Wayne’s World kind of ruined “Stair­way to Heav­en” for me. Yes, it’s been 27 years, but I still can’t help but think of Wayne turn­ing to the cam­era with his ston­er grin, say­ing “Denied!” when the gui­tar store clerk points out a “No Stair­way to Heav­en” sign. It was not a song I took par­tic­u­lar­ly seri­ous­ly, but I respect­ed the fact that it took itself so seri­ous­ly… and thread­ed my way out of the room if some­one picked up a gui­tar, earnest­ly cocked an ear, and played those gen­tle open­ing notes.

Now I gig­gle even when I hear the mag­is­te­r­i­al orig­i­nal intro. This is not the fault of Zep­pelin but of the many who approach the Zep­pelin tem­ple of rock grandios­i­ty unpre­pared, attempt­ing riffs that only Jim­my Page could pull off with author­i­ty. At least the joke gave us a way to talk about the phe­nom­e­non: in less­er hands than Led Zeppelin’s “Stair­way” can sound… well, a bit ridicu­lous (with apolo­gies to Dol­ly Par­ton.) Although accused (and acquit­ted) of rip­ping off the open­ing notes to Spirit’s instru­men­tal “Tau­rus,” the song is all Zep­pelin in every pos­si­ble way.

“Stair­way” is a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­pler pack of the band’s sig­na­ture moves: mix­ing folk rock and heavy met­al with a Delta blues heart; explod­ing in thun­der­heads of John Bon­ham drum fills and a world-famous Page solo; Plant scream­ing cryp­tic lyrics that vague­ly ref­er­ence Tarot, Tolkien, Eng­lish folk tra­di­tions and “a bus­tle in your hedgerow”; John Paul Jones’ wild­ly under­rat­ed mul­ti-instru­men­tal genius; bizarre charges of Satan­ic mes­sages encod­ed back­wards in the record…. (bring­ing to mind anoth­er Wayne’s World actor’s char­ac­ter.)

“Stair­way… crys­tal­lized the essence of the band,” said Page lat­er. “It had every­thing there and showed us at our best. It was a mile­stone.” It set a very high bar for big, emo­tion­al rock songs. “All epic anthems must mea­sure them­selves against ‘Stair­way to Heav­en,’” writes Rolling Stone. It is “epic in every sense of the word,” says the Poly­phon­ic video at the top, includ­ing the lit­er­ary sense. It can “make you feel like you’re part of a dif­fer­ent time, part of a dif­fer­ent world. It can make you feel like you’re part of a sto­ry.”

That sto­ry? “One of the great­est nar­ra­tive struc­tures in human his­to­ry,” the Hero’s Jour­ney, as so famous­ly elab­o­rat­ed by Joseph Camp­bell in The Hero With a Thou­sand Faces—an arche­typ­al mytho­log­i­cal arc that has “per­me­at­ed sto­ries for as long as humans have told them.” Not only do Robert Plant’s mys­ti­cal lyrics reflect this ancient nar­ra­tive, but the song’s com­po­si­tion also enacts it, build­ing stage by stage, from ques­tion­ing to quest­ing to bat­tling to return­ing with the wis­dom of how “to be a rock and not to roll.”

The song’s almost clas­si­cal struc­ture is, of course, no acci­dent, but it is also no indi­vid­ual achieve­ment. Hear the sto­ry of its com­po­si­tion, and why it has been so influ­en­tial, despite the jokes at the expense of those it influ­enced, in the Poly­phon­ic video at the top and straight from Jim­my Page him­self in the inter­view above.

Out of all of Zeppelin’s many epic jour­neys, “Stair­way” best rep­re­sents “the rea­son,” as cul­tur­al crit­ic Steven Hyden writes, “why that band endures… the mythol­o­gy, that Joseph Camp­bell idea of an epic jour­ney into the wild that Zeppelin’s music rep­re­sents, the sense that when you lis­ten to this band, you feel like you’re plug­ging into some­thing big­ger and more pro­found than a band.” Or that the band is open­ing a door­way to some­thing big­ger and more pro­found than them­selves.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

48 Hours of Joseph Camp­bell Lec­tures Free Online: The Pow­er of Myth & Sto­ry­telling

Decon­struct­ing Led Zeppelin’s Clas­sic Song ‘Ram­ble On’ Track by Track: Gui­tars, Bass, Drums & Vocals

Jim­my Page Describes the Cre­ation of Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lot­ta Love”

What Makes John Bon­ham Such a Good Drum­mer? A New Video Essay Breaks Down His Inim­itable Style

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Rock and roll needs its out­siders, its prodi­gious weirdos, trick­sters and pas­tiche artists to rein­vig­o­rate mori­bund gen­res and put things togeth­er no one thought would go. No two peo­ple fit the descrip­tion bet­ter than Frank Zap­pa and Cap­tain Beef­heart (Don Van Vli­et), some­time col­lab­o­ra­tors, fren­e­mies, and par­al­lel evil genius­es with crack teams of musi­cal hench­men at the ready—Zappa the genre-hop­ping vir­tu­oso and music busi­ness supervil­lain; Beef­heart the mad blues­man with a Beat poet’s heart and Mer­ry Prankster’s sense of humor….

