Robert Plant Squashes His 16-Year Beef With ‘Stairway to Heaven’

Robert Plant briefly put aside his differences with one of his greatest adversaries — “Stairway to Heaven” — and performed the Led Zeppelin opus for the first time in 16 years at a benefit concert organized by Duran Duran’s Andy Taylor.

The last time Plant played “Stairway to Heaven” on stage was Dec. 10, 2007, when the surviving members of Led Zeppelin — Plant, Jimmy Page, and John Paul Jones — reunited for a one-night-only set at an Ahmet Ertegun tribute concert in London (the band was joined by John Bonham’s son, Jason, on drums). Plant has played a lot of shows since then and has regularly peppered his setlist with Zeppelin classics like “Going to California,” “Black Dog,” and “Whole Lotta Love.” But he’s steered completely clear of “Stairway” and regularly shared his somewhat prickly feelings about the song in interviews. 

It’s impossible to say whether absence made Plant’s heart grow fonder for the song, whether spending several years in copyright litigation over it got it stuck in his head again, or if he just felt compelled to do it for a special occasion benefiting the Cancer Awareness Trust. Either way, Plant gamely belted the track, with Taylor joining in on guitar. 

Plant may not have tried to hit all the big, booming high-notes as he does on the original recording, but he still lent the song the gravitas it deserved. And, after 16 years, the man still remembered every single word. (Then again, who amongst us doesn’t?)

While Plant has never outright dismissed “Stairway to Heaven,” he has been honest about his feelings towards the song, especially his lyrics. In an interview with Rolling Stone last year, he said, “When I hear it in isolation, I feel overwhelmed for every single reason you could imagine. There was a mood and an air of trying to make it through. The world is a different place. Everybody was reeling from Vietnam and the usual extra helping of corruption with politics. There were people who were really eloquent who brought it home far less pictorially and did a much better job of reaching that point. But I am what I am, and as my grandfather said, ‘I can’t be more ‘am’-erer.’”

From Rolling Stone US.