I love Led Zeppelin..one of my three favorites..the others being Pink Floyd and YES. Music that said something. Music that had deeper meanings. Not the mostly fluff of today. Call me old.
And I love the reference in your new book "Rough Beast", which also is my all time favorite poem by Yeats!
Thanks, Mary. Music is in a weird place now, now I do feel like the 2010s are an underrated music decade...although not in the same vein. There are no rock stars anymore, not really.
Thank you for writing this. I saw Led Zeppelin play “Stairway to Heaven” live in Cleveland at the Richfield Coliseum in April 1977, in the grips of a LedZep fever I’ve never been released from. A fever I’ve passed to my son and plan to pass to my grandson. Around the time I turned 50, I suddenly could “hear” Bonzo’s drums as the predominant driver of their songs, where I’d previously focused on Page’s skills with guitar. Their music became new to me again. But, tbf, their music will always be new to me. Thanks again.
Oh, wow, that must have been AWESOME. There was a cool band that covered it in high school at a Battle of the Bands, and I thought THAT was something, at the time. I can't even imagine seeing LZ do it.
Bonzo is THE best rock drummer. I'm with you -- the older I get, the more I listen to and really appreciate the drums. Stewart Copeland of the Police...the drummer from Green Day is incredible.
YES. Every word. My favorite song of all times. The one I hear in my head as I walk beaches, into courtrooms, into a church.
The interpretation has changed over the years as I’ve become more familiar with history, music, art, and lately tarot.
But the idea that a 22 year old understood that there is time to change the road you’re on, and that it never changes for so long as you draw a breath is inspiring.
Thanks, Karen. I thought of that after, how the words FEEL so olden, so wise, and yet were written by someone so young. Almost like he was channeling something greater than himself.
Pop radio stations have always ruined great songs by overplaying the shit out of them.
The critics wanted so hard to believe the same about Stairway, but it's the rare song that overplaying just couldn't ruin, and they refuse to believe that it doesn't fit the accepted norm. Great post!
For some ridiculous reason, my high school had a jukebox in the cafeteria, and "Stairway to Heaven" played at almost every lunchtime during my freshman year. My appreciation of the song, although SICK of hearing it, never wavered. But then came "Radar Love," and THAT seemed to play for the next three years, to the point that when looking it up this morning, I'm STILL, 50 years later, sick of it. I never knew who sang it, and it turned out to be an obscure band called Golden Earring. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRlSHG5hRY4
Heart singing "Stairway to Heaven" is like life itself! Thanks for sharing that, Greg!
When I die and go to hell, right after they hand me the tepid cup of hazelnut coffee, they will show me to a room where "radar Love" is played on a loop.
My God, an extraordinaryaojt of bullshit has beenl mooted since I first loved this song in 1976. My mother: "And w a word she can get what she came for"; it's anti-materialist, contrasting w the same mythic bucolic English countryside that, yes, informs Tolkein. Who cares if everyone else loves it, too? And as to "playing Satan backwards": they used to say that about *The Beatles*.
The Beatles Satan thing is funny to me, because none of those guys are remotely dark in that way. As least with Page, it makes some kind of sense. There is a spooky, haunting quality to certain LZ songs that goes there.
fascinating ruminations on Stairway to Heaven. I've never sat down and thought about analyzing it, and if played backwards it was Satanic, I'd bumped that kind of consideration back with the same stuff about the Beatles.
It brings up something I've often thought of about the music of the 60s and early 70s, my college and young adult years. My son, at 14 in 1993, was fascinated, even obsessed by it: from the Stones and Beatles through the Who and Led Zeppelin, and many more. I think about the songs popular when my own parents were in college and young adults (late 1920s to mid thirties), and what I was listening to when I was 14 in 1958. My obsessions certainly weren't what THEY played on their 78s--Guy Lombardo? Paul Whiteman? (By the time I was born they were heavily into Dixieland, which still to me is "real" jazz).
What does this say about the way music "travels" through the years? It wasn't, in 1993, the ubiquity of streaming. And it wasn't my playing it a lot--by that time I was more into Tom Waits. There was an energy in music of the 60s and early 70s (I don't count disco as music) that appeals in ways that the pop of my parent's generation didn't have (for that, they needed Dixieland and just felt nostalgic about Big Band.) That energy of my "era" is still with us--my grandkids listen to the Beatles, though not with the intensity my son did to the Stones, the Who, and Led Zeppelin.
