and Plant’s devotion to folk singer Joni Mitchell, as well as their love of the West Coast. In a similar vein, “Rock and Roll” and “Misty Mountain Hop” (with an electric piano from the versatile Jones) were uptempo rockers that are still in heavy rotation on rock stations. (The stop-time structure was inspired by Fleetwood Mac’s earlier blues hit “Oh Well,” another example of how widely Zeppelin listened – and borrowed.) The fast pace of the song is staggered, unsettled – it sounds like Page and Bonham are about to fall out of sync, and when the music drops out, Plant yelps a come-on to a “steady-rolling woman.” It’s a “blatant let’s-do-it-in-the-bath type” of song, he said. “Black Dog,” named for a stray canine that often visited Headley Grange, was rooted in a riff Jones created after listening to the psychedelicized Muddy Waters album Electric Mud.