Tuesday, March 29, 2016
I Can't Get No- Satisfaction -The Rolling Stones - Glastonbury 2013 (HD)
Midnight ramblers: Ronnie Wood, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones at Glastonbury.
In the pre-internet age, the Glastonbury festival was famously a hive of bizarre rumours about what was going on in the outside world. For a period in the early 90s, a story seemed to be passed around every year that Cliff Richard had died, while in 1995, the news that John Redwood was launching a leadership challenge to then-prime minister John Major somehow got mangled into a report that the entire Tory government had resigned en masse.
The rise of the web and the smartphone was supposed to have done for that kind of thing, but this year the spirit of the unlikely Glastonbury rumour seems to be abroad once again, although this time the stories are concerned not with the sad demise of the tennis-loving Peter Pan of Pop, but with a plethora of secret guest appearances. Lady Gaga is supposed to be turning up. Almost nowhere in the festival is safe from an imminent guerilla gig by Daft Punk. And David Bowie, we are earnestly informed, is going to appear on stage with the Rolling Stones, giving rise to the flatly horrifying thought that he and Mick Jagger might favour us with their cover version of Dancing in the Street.
By the time the Rolling Stones arrive, the crowd in front of the Pyramid stage has swelled to 100,000, something you might have predicted had you noted the sheer number of people walking around the site in Stones T-shirts: it's hard to think of another Glastonbury that's been so conclusively overtaken by a solitary headlining act. As U2 discovered a few years back, parachuting a hugely successful band in to headline Glastonbury doesn't always work, something of which Jagger at least appears aware. For someone with a reputation for lofty diffidence, he seems to have been on a charm offensive for weeks: no sooner had their headline slot been announced than he took to Twitter to claim, a little implausibly, that he was going to stay on site in a yurt. The charm offensive carries over into their set. Just as he joked about the cost of the seats at last November's O2 performance, he jokes about Glastonbury's dogged pursuit of the band over the years: "So, they finally asked us."
If mention of his actual sleeping arrangements is conspicuous by its absence, Jagger mentions having spent the previous night at the festival: "I went to Shangri-La!" he says, sounding as ever, exactly like a man doing an impersonation of Mick Jagger. "I saw the Arctic Monkeys." Indeed, so keen is he to underline his awareness that this show is more than just another stop off on the Stones' 50th Anniversary Tour, he has reworked the song Factory Girl for the occasion: Glastonbury Girl makes reference to wet wipes, inhaling nitrous oxide, camping and ecstasy.
What's striking about the other songs they perform is how thrillingly ramshackle the Stones sound. In contrast to most of their stadium-filling peers, you can hear the imperfections, the occasional fluffed notes. They sound like a real band, rather than bored multimillionaires going through the motions, which adds a genuine edge to the big hits: Wild Horses should be dulled by overfamiliarity, but it packs an emotional punch. It's a sense heightened by their evident delight at having former guitarist Mick Taylor back on stage with them – a delight not shared entirely by the audience, which thins out a bit during the lengthy versions of You Got the Silver and Midnight Rambler – and the set's occasional surprises: they perform a fantastic version of 2,000 Light Years From Home, from the most reviled of their 60s albums, the psychedelic folly Their Satanic Majesties Request.
As they play Sympathy for the Devil, the scrap-metal phoenix at the top of the Pyramid stage begins to slowly rise up and belch out fire. In the crowd, people are letting off flares and red smoke billows around. It's incredibly exciting: one of those much-vaunted Glastonbury moments.
(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction
| "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" | ||||||||||||||
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| Single by The Rolling Stones | ||||||||||||||
| from the album Out of Our Heads (US) | ||||||||||||||
| B-side |
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| Released |
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| Format | 7", 12" | |||||||||||||
| Recorded | 12 May 1965, RCA Studios, Hollywood | |||||||||||||
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| Length | 3:44 | |||||||||||||
| Label |
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| Writer(s) | Jagger/Richards | |||||||||||||
| Producer(s) | Andrew Loog Oldham | |||||||||||||
| Certification | Gold (RIAA) | |||||||||||||
| The Rolling Stones singles chronology | ||||||||||||||
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"(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" is a song by the English rock band The Rolling Stones, released in 1965. It was written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and produced by Andrew Loog Oldham. Richards' three-note guitar riff—intended to be replaced by horns—opens and drives the song. The lyrics refer to sexual frustration and commercialism.
The song was first released as a single in the United States in June 1965 and was also featured on the American version of the Rolling Stones' fourth studio album, Out of Our Heads, released that July. "Satisfaction" was a hit, giving the Stones their first number one in the US. In the UK, the song initially was played only on pirate radio stations, because its lyrics were considered too sexually suggestive. It later became the Rolling Stones' fourth number one in the United Kingdom.
The song is considered the greatest song the band ever recorded. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine placed "Satisfaction" in the second spot on its list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time". The song was added to the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress in 2006.
Contents
Recording
Richards recorded the rough version of the riff in a hotel room. He ran through it once before falling asleep. He said when he listened back to it in the morning, there was about two minutes of acoustic guitar before you could hear him drop the pick and "then me snoring for the next forty minutes".
