Copyright Parade
Robert Plant, 77, never, ever pulls his punches when it comes to speaking his mind about his work with Led Zeppelin. Most notably, the singer has panned request after request to sing the iconic song “Stairway to Heaven” due to the fact that he, well, kind of loathes it. The “Golden God” also noted that he and his fellow living bandmates Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones feel that the song (and a reunion) belong in the past because they want to remember it for what it was. However, in 2023 Plant put his trepidation aside and sang the iconic eight-minute tune for the first time in 16 years at a benefit concert organized by Duran Duran’s Andy Taylor. The version he sang was much more subdued, but fans were still in awe of how he made the song work for his current vocal range — and generally praised the genius of the enduring song. “When I first heard ‘Stairway’ (1977) I truly believed music could show you your destiny… let music lead you… follow it to happiness, your fate,” said one longtime loyal fan. “Robert Plant singing this song today is even more intense than when it was released,” another claimed. The last time Plant played the song publicly was in 2007, when the surviving Zeppelin members reunited for a one-night-only set for an Ahmet Ertegun tribute show in London. In 2022, Plant got candid with Rolling Stone about the song and in particular his feelings on the lyrics. “When I hear it in isolation, I feel overwhelmed for every single reason you could imagine,” he confessed. “There was a mood and an air of trying to make it through. The world is a different place. Everybody was reeling from Vietnam and the usual extra helping of corruption with politics. There were people who were really eloquent who brought it home far less pictorially and did a much better job of reaching that point. But I am what I am, and as my grandfather said, ‘I can’t be more ‘am’-erer.’”