I suppose this observation might vary depending on what actual genre one prefers--I don't do country except for a few folks I think of as crossover, and the dynamic might be different there. But having Led Zeppelin come up on my Substack feed as I approach 80 got me thinking about it.
"later in the week" for the ebook? Missed the Kindle Rewards Double Points day. But since today IS that double points, I picked up your book on Anna K.
Thanks, first of all, for Anna K. I'm very fond of that one, and I hope you enjoy it. I wanted all the formats to come out at the same time, but it wasn't possible. I'm told it will drop early this week.
The decade of the 2010s was pretty great for music. I made a big mix and listened to it the whole eight hour car ride back from seeing the eclipse, and it made me happy:
With that said, music changed, almost on a time, in something like 1958. Buddy Holly did that. There was Sinatra and Big Band and all that kind of stuff, and then, boom, Holly shows up. I watched this YouTube clip of him on some old variety show. All the women are wearing ball gowns...it was old-fashioned as hell. And there is Buddy. He looks like he traveled back in time. Astonishing. He was what, 23 when he died, and he left behind an hour-long greatest hits album. Let Justin Bieber sing "Everyday," with the same exact music track, and it would be a hit right now. Nothing was the same after that. And the era of the rock star died with Cobain really. I have a line in my Fathermucker book that's something like, "Who's going to pick up the mantle from John and Paul and Mick and Keith? The fucking JONAS BROTHERS?" It's amazing, the staying power of LZ and that era of bands.
I think the first thing was Bill Haley and the Comets. I was 12 when I first saw them (in a movie). Buddy Holly has stuck with me ever since he hit the radio. By the time I hit college, of course, he was gone, Elvis was fat; freshman year we were into Dylan, Baez, Peter Paul and Mary. There was still Pat Boone. There were rumblings--and then, sophomore year when I was doing a year abroad in Italy--the Beatles hit. Italy first: I wrote to my brother asking if he liked them and he wrote back "who??" Then first quarter junior year I was studying for a French history course and from a neighboring dorm room came the first time I ever heard the opening of Satisfaction.
I have Stairway to Heaven on my favorites playlist and listen to it quite frequently, but your in-depth analysis makes me realize it’s there more because it was popular than my having given it much thought. My “adolescent ignorance” is embarrassingly obvious. I am fascinated by your likening Stairway to a Tarot reading—a subject I happen to know something about—because it helps me appreciate more easily why you love the recording. And I shouldn’t have been surprised at your expertise in that arena, since I met you (not quite literally) on Irish Granny Tarot!
I didn't realize you met me there, Earl! Or if I did, I'd forgotten. I'm going back on her lovely show soon!
The extended tarot reading piece I wrote, that this is cribbed from, is out in the ether. It does work, I think, as an interpretation...
And I didn't realize anything about this song other than "it's cool" until quite recently. In high school, we mostly liked it because it was an eight-minute slow dance...
In October 2021 Helen had reviewed my book, Off the Hook: Escaping Toxic Ideology, and right after that, as I recall, she reviewed one of yours. You mentioned Substack, and I’ve followed you ever since.
Interesting, I was just reading a book on Tarot by A. E. Waite right before opening this email! I never made the connections between the cards & Stairway but I certainly see it now. I’ve been fascinated w the mystical & dark Anglofiles Page & Plant for a long time. Well done.
(I date myself when I say you were just an infant when I listened to this song over & over with the cool older guys when I was in junior high)!
It's funny, isn't it, how this song can be, simultaneously, the track the cool kids were listening to, but also the track that music snobs loathe. It contains multitudes!
Greg. Your range of interests is inspiring. Thanks maestro. Billserle.com
Thanks, Bill!
You knocked another column out of the park!
Thanks, Joseph!
I really love all your insightful pieces that one was really terrific!!
So much fun! Thanks for the YouTube cover of Stairway. Impressive!
Thank you! Glad you liked that cover.
I love Led Zeppelin..one of my three favorites..the others being Pink Floyd and YES. Music that said something. Music that had deeper meanings. Not the mostly fluff of today. Call me old.
And I love the reference in your new book "Rough Beast", which also is my all time favorite poem by Yeats!
Great post!
Yes!
Thanks, Mary. Music is in a weird place now, now I do feel like the 2010s are an underrated music decade...although not in the same vein. There are no rock stars anymore, not really.
