Stairway to wisdom

[Miguel Duarte]

I need someone to give me some information about the theme Stairway to Heaven.

Is there a real person associated with the female that inspired the music or is she just a stereotype?

[JAG]

Is not a real person, but rather a mythogolical entity/metaphor. Robert Plant, as you know, was heavily into ancient Greek and Roman mythology as a youngster alongside pet subjects like accounting. You will familiar with Plant-written song like "Achilles Last Stand," "The Flight of Icarus" and "Tales of Brave Ulysees."

The female "character" in Stairway to Heaven comes from the Elpis, the Greek Goddess of Hope. Elpis was the spirit (daimona) of hope. She along with the other daimones were trapped in a jar by Zeus and entrusted to the care of the first woman Pandora. When she opened the vessel all of the spirits escaped except for Elpis (Hope) who alone remained to comfort mankind.

Among the working titles for STH was "The May Queen," "The Butter Queen Heaven" and "Stairway to Elphis." Ultimately, Atlantic records decided, out of fear from confusion and potential legal-action by Elvis Costello, that song be released as "Stairway to Heaven."

And now you know the rest of story.

[~tangerine~]

Some other interpretations (found from various websites) and not my words. I felt like contributing to this thread, lol. I have never taken the lyrics seriously, myself, but seems so many do. Hey Place, nice to see you back!

1. The members of Led Zeppelin were great fans of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series - as many as 5 of their songs have direct references to Tolkien's literary masterpiece - the most evident song being "Ramble On." It's possible that Stairway to Heaven also makes many references to Tolkien's story. The phrase, "In my thoughts I have seen rings of smoke through the trees" could be a reference to the smoke rings blown by the wizard Gandalf. Some say the song itself was inspired by the novel - and that the lady spoken of in the tale is Lady Galadriel, the Queen of Elves who lives in the golden forest of Lothlorien. In the book, all that glittered around her, was in fact, gold, as the leaves of the trees in the forest of Lothlorien were golden.

2. I just realized this but Tolken wrote a poem saYing "All that is gold does not gliter" and in this song they say "there's a lady who shure all that gliters is gold." There is a resembleance

3. I've been putting this off for 30 years. Time to bite the bullet. You understand that rock lyrics, like the quantum mechanical universe, are subject to a sort of Heisenberg uncertainty principle, meaning we can't really know the truth but merely glimpse it, as through a glass darkly, etc. (And no, I'm not reprinting the words to "Stairway to Heaven"--anybody who can't remember them after more than three decades of steady airplay probably can't read anyway.) With that caveat out of the way, some theories about the song:

(1) It doesn't mean anything. The song was written in 1971, which culturally was pretty much still the '60s, and you know what that means. According to band lore, Robert Plant composed most of the lyrics in a single day during sessions at Headley Grange, a former poorhouse in Hampshire, England, then being used by rock groups as a rehearsal space and studio. To give you a feel for Plant's range as a writer, here's an excerpt from "Black Dog," which appeared on the same side of Led Zeppelin's untitled fourth album as "Stairway": "Hey, hey, baby, when you walk that way, watch your honey drip, can't keep away. / Ah yeah, ah yeah, ah, ah, ah. Ah yeah, ah yeah, ah, ah, ah."

In sum, we've got the well-known psychosociochemical influences of the era, we've got an extremely compressed compositional time frame, and we've got a poetical sensibility that, to be objective about it (and believe me, I like "Stairway to Heaven"), probably rates between 2 and 3 millishakespeares. So I think it's safe to say that what we're hearing aren't so much lyrics as the unmediated pulsations of the reptile brain.

(2) It means something really deep. Browsing on the Web, I find the following commentary, allegedly extracted from a 1991 Esquire article and attributed to Robert Walser, professor of musicology at UCLA and author of the 1993 book Running With the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music: "Musically, 'Stairway' fuses powerful 'authenticities'--which are really ideologies. . . . 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 . . . 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."

Translation: I have no frickin' clue.

(3) It means whatever you want it to mean. Continuing our peregrinations on the Internet (OK, so I'm not exactly busting my hump this week, but honestly, can you think of a better place to research this?), we find the following theories:

The lyrics recall the bumbling efforts of one Erma Rees-Gwynn, a divorcee and aspiring contractor, to build a three-story deck--with a stairway leading up from the garden--at the rear of a castle that guitarist Jimmy Page owned in Wales. Presumably meant satirically, but one never knows.

When played in reverse the lyrics are a paean to Satan. Que stupido, you say. Compared to what?

It's about drugs. Just like every other rock song.

Plant had this bimbo girlfriend, see, and she took his Visa card and went to the mall, and got the idea of buying the escalators. Another satire. Unfortunately, that's about as funny as it gets.

"A bustle in your hedgerow" refers to menstruation, and when taken in conjunction with the reference to "the May Queen" signifies a woman's coming of age. Plant has denied this, but he's obviously unfamiliar with semiotics. Have a seat, Bob. We know what you wrote. Now let us explain what you meant.

--CECIL ADAMS

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/030425.html

[~tangerine~]

Thats ok if you or anyone else thinks or feels they haven t a clue , Robert Plant Knows the truth as well as Cristina Suzan Phelps it has to do with actual experience manifested on the physical plane to which they both were exclusively present

I didn't say i don't have a clue. Everything i posted was copied from other interpretations. I don't need a clue. I take the lyrics as they sound and don't need to find a deep dark secret meaning in them. Not everything is "mysterious". But some things do remain that way.

[~tangerine~]

No , the song was written in 1970 most serious Led Zeppelin fans know this and that they preformed it publicly for the first time on March 5,1971 ulster Hall ps. the straight dope is basicly all statire , Cristina is a real person as is Robert

Well i didn't write any of that. I'm guessing the person who interpreted that was going by the year the album was released and wasn't thinking about when recording took place, or yes, they would have realized it was written in 1970. Anyway, i liked the thoughts others presented, and since i don't need to come up with the "true meaning" to enjoy the song, i haven't given it much thought over the years. Feel free to disregard what i posted. It wasn't researched for more than a few minutes.

You definitely have a passion for what you discuss, i'm not trying to take away from that in any way. I know you are well informed.

[Suz]

*

[Bustle In My Hedgerow]

"A bustle in your hedgerow" refers to menstruation, and when taken in conjunction with the reference to "the May Queen" signifies a woman's coming of age. Plant has denied this, but he's obviously unfamiliar with semiotics. Have a seat, Bob. We know what you wrote. Now let us explain what you meant.

--CECIL ADAMS

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/030425.html

Well, shit, I wonder how many people have heard of this interpretation and look at my username suspiciously....

[beatbo]

Is not a real person, but rather a mythogolical entity/metaphor. Robert Plant, as you know, was heavily into ancient Greek and Roman mythology as a youngster alongside pet subjects like accounting. You will familiar with Plant-written song like "Achilles Last Stand," "The Flight of Icarus" and "Tales of Brave Ulysees."

The female "character" in Stairway to Heaven comes from the Elpis, the Greek Goddess of Hope. Elpis was the spirit (daimona) of hope. She along with the other daimones were trapped in a jar by Zeus and entrusted to the care of the first woman Pandora. When she opened the vessel all of the spirits escaped except for Elpis (Hope) who alone remained to comfort mankind.

Among the working titles for STH was "The May Queen," "The Butter Queen Heaven" and "Stairway to Elphis." Ultimately, Atlantic records decided, out of fear from confusion and potential legal-action by Elvis Costello, that song be released as "Stairway to Heaven."

And now you know the rest of story.

'and she's buying a stairway to elphis...."

lmfao....