“It went off really great,” Wilson explained in a recent episode of the Eddie Trunk Podcast. “Afterward, the Zeppelin guys each came back individually… [John Paul] Jones was like, 'Wow, you did a great job.' And Robert Plant goes, 'Whoah, I learned to just hate that song because everybody murders it – but you did it justice. Way to go!’ And Jimmy Page goes… ‘You played that great; just lovely.’”
Wilson also recalled that she hadn’t performed well during the only rehearsal that took place before the performance. “It was cold as heck in Washington D.C.,” she reported. “My hands were freezing when we finally got into the practice room with all the choirs and all the players… So it's like, ‘Okay, go, let's just play “Stairway to Heaven.” You start.’ … I’m trying to play this beginning, and I’m just barely getting it together, because it was just a cold, draughty old place.
The guys in the house band were like, ‘Oh, well, we could just shadow you. You just kind of play along, kind of behind…’ It’s like, ‘No, no, seriously, I got this – don't worry about me. … I’ve got this. I’ve been playing this all my life’.” The next day, before the show, she made certain her hands were warm enough. “I walked out there, took a really, really deep breath, just looked them in the eye, had a very big exhale and started,” she said.
Robert Plant says he can no longer relate to the lyrical content of Led Zeppelin’s classic track Stairway To Heaven.
The vocalist was speaking with UCR and their Nights radio show when the topic of the 1971 track came up.
Plant says: “The construction of the song, the actual musical construction, is very good. It’s one of those moments that really can stand without a vocal and, in fact, it will stand again without a vocal, I’m sure, because it’s a fine piece of music.
“Lyrically, now, I can’t relate to it, because it was so long ago. I would have no intention ever to write along those abstract lines any more.
Plant simply hates ‘Stairway to Heaven’. It has become the forbidden riff that is banned from guitar shops, but Plant was ahead of the curve in bashing the anthem that many consider to be the band’s opus. (Faroutmagazine)
In 1988, Plant told Q that he understood the criticisms: “If you absolutely hated ‘Stairway to Heaven,’ no one can blame you for that because it was so pompous.” While upon release, he spoke of the lyrics in an abstract sense stating, “Depending on what day it is, I still interpret the song a different way – and I wrote the lyrics,” in time he would comment, “Lyrically, now, I can’t relate to it, because it was so long ago. I would have no intention ever to write along those abstract lines anymore.”
“I look at it and I tip my hat to it and I think there are parts of it that are incredible. The way Jimmy Page took the music through, and the way that the drums almost climaxed and then continued – it’s a very beautiful piece. But lyrically, now, and even vocally, I go, ‘I’m not sure about that.’”
