Led Zeppelin took to the stage for the final time in 2007, a time when they graced London’s O2 Arena for a night that the 20,000 strong crowd in attendance would never forget. This would not only mark the last time that the band would seemingly play together but it would also be the last time that Robert Plant would sing ‘Stairway to Heaven’ which, for some unknown reason, he continues to shy away from performing when he’s playing solo.
The band reunited for a one-off set as the headline act at The Ahmet Ertegün Tribute Concert was a benefit concert held in memory of music executive Ahmet Ertegün which took place on December 10th, 2007. Ertegün, who was the co-founder and president of Atlantic Records, was a character that helped define music as we know it today and was a pivotal player in the advent of the career of Led Zeppelin who also served as the chairman of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. 2009’s Guinness World Records stated that at the time the concert holds the world record for the ‘Highest Demand for Tickets for One Music Concert’ as 20 million requests for the reunion show were rendered online.
The track, released in late 1971, was created by Plant and his bandmate Jimmy Page for Led Zeppelin’s untitled fourth studio album and is considered by many as one of the greatest rock songs of all time but, since then, Plant has turned his back on the song but when sharing the stage with his old bandmates it would be criminal not to play the classic rock anthem.
It’s hard not to fall head over heels in love with ‘Stairway’, after all, its eight minutes of pure songwriting brilliance. The song manages to encapsulate into one song what made Led Zep such a dynamic, loveable group who managed to take music to a whole new dimension. The lyrics are deliberately abstract which make the pairing alongside Plant’s heartfelt vocals a true thing of beauty.
Plant had millions fall weak at the knees for his gravel toned screech of the band’s early efforts. However, on ‘Stairway’, he returns to a vulnerable and tender sound that showed the world he was capable of far more than he offered in Led Zeppelin—it truly his one of his finest ever performances that still sounded phenomenal live in London for this concert in 2007, even if John Bonham wasn’t on stage to marvel at his singing.
Last year, however, Plant spoke about how ‘Stairway To Heaven’ is a track that he can no longer relate to but did admit he can admire it, even if only from afar. While sitting down with UCR as part of their ‘Nights’ radio show, Plant said: “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.”
He added: “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.’”
The legendary rockers performed a 16 song set that December evening in London which saw them take to the stage for two encores after the crowd pined and pined for more, with Led Zep more than happy to cave to their demands.
“We were asked to play a forty-minute set,” Jimmy Page remarked during rehearsals. “And we soon realised we couldn’t. If we go out and play ‘No Quarter’, ‘Moby Dick’ and ‘Dazed and Confused’ with all the solos, you’re already talking over an hour. We’ve gone from seventy-five minutes to ninety, to the best part of two hours,” the guitar God added.
‘Stairway To Heaven’ was a spectacle of the finest calibre and even though Robert Plant may not be the world’s biggest fan of the track — you wouldn’t have guessed that from the following footage which captures Zeppelin lost in the moment, soaking up every second.
When you’re a rock star you’re not so picky about where your inspiration comes from. In fact, any artist worth their weight in gold will take a spark of influence from whatever direction it is coming from. For Robert Plant and the rest of Led Zeppelin, a huge chunk of their lyrical stylings was inspired by one classic set of books, J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy epic, The Lord of the Rings.
The band had already achieved a smash and grab wave of adulation when they arrived on the rock scene. Led Zeppelin were so far away from the pop-adjacent stylings of bands like The Rolling Stones and The Beatles that they not only sent shockwaves through the industry with their self-titled LP but they, arguably, created a whole new genre — heavy metal. But, with every great debut album comes the need for a classic follow-up. The record would need to be as original and devastating as the first and the band’s lyricist, Robert Plant, knew it.
One such song that saw the band truly excel was ‘Ramble On’. Taken from the iconic sophomore record Led Zeppelin II, the album the quartet released in 1969, the vision for ‘Ramble On’ was one of fantasy from Plant. Like many other artists his age, the singer had become inspired by the work of fantasy fiction writer J.R.R. Tolkein and the song makes continuous references to the writer’s work and the impact it had on Plant.
The singer used moments throughout the lyrics to express his connection; lines like “the darkest depths of Mordor” and “Gollum and the evil one” are both doffs of the caps to the writer. Many artists have made references to great literature in their time; whether it is The Beatles and C.S. Lewis’ influence on ‘I Am The Walrus’ or The Cure’s nod to Albert Camus, the real trick is picking work that you can always stand next to.
When reflecting on the song ‘Ramble On’ in later years, it’s clear that the Zeppelin man had become a touch embarrassed by his inspiration. It’s not the first time, either. The singer has famously turned his back on the band’s most famous song of all time, ‘Stairway To Heaven’, equally dissatisfied by the tune given the passing of time.
One of Zeppelin’s more obviously joyous songs, the upbeat tone of the cut is perfectly complimented by guitarist Jimmy Page’s silky solo which saunters in around the one minute 47-second mark. It swirls and spirals like a magician’s spell and there is something entirely hypnotic about it, something we’re sure Tolkein would have been more than a big fan of.