And: I'm delighted you got the allusion!
Thank you for writing this. I saw Led Zeppelin play “Stairway to Heaven” live in Cleveland at the Richfield Coliseum in April 1977, in the grips of a LedZep fever I’ve never been released from. A fever I’ve passed to my son and plan to pass to my grandson. Around the time I turned 50, I suddenly could “hear” Bonzo’s drums as the predominant driver of their songs, where I’d previously focused on Page’s skills with guitar. Their music became new to me again. But, tbf, their music will always be new to me. Thanks again.
I was at that same concert! Amazing performance!
It was! The set list! The light show! The performances! How lucky we were to witness it!
June 8th, 3rd row center Orchestra, Madison Square Garden for me. My ears were ringing for days.
Oh yeah!
Oh, wow, that must have been AWESOME. There was a cool band that covered it in high school at a Battle of the Bands, and I thought THAT was something, at the time. I can't even imagine seeing LZ do it.
Bonzo is THE best rock drummer. I'm with you -- the older I get, the more I listen to and really appreciate the drums. Stewart Copeland of the Police...the drummer from Green Day is incredible.
Wow, Greg, a tour de force! A fascinating song, wonderful and heartfelt. Thank you
Thanks, William!
YES. Every word. My favorite song of all times. The one I hear in my head as I walk beaches, into courtrooms, into a church.
The interpretation has changed over the years as I’ve become more familiar with history, music, art, and lately tarot.
But the idea that a 22 year old understood that there is time to change the road you’re on, and that it never changes for so long as you draw a breath is inspiring.
Our country should adopt that line. 🙏🏻
Thanks, Karen. I thought of that after, how the words FEEL so olden, so wise, and yet were written by someone so young. Almost like he was channeling something greater than himself.
Can’t wait to read your new book!
Thank you!
Pop radio stations have always ruined great songs by overplaying the shit out of them.
The critics wanted so hard to believe the same about Stairway, but it's the rare song that overplaying just couldn't ruin, and they refuse to believe that it doesn't fit the accepted norm. Great post!
Good point, and I agree. Its length makes it hard for them to play too often, which I think helps...
What a performance. Thanks! That was FUN.
And your book. Thanks. More serious. But looking forward to reading the writing and your take of the Beasty Boyz 2 Men-dacious.
Thanks, Julie!
For some ridiculous reason, my high school had a jukebox in the cafeteria, and "Stairway to Heaven" played at almost every lunchtime during my freshman year. My appreciation of the song, although SICK of hearing it, never wavered. But then came "Radar Love," and THAT seemed to play for the next three years, to the point that when looking it up this morning, I'm STILL, 50 years later, sick of it. I never knew who sang it, and it turned out to be an obscure band called Golden Earring. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRlSHG5hRY4
Heart singing "Stairway to Heaven" is like life itself! Thanks for sharing that, Greg!
When I die and go to hell, right after they hand me the tepid cup of hazelnut coffee, they will show me to a room where "radar Love" is played on a loop.
Yes, gods, yes. I will see you there!
My God, an extraordinaryaojt of bullshit has beenl mooted since I first loved this song in 1976. My mother: "And w a word she can get what she came for"; it's anti-materialist, contrasting w the same mythic bucolic English countryside that, yes, informs Tolkein. Who cares if everyone else loves it, too? And as to "playing Satan backwards": they used to say that about *The Beatles*.
The Beatles Satan thing is funny to me, because none of those guys are remotely dark in that way. As least with Page, it makes some kind of sense. There is a spooky, haunting quality to certain LZ songs that goes there.
fascinating ruminations on Stairway to Heaven. I've never sat down and thought about analyzing it, and if played backwards it was Satanic, I'd bumped that kind of consideration back with the same stuff about the Beatles.
It brings up something I've often thought of about the music of the 60s and early 70s, my college and young adult years. My son, at 14 in 1993, was fascinated, even obsessed by it: from the Stones and Beatles through the Who and Led Zeppelin, and many more. I think about the songs popular when my own parents were in college and young adults (late 1920s to mid thirties), and what I was listening to when I was 14 in 1958. My obsessions certainly weren't what THEY played on their 78s--Guy Lombardo? Paul Whiteman? (By the time I was born they were heavily into Dixieland, which still to me is "real" jazz).