The Rolling Stones first recorded the track on 10 May 1965 at Chess Studios in Chicago – a version featuring Brian Jones on harmonica. The Stones lip-synched to a dub of this version the first time they debuted the song on ABC's Shindig. The group re-recorded it two days later at RCA Studios in Hollywood, with a different beat and the GibsonMaestro fuzzbox adding sustain to the sound of the guitar riff. Richards envisioned redoing the track later with a horn section playing the riff: "this was just a little sketch, because, to my mind, the fuzz tone was really there to denote what the horns would be doing." The other Rolling Stones, as well as producer and manager Andrew Loog Oldham and sound engineer David Hassinger eventually outvoted Richards and Jagger so the track was selected for release as a single. The song's success boosted sales of the Gibson fuzzbox so that the entire available stock sold out by the end of 1965.
Author Gary West cites a different source for the release of, "Satisfaction" in interviewing WTRY radio (Troy, NY) DJ Joe Condon. In the interview, Condon clearly states that his radio station began playing "Satisfaction" on 29 April 1965, making the above recording date impossible. It can be assumed that "Satisfaction" was probably recorded earlier in April, and that WTRY was playing a test pressing.
Like most of the Stones' pre-1966 recordings, "Satisfaction" was originally released in mono only. In the mid-1980s, a true stereo version of the song was released on German and Japanese editions of the CD reissue of Hot Rocks 1964-1971. The stereo mix features a piano (played by session player Jack Nitzsche, who also provides the song's iconic tambourine) and acoustic guitar that are barely audible in the original mono release (both instruments are also audible on a bootleg recording of the instrumental track). This stereo mix of "Satisfaction" also appeared on a radio-promo CD of rare stereo tracks provided to US radio stations in the mid-1980s, but has not yet been featured on a worldwide commercial CD; even later pressings of the German and Japanese Hot Rocks CDs feature the mono mix, making the earlier releases with the stereo mix collectors' items. For the worldwide 2002 reissue of Hot Rocks, an alternative quasi-stereo mix was used featuring the lead guitar, bass, drums, and vocals in the center channel and the acoustic guitar and piano "split" left and right via a delay effect.
This audio file was created from a revision of the "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" article dated 2005-04-20, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. (Audio help)
Lyrics and melody
The song opens with the guitar riff, which is joined by the bass halfway through. It is repeated three times with the drums and acoustic guitar before the vocal enters with the line: "I can't get no satisfaction". The key is E major, but with the 3rd and 7th degreeoccasionally lowered, creating - in the first part of the verses ("I can't get no ...") - a distinctive mellow sound. The accompanying chords (i.e. E major, D major and A major) are borrowed from the E mixolydian scale, which is often used in Blues and Rock.
The title line is an example of a negative concord. Jagger sings the verses in a tone hovering between cynical commentary and frustrated protest, and then leaps half singing and half yelling into the chorus, where the guitar riff reappears. The lyrics outline the singer's irritation with the increasing commercialism of the modern world, where the radio broadcasts "useless information" and a man on television tells him "how white my shirts can be – but he can't be a man 'cause he doesn't smoke the same cigarettes as me." Jagger also describes the stress of being a celebrity, and the tensions of touring. The reference in the verse to not getting any "girl reaction" was fairly controversial in its day, interpreted by some listeners (and radio programmers) as meaning a girl willing to have sex. Jagger commented that the dissers "didn't understand the dirtiest line", as afterwards the girl asks him to return the following week as she is "on a losing streak," an apparent reference to menstruation. The song closes with a fairly subdued repetition of the song's title, followed suddenly by a full shout of the line, with the final words repeated into the fade-out.
In its day the song was perceived as disturbing because of both its sexual connotations and the negative view of commercialism and other aspects of modern culture; critic Paul Gambaccini stated: "The lyrics to this were truly threatening to an older audience. This song was perceived as an attack on the status quo". When the Rolling Stones performed the song on Shindig! in 1965, the line "trying to make some girl" was censored although a performance on The Ed Sullivan Show on 13 February 1966 was uncensored. Forty years later, when the band performed three songs during the February 2006 Super Bowl XL halftime show, "Satisfaction" was the only one of the three songs not censored as it was broadcast.
Release and success
"Satisfaction" was released as a single in the US by London Records on 6 June 1965, with "The Under-Assistant West Coast Promotion Man" as its B-side. The single entered the Billboard Hot 100 charts in America in the week ending 12 June 1965, remaining there for 14 weeks, reaching the top on 10 July by displacing The Four Tops' "I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)". "Satisfaction" held the number one spot for four weeks, being knocked off on 7 August by "I'm Henry the Eighth, I Am" by Herman's Hermits. While in its eighth week on the American charts, the single was certified a gold record award by the RIAA for shipping over a million copies across the United States, giving the band their first of many gold disc awards in America. Later the song was also released by London Records onOut of Our Heads in America.[9] Billboard ranked the record as the No. 3 song of 1965.[20]
"Satisfaction" was not immediately released by Decca Records in Great Britain. Decca was already in the process of preparing a live Rolling Stones EP for release, so the new single did not come out in Britain until 20 August, with "The Spider and the Fly" on the B-side. The song peaked at number one for two weeks, replacingSonny & Cher's "I Got You Babe", between 11 and 25 September, before being toppled by the Walker Brothers' "Make It Easy on Yourself".