We’ve all got a little embarrassed about the stuff that made us tick in our twenties, and while we’re sure Plant thinks he’s written better lyrics, there is something innocent, poetic and, ultimately, authentic about these fantasy nuances that makes ‘Ramble On’ a bonafide classic, no matter where the inspiration came from.
When you think of Island Records, there might be a number of names that spring to mind from their earliest years as a label, with Nick Drake and Cat Stevens being two iconic folk acts signed to their roster in the 1960s and ‘70s. As they developed over the years, bigger names came to be associated with the label, with once U2 and PJ Harvey, and now we have artists such as Chappell Roan and The Last Dinner Party gracing their books.
However, the label’s initial flagship artists came from Jamaica, the island nation where the label was born in 1959. Among the earliest acts discovered and released on the label were Toots and the Maytals and Jimmy Cliff, but the biggest Jamaican name to be associated with the label was Bob Marley. Signed in 1973 for the release of Catch a Fire, he and his band, The Wailers, would go on to become the most notable reggae act in the world.
While Marley’s talent as a songwriter would have carried him a long way, the primary person responsible for his significant rise was the label’s founder, Chris Blackwell. Born in Westminster to a mother who was a Jamaican heiress, Blackwell found himself living in Jamaica from a young age. However, the world he was brought up in was one of affluence, and reggae was a style of music born from earlier genres such as ska and rocksteady that were born out of working-class struggles—so how did he end up becoming such a prominent figure in the genre?
In 1959, when Blackwell was 21, he embarked on a boat trip that went awry and was shipwrecked in a coral reef off the island’s coast. When some local Rastafarians came to his rescue, they tended to him, and he became immersed in their culture, specifically the music they were playing him. While it wouldn’t have been known as reggae until much later, the style and its vibrance resonated with Blackwell so much that he requested his wealthy parents to lend him $10,000 so he could set up his own record label, dedicating it to the discovery of the island’s rich musical innovation.
Only three years later, Blackwell relocated to London to further establish the label, and while the genres that they were releasing became broader, there was still a focus on championing acts from the Caribbean. The label would score a huge hit with Millie Small’s ‘My Boy Lollipop’ in 1964, but the greatest success they had was when Marley joined the label in 1973.
Jimmy Cliff had only recently departed the label, and Blackwell was after another reggae act with the potential to score mainstream success. When he finally landed upon the music of Bob Marley and The Wailers, who had recently been unfortunate to lose out on another offer, they would strike up a deal to write Catch a Fire in an incredibly short window with an advance of just £4,000. The album was a moderate success, but the group would eventually go on to release several hit singles and albums, racking up a total of 75million album sales worldwide to this date.
While Marley, unfortunately, passed away in 1981, his legacy remains strong, and if it hadn’t been for the intervention of Blackwell and his label, the explosion of reggae as a global phenomenon may never have happened, or the scene would have looked a lot different. If it hadn’t been for the shipwreck, we might have never even had Island Records either.
It seems unlikely that a cover song, taken from a Bridget Jones soundtrack of all places, would endure as one of the greatest sonic legacies of the late, great Amy Winehouse.
But indeed, the mark of the woman—an inner-city London girl with a voice that defied generations—was that she could turn her hand to anything, from classic soul to indie sleaze, and make it sound as if that song was always meant to be sung in her particular way, with her specific quirks, and forever in her moment.
There is arguably no better example to prove this than Winehouse’s 2004 take on the 1960 classic ‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow’, originally performed by The Shirelles but equally popularised in 1971 by its original writer, Carole King. Appearing on the soundtrack for the film Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, it’s easy to perhaps take Winehouse’s cover of the tune superficially by comparison, but really, she should be considered one of the greats.
From a purely sonic perspective, first of all, the emphatic swing of Winehouse’s rendition makes it feel as if a true star has arrived. It’s like the first glimpse of Marilyn Monroe or Audrey Hepburn in a classic movie – so striking and timelessly beautiful that it completely and utterly sweeps you off your feet. Then it’s the job of her rousing vocal, so tender yet soaring, to captivate you into its orbit. It doesn’t let you back down to Earth gently.
Usually, in the scores of Winehouse’s back catalogue, between her original songs and other covers, there’s a defining resoluteness, as well as romance, of course, and the occasional hint of yearning. But rarely is all of this combined, and then coupled with a disarming degree of desperation, in the way that is seen on ‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?’, with the sheer longing and lust of the vocal only heightened by the singer’s wizened soul.
In this sense, the song hits the mark of being Winehouse’s greatest cover not only for the total mastery of the vocal performance outlined, but because the history of the tune is one that she became a highly significant bona fide part of, rather than just an imitation. ‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?’ is a song that demands to be commanded by women, whether it be King or Linda Ronstadt or, indeed, Winehouse – because these are their stories and their power, and the rest of us should just revel in it.
You could spend days writing entire theses on which songs out of Winehouse’s discography are indisputably the greatest, or reveal the most about the state of her soul, or whatever it may be. But sometimes the biggest gems are found when you take a step back to admire the occasions when an artist has admired their own heroes, just as she did on ‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?’.