Their intense on-again-off-again musi­cal rela­tion­ship threat­ened to come apart for good dur­ing the record­ing of Beefheart’s Zap­pa-pro­duced weirdo mas­ter­piece Trout Mask Repli­ca. These trou­bled stages of their asso­ci­a­tion are what we often talk about when we talk about Zappa/Beefheart, when they dis­cov­ered, writes Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock, “that their cre­ative process­es and work habits—Zappa was dis­ci­plined and exact­ing, while Beef­heart pre­ferred to be spon­ta­neous and freeform—couldn’t have been more at odds.”

A lit­tle over a decade ear­li­er, before either of them had musi­cal careers neces­si­tat­ing work habits, the two began record­ing togeth­er in “either late 1958 or ear­ly 1959,” notes Dan­ger­ous Minds. They had known each oth­er since high school in Lan­cast­er, Cal­i­for­nia, where their shared sen­si­bil­i­ties brought them togeth­er: “The two found they had a sim­i­lar taste in music, and quick­ly bond­ed over a shared love of blues, doo-wop, and R&B records.”

Pre­sag­ing all of the ways they would go on to warp, can­ni­bal­ize, and mash up these gen­res, “Lost in a Whirlpool,” with music by Zap­pa and lyrics by Van Vli­et, was one of sev­er­al songs they had begun writ­ing while still teenagers. Zap­pa tells the sto­ry of the record­ing in a 1989 inter­view:

“Lost in a Whirlpool” was taped on one of those tape recorders that you have in a school in the audio/visual depart­ment. We went into this room, this emp­ty room at the junior col­lege in Lan­cast­er, after school, and got this tape record­ed, and just turned it on. The gui­tars are me and my broth­er (Bob­by Zap­pa) and the vocal is Don Vli­et.

The sto­ry of “Lost in a Whirlpool” goes back even far­ther. When I was in high school in San Diego in ‘55, there was a guy who grew up to be a sports writer named Lar­ry Lit­tle­field. He, and anoth­er guy named Jeff Har­ris, and I used to hang out, and we used to make up sto­ries, lit­tle skits and stuff, you know, dumb lit­tle teenage things. One of the plots that we cooked up was about a per­son who was skindiving—San Diego’s a surfer kind of an area—skindiving in the San Diego sew­er sys­tem [laugh­ter], and talk­ing about encoun­ter­ing brown, blind fish. [laugh­ter] It was kind of like the Cousteau expe­di­tion of its era. [laugh­ter] So, when I moved to Lan­cast­er from San Diego, I had dis­cussed this sce­nario with Vli­et, and that’s where the lyrics come from. It’s like a musi­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of this oth­er skin­div­ing sce­nario.

Scat­o­log­i­cal skin­div­ing seems like such a per­fect con­cep­tu­al sum­ma­ry of the shared Zappa/Beefheart ethos it’s a won­der they didn’t use the title them­selves. Despite their grow­ing cre­ative dif­fer­ences and incom­pat­i­ble tem­pera­ments, they col­lab­o­rat­ed into the mid-70s.

In 1975, twen­ty years after cook­ing up the sto­ry of skin­div­ing in the San Diego sew­ers, they “regaled their fans with the amus­ing­ly titled (most­ly) live album, Bon­go Fury,” Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock writes, “a his­toric cease­fire in their oth­er­wise tur­bu­lent rela­tion­ship that would sad­ly prove all too fleet­ing.” The record is the result of an “inten­sive, 30-date tour” in which “Beef­heart con­tributed har­mon­i­ca, occa­sion­al sax, and numer­ous dis­plays of his eccen­tric poet­ry and one-of-a-kind vocals to the [Zap­pa] ensemble’s reper­toire.” Above, hear Bon­go Fury’s “Advance Romance,” as clas­sic a slice of Zappa/Beefheart odd­ball blues as their very first record­ings from the late 50s.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds/Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Case for Why Cap­tain Beefheart’s Awful Sound­ing Album, Trout Mask Repli­ca, Is a True Mas­ter­piece

The Night Frank Zap­pa Jammed With Pink Floyd … and Cap­tain Beef­heart Too (Bel­gium, 1969)

Hear a Rare Poet­ry Read­ing by Cap­tain Beef­heart (1993)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.