1971 – Ten days before the Ides of March, Led Zeppelin played Stairway to Heaven for the first time ever in front of a live concert audience in Belfast’s Ulster Hall. This March 5th performance was (reportedly) met with polite but casual indifference as the song was still unreleased and unfamiliar to audiences. One month later, Stairway would get its live world radio broadcast debut compliments of the BBC when Led Zeppelin’s live April 1st performance at the Paris Cinema was captured for broadcast and preserved for posterity. Eventually released as part of The BBS Sessions, or The Complete BBC Sessions, this was Stairway as performed by the band without the burden of it having to live up to the reputation of being the greatest song in the rock canon.
It wouldn’t be until November of that same year that the studio recording of Stairway to Heaven would be revealed to the world with the release of Zeppelin’s untitled 4th studio album (more commonly known as Led Zeppelin IV), and similarly it would take time for the band to work out and optimize the live arrangement that would become the staple of almost every live concert they’d play thereafter.[1]see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stairway_to_Heaven Yet despite this, the arrangement, as performed in Paris, is surprisingly complete and familiar.
The song starts with Jimmy Page playing the familiar opening figure on an electric 6 string – most likely his red Gibson Doubleneck – joined almost immediately by John Paul Jones playing the song’s infamous recorder parts on the mellotron. As Robert Plant starts to lay down the vocal things get a little weird. Plant is singing low and soft here, with a tonality that is coming from the back of the throat. It’s plaintive – and reminiscent of the vocal he delivers on No Quarter – amazing here because the effect on NO Quarter was achieved by slowing down the tape to drop the vocal a semitone. Plan’s vocal is almost otherworldly here. As with all Stairway performances, the whole song lifts off when Jones switches to the electric piano and Jimmy transitions to the 12 string giving the rhythm guitar that extra shimmer that only the 12 string can do. I get excited every time I hear that moment.
Bass is being played by Jones using foot pedals, most likely a 60’s Fender model.[2]http://www.geocities.ws/jpjkeys/basspedals.html You can hear their distinctive attack & release in the relatively basic bass arrangement. Jones opts instead to augment the piano parts with slightly more syncopation and flourishes to make up for what is lost by not having a bass guitar take us through the last half of the song.
A few interesting elements exist inside the mix of the Paris recording that are worth noting – particularly with the drums. You can hear where the drum faders get pushed up just before John Bonham’s entrance (as evidenced by the sympathetic rattle of the snare wires suddenly being present around the 4 minute mark), and the curious neglect of the recording engineer to bring the bass drum fader up into the mix until around the 5 minute mark. This suggests the song was tracked and mixed live with the drums getting summed through the mixer before being committed to tape.
You can also hear the obvious change in tempo at the fanfare with Bonham establishing the shift, and keeping time with the the high hats. This hearkens back to one of the earliest articles on the site where we show how to navigate this tricky section of the song.
For anyone who has not heard the BBC sessions I’d highly recommend getting to know the collection. The live performances are amazing as are the special in-studio recordings commissioned by the BBC. And for lovers of Stairway – remember that this was the first performance of Stairway heard by a mass (radio) audience… Imagine hearing Stairway for the first time again.