[troutman]

I always thought the lyrics were pretty much nonsensical. Just random English words. I think I heard Plant say he wrote the lyrics in about 10 minutes one day.

Facts about the famous song:

http://www.superseventies.com/stairway.html

We might better understand the associative powers of the lyrics by breaking them up into categories. We are presented with a number of mysterious figures: a lady, the piper, the May queen. Images of nature abound: a brook, a songbird, rings of smoke through the trees, a hedgerow, wind. We find a set of concepts (that pretty much sum up the central concerns of all philosophy): signs, words, meanings, thoughts, feelings, spirit, reason, wonder, soul, the idea that "all are one and one is all." We find a set of vaguely but powerfully evocative symbols: gold, the West, the tune, white light, shadows, paths, a road, and the stairway to heaven itself. At the very end, we find some paradoxical self-referentiality: "To be a rock and not to roll."

The words provide a very open text; like those of Don McLean's "American Pie" (also released in 1971), they invite endless interpretation. Yet they are resonant, requiring no rigorous study in order to become meaningful. Like the music, they engage with the fantasies and anxieties of our time; they offer contact with social and metaphysical depth in a world of commodities and mass communication. "Stairway to Heaven," no less than canonized artistic postmodernism, addresses "decentered subjects" who are striving to find credible experiences of depth and community. It strains at mystery and promises utopia: "A new day will dawn," and "If you listen very hard/The tune will come to you at last."


Jimmy Gutterman, coauthor of "The Worst Rock'n'Roll Records of All-Time":

The lyrics to "Stairway to Heaven" are horrible, nothing more than nonsense
words enlivened by cliche. If I ever wrote "There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold," my editor would cancel my contract.