It was tricky because it had sections, but they didn’t repeat exactly the same each time.” Also, Stairway did things songs weren’t meant to do.
![the way to heaven buckethead tabs the way to heaven buckethead tabs](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f6/4c/e6/f64ce626fb422da9e112652cbcae9bd6.gif)
“It’s not just one of those things where it goes verse-chorus-verse. “I think it was more: ‘This is tricky,’” Page says. The band’s first reaction, though, was not to bow down in awe before their leader’s monumental offering. Page had worked out the sections of the song at his home in Pangbourne, near Reading, before bringing it to Headley Grange in Hampshire, where Zeppelin were recording their fourth album in late 1970 and early 1971. “There’s almost a hysterical trill at the end of the solo that leads into the finale … ‘And as we wind on down the road …’” He’s often used sexual imagery to describe the song and it’s no different today: “It’s like an orgasm at the end. And then it’s two more verses before you get to the solo, with this sort of fanfare approach to it. I knew that would be successful, because whenever he came in he made so much difference. Keeping John Bonham to come in for effect was a trick I’d used before, on things like Ramble On. “It would keep unfolding and more layers would be introduced into the equation. You’ve got the fragile guitar that is going to open the whole thing, you’ve got the vocal over that fragile guitar, and then it moves into the more sensual wave with the twin 12-strings, and the electric piano as well. “It begins with the concept of trying to have something would unravel in layers as the song progressed. Today, he talks about the song with unbridled enthusiasm, losing himself in his words. “I don’t want to tell you about it in case it doesn’t come off,” he told NME in April 1970, “it’s an idea for a really long track on the next album … we want to try something new with the organ and acoustic guitar building up and building to the electric thing.” Page had decided he wanted an epic song for the fourth album more than 18 months before its eventual release in November 1971. In other words, if you were looking for the ur-song of classic rock, for something combining incredible popularity, a huge selection of myths, and a faint sense of preposterousness, then your search can begin and end with Stairway to Heaven. It’s also become mocked for being a monument of pretension, described by rock critic Lester Bangs as “a thicket of misbegotten mush”. It’s been voted on to scores of lists of the greatest songs of all time it was claimed on its 20th anniversary in 1991 that it had been played 2,874,000 times on the radio, amounting to 44 years’ worth of airtime it’s been suggested that if you play it backwards you’ll hear Satanic messages, including “Here’s to my sweet Satan,” though the dark lord clearly didn’t anticipate downloads ruining his ploy to brainwash credulous youth.
THE WAY TO HEAVEN BUCKETHEAD TABS HOW TO
In the intervening 43 years, Hughes’s reaction has been shared by generation after generation of teenagers, kids who learn how to play Jimmy Page’s acoustic guitar intro, who pore over Robert Plant’s lyrics. “He plays me the entire record and it comes to Stairway to Heaven, and of course I’m only 19 years old, and I’m thinking: ‘Bloody hell, this is earth-shattering.’” It hasn’t been released yet – it’s an acetate of the fourth Led Zeppelin album, it hasn’t been mastered yet.’ “It’s about three or four in the morning,” Hughes recalls by phone from the US west coast, “and he says: ‘I want to play you something. After the show, instead of saying his goodbyes, he suggested to Hughes – whom he’d known for several years on the Birmingham club band scene – that they go back to Bonham’s house and continue the party there. He climbed up, and without ceremony starting playing along with the group.
![the way to heaven buckethead tabs the way to heaven buckethead tabs](https://townsquare.media/site/366/files/2017/12/ace_02.jpg)
G lenn Hughes’s band Trapeze were playing at Mother’s in Birmingham one night in autumn 1971 when John Bonham came barrelling through the doors, pushing through the crowd, until he reached the stage.