Woah! Robert Plant, lead singer of Led Zeppelin, has finally performed the hit song ‘Stairway To Heaven’ after refusing to for 16 years.
The performance happened at the benefit show for Duran Duran's Andy Taylor, who played guitar on the hiatus-ending rendition.
“I know that in this contemporary age of digital stuff, there’s every likelihood that other people will see that,” Plant said once the applause subsided.
Plant dedicated the performance to Taylor, who is suffering from Stage 4 prostate cancer, and his old band.
“I offer it up to you and your success,” he said. “And to the whole deal that has happened here. The future of it all. And also, so it’s not just that, I offer it up to Led Zeppelin, wherever they are.”
The last time Plant played the song on stage was at a Led Zeppelin reunion on December 10, 2007. He was joined by surviving members Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones as well as Jason Bonham, the son of the late drummer John Bonham.
Over the years, Plant has shared that he doesn’t like playing 'Stairway To Heaven' because he thinks the world has changed and moved past the song.
As early as 1988, 17 years after the song was released, Plant told the LA Times: “I’d break out in hives if I had to sing that song in every show. I wrote those lyrics and found that song to be of some importance and consequence in 1971, but 17 years later, I don’t know. It’s just not for me.”
Last year, over half a century since it came out, he told Rolling Stone magazine: “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.’”
I’d also bet he’s a bit tired of playing it after it has been insanely popular for 52 years. Overplayed or not, it’s an all-time great song.