In the decades since its release, "Satisfaction" has repeatedly been acclaimed by the music industry. In 1976, Britain's New Musical Express listed "Satisfaction" 7th among the top 100 singles of all time. There was a resurgence of interest in the song after it was prominently featured in the 1979 movie Apocalypse Now. In 1991,Vox listed "Satisfaction" among "100 records that shook the world". In 1999, BMI named "Satisfaction" as the 91st-most performed song of the 20th century. In 2000, VH1 listed "Satisfaction" first among its "Top 100 Greatest Rock Songs"; the same year, "Satisfaction" also finished runner-up to "Yesterday" in a list jointly compiled by Rolling Stone and MTV.[23] In 2003, Q placed the song 68th out of its "1001 Best Songs Ever". In 2004, Rolling Stone's panel of judges named "Satisfaction" as the second-greatest song of all time, coming in second to Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone". Newsweek magazine has called the opening riff "five notes that shook the world".
Jagger said of "Satisfaction":
The song has become a staple at Rolling Stones shows. They have performed it on nearly every tour since its release, and concert renditions have been included on the albums Got Live If You Want It!, Still Life, Flashpoint, Live Licks, Shine a Light, and Sweet Summer Sun: Hyde Park Live. One unusual rendition is included inRobert Frank's film Cocksucker Blues from the 1972 tour, when the song was performed by both the Rolling Stones and Stevie Wonder's band as the second half of a medley with Wonder's "Uptight".
Chart performance[edit]
| Chart | Peak position |
|---|---|
| UK Singles Chart[18] | 1 |
| Austrian Singles Chart | 1 |
| Dutch Top 40 | 1 |
| French Singles Chart | 3 |
| German Singles Chart | 1 |
| US Billboard Hot 100[26] | 1 |
| US Billboard Top Selling Rhythm & Blues Singles[27] | 19 |
| US Cashbox Top Singles[28] | 1 |
Sunday, March 27, 2016
Saturday, March 26, 2016
Saturday, March 19, 2016
Stephen Darori Great Songs and Cover Performances : Heart - Stairway to Heaven (Live at Kennedy Center...
Stephen Darori Great Songs and Cover Performances : Heart - Stairway to Heaven (Live at Kennedy Center...: Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart, along with Jason Bonham, playing Stairway to Heaven as a tribute for Led Zeppelin on Dec. 2, 2012 at Kenned...
Heart - Stairway to Heaven (Live at Kennedy Center Honors) [FULL VERSION]
Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart, along with Jason Bonham, playing Stairway to Heaven as a tribute for Led Zeppelin on Dec. 2, 2012 at Kennedy Center.
"Stairway to Heaven" is a song by the English rock band Led Zeppelin, released in late 1971. It was composed by guitarist Jimmy Page and vocalist Robert Plant for the band's untitled fourth studio album (often called Led Zeppelin IV). It is often referred to as one of the greatest rock songs of all time.
The song has three sections, each one progressively increasing in tempo and volume. The song begins in a slow tempo with acoustic instruments (guitar and recorders) before introducing electric instruments. The final section is an uptempohard rock arrangement highlighted by Page's intricate guitar solo accompanying Plant's vocals that end with the plaintivea cappella line: "And she's buying the stairway to heaven."
"Stairway to Heaven" was voted #3 in 2000 by VH1 on its list of the 100 Greatest Rock Songs,[7] and was placed at number 31 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time". It was the most requested song onFM radio stations in the United States in the 1970s, despite never having been officially released as a single there.] In November 2007, through download sales promoting Led Zeppelin's Mothership release, "Stairway to Heaven" hit No. 37 on the UK Singles Chart.
Writing and recording
The recording of "Stairway to Heaven" commenced in December 1970 at Island Records' new Basing Street Studios in London. The song was completed by the addition of lyrics by Plant during the sessions for Led Zeppelin IV at Headley Grange, Hampshire, in 1971. Page then returned to Island Studios to record his guitar solo.
The song originated in 1970 when Jimmy Page and Robert Plant were spending time at Bron-Yr-Aur, a remote cottage in Wales, following Led Zeppelin's fifth American concert tour. According to Page, he wrote the music "over a long period, the first part coming at Bron-Yr-Aur one night". Page always kept a cassette recorder around, and the idea for "Stairway" came together from bits of taped music:[13]
Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones recalled this presentation of the song to him following its genesis at Bron-Yr-Aur:
In an interview he gave in 1977, Page elaborated:
The first attempts at lyrics, written by Robert Plant next to an evening log fire at Headley Grange, were partly spontaneously improvised and Page claimed, "a huge percentage of the lyrics were written there and then".[13] Jimmy Page was strumming the chords and Robert Plant had a pencil and paper. Plