Led Zeppelin records Stairway to Heaven on Led Zeppelin IV and it becomes one of the most requested songs on FM radio

If you haven’t played air guitar or slow danced to it in high school, then you’ve certainly heard it on the radio…again and again. It’s the most requested and played song on FM radio even though it was never released here as a single. The tune is Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” the whopping eight minute and two second opus that appears on the album Led Zeppelin IV. Released in November 1971, the song’s opening has an Elizabethean ring thanks to John Paul Jones’ recorder solo and of course lyrics that include:

If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow
Don’t be alarmed now,
It’s just a spring clean for the May queen

But “Stairway” is positively rock n roll…just listen to the last three minutes.

The song has sparked some controversy. Some critics have claimed that if the middle part of the song is played backwards, you can hear satanic references. Of course the lyrics are baffling enough to understand and decipher when Robert Plant sings them the way the band originally intended!

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