What does this say about the way music "travels" through the years? It wasn't, in 1993, the ubiquity of streaming. And it wasn't my playing it a lot--by that time I was more into Tom Waits. There was an energy in music of the 60s and early 70s (I don't count disco as music) that appeals in ways that the pop of my parent's generation didn't have (for that, they needed Dixieland and just felt nostalgic about Big Band.) That energy of my "era" is still with us--my grandkids listen to the Beatles, though not with the intensity my son did to the Stones, the Who, and Led Zeppelin.
I suppose this observation might vary depending on what actual genre one prefers--I don't do country except for a few folks I think of as crossover, and the dynamic might be different there. But having Led Zeppelin come up on my Substack feed as I approach 80 got me thinking about it.
"later in the week" for the ebook? Missed the Kindle Rewards Double Points day. But since today IS that double points, I picked up your book on Anna K.
Thanks, first of all, for Anna K. I'm very fond of that one, and I hope you enjoy it. I wanted all the formats to come out at the same time, but it wasn't possible. I'm told it will drop early this week.
The decade of the 2010s was pretty great for music. I made a big mix and listened to it the whole eight hour car ride back from seeing the eclipse, and it made me happy:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2L8KiPfAe64bbncq6FjS5P?si=e5856c2797b44fb5
With that said, music changed, almost on a time, in something like 1958. Buddy Holly did that. There was Sinatra and Big Band and all that kind of stuff, and then, boom, Holly shows up. I watched this YouTube clip of him on some old variety show. All the women are wearing ball gowns...it was old-fashioned as hell. And there is Buddy. He looks like he traveled back in time. Astonishing. He was what, 23 when he died, and he left behind an hour-long greatest hits album. Let Justin Bieber sing "Everyday," with the same exact music track, and it would be a hit right now. Nothing was the same after that. And the era of the rock star died with Cobain really. I have a line in my Fathermucker book that's something like, "Who's going to pick up the mantle from John and Paul and Mick and Keith? The fucking JONAS BROTHERS?" It's amazing, the staying power of LZ and that era of bands.
I think the first thing was Bill Haley and the Comets. I was 12 when I first saw them (in a movie). Buddy Holly has stuck with me ever since he hit the radio. By the time I hit college, of course, he was gone, Elvis was fat; freshman year we were into Dylan, Baez, Peter Paul and Mary. There was still Pat Boone. There were rumblings--and then, sophomore year when I was doing a year abroad in Italy--the Beatles hit. Italy first: I wrote to my brother asking if he liked them and he wrote back "who??" Then first quarter junior year I was studying for a French history course and from a neighboring dorm room came the first time I ever heard the opening of Satisfaction.
I have Stairway to Heaven on my favorites playlist and listen to it quite frequently, but your in-depth analysis makes me realize it’s there more because it was popular than my having given it much thought. My “adolescent ignorance” is embarrassingly obvious. I am fascinated by your likening Stairway to a Tarot reading—a subject I happen to know something about—because it helps me appreciate more easily why you love the recording. And I shouldn’t have been surprised at your expertise in that arena, since I met you (not quite literally) on Irish Granny Tarot!
I didn't realize you met me there, Earl! Or if I did, I'd forgotten. I'm going back on her lovely show soon!
The extended tarot reading piece I wrote, that this is cribbed from, is out in the ether. It does work, I think, as an interpretation...
And I didn't realize anything about this song other than "it's cool" until quite recently. In high school, we mostly liked it because it was an eight-minute slow dance...
In October 2021 Helen had reviewed my book, Off the Hook: Escaping Toxic Ideology, and right after that, as I recall, she reviewed one of yours. You mentioned Substack, and I’ve followed you ever since.
Interesting, I was just reading a book on Tarot by A. E. Waite right before opening this email! I never made the connections between the cards & Stairway but I certainly see it now. I’ve been fascinated w the mystical & dark Anglofiles Page & Plant for a long time. Well done.
(I date myself when I say you were just an infant when I listened to this song over & over with the cool older guys when I was in junior high)!
It's funny, isn't it, how this song can be, simultaneously, the track the cool kids were listening to, but also the track that music snobs loathe. It contains multitudes!
Ha, now you are getting into Dylan territory.
Yes, Zeppelin… agree and 🙌🏼 to “Psycotic Reactions…,” and Lester! Good one!
Thanks, Steven!