Led zeppelin - stairway to heaven

"Stairway to Heaven" is a song by the English rock band Led Zeppelin. It was composed by guitarist Jimmy Page and vocalist Robert Plant for the band's fourth studio album, Led Zeppelin IV. It is the most requested and most played song on FM radio stations in the United States, despite never having been released as a single there. In November 2007, through download sales promoting their recent Mothership release, the song hit #37 on the UK Singles Chart and #13 on the New Zealand Singles Chart. The recording of "Stairway to Heaven" started in December 1970 at Island Records' new Basing Street Studios in London. The song was completed by the addition of lyrics by Plant during the sessions for Led Zeppelin IV at Headley Grange, Hampshire, in 1971. Page then returned to Island Studios to record his guitar solo. The song's instrumentals were written by Page "over a long period, the first part coming at Bron-Yr-Aur one night." Page always kept a cassette recorder around, and the idea for "Stairway" came together from bits of taped music. The song's main guitar line is similar to a guitar line from an instrumental track called "Taurus" by the band Spirit, with whom Led Zeppelin were acquainted in their opening days. The first attempts at lyrics, written by Led Zeppelin vocalist Robert Plant next to an evening log fire at Headley Grange, were partly spontaneously improvised and Page claimed, "a huge percentage of the lyrics were written there and then". Jimmy Page was strumming the chords and Robert Plant had a pencil and paper. Plant later said that suddenly, My hand was writing out the words, 'There's a lady is sure [sic], all that glitters is gold, and she's buying a stairway to heaven'. I just sat there and looked at them and almost leapt out of my seat." Plant's own explanation of the lyrics was that it "was some cynical aside about a woman getting everything she wanted all the time without giving back any thought or consideration. The first line begins with that cynical sweep of the hand ... and it softened up after that." The lyrics of the song reflected Plant's current reading. The singer had been poring through the works of the British antiquarian Lewis Spence, and later cited Spence's Magic Arts in Celtic Britain as one of the sources for the lyrics to the song. In November 1970, Page dropped a hint of the new song's existence to a music journalist in London: It's an idea for a really long track.... You know how "Dazed and Confused" and songs like that were broken into sections? Well, we want to try something new with the organ and acoustic guitar building up and building up, and then the electric part starts.... It might be a fifteen-minute track. The complete studio recording was released on Led Zeppelin IV in November 1971. The band's recording label, Atlantic Records was keen to issue this track as a single, but the band's manager Peter Grant refused requests to do so in both 1972 and 1973. The upshot of that decision was that record buyers began to invest in the fourth album as it were a single. A handful of rare original seven inch promos were pressed at the time, accompanied by a humorous in-house memo (Atlantic LZ3), which are now extremely sought-after collectors items.