Stairway to Heaven

Page wrote the music in 1970, partly at Bron-Yr-Aur. Plant wrote the first lyrics beside a log fire at Headley Grange, and Page said a huge percentage of the words were written there and then. It was recorded between December 1970 and February 1971 at Island Studios and in two mobile studios, with Jones on bass, electric piano and recorder, and Page on acoustic and electric guitars. The song builds through three sections of rising tempo and volume.

It was never released as a single in the original era, though a download pushed it to number 37 in the UK charts in November 2007. It entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2003 and the Library of Congress National Recording Registry in 2023, and Guitar World ranked Page's solo number one in 2006.

Plant's lyrics were written at Headley Grange about a woman who took everything without giving anything back. The final take was recorded at Island after the Headley Grange session, with Bonham on drums, Jones on electric piano and Page on acoustic guitar. The whole group shaped the arrangement: Jones played the recorders in the introduction and Bonham's drum entry halfway through is distinctive. Page played the solo on the Telecaster Jeff Beck had given him, recorded three takes, and chose the best. To cover the changes between acoustic, electric and twelve-string guitar on stage, he used a Gibson EDS-1275 double-neck. The band resisted every suggestion to release it as a single. Pitchfork's Mark Richardson wrote that it cycles so fast between reverence and self-parody that it becomes a blur.

Live

The band first played it on 5 March 1971 at the Ulster Hall in Belfast. A radio recording from the Paris Cinema on 1 April 1971 was broadcast on the BBC three days later. The last full-band performance of the Zeppelin era was in Berlin on 7 July 1980, with later outings at Live Aid in 1985, in 1988 and at the O2 in 2007. setlist.fm counts 269 performances. Plant said after 1977 that there are only so many times you can sing it and mean it.

The Taurus case

The band was sued in May 2014 over the song's resemblance to Spirit's Taurus. A jury found no infringement on 23 June 2016, the Ninth Circuit ruled for Led Zeppelin en banc on 9 March 2020, and the Supreme Court declined to hear the case on 5 October 2020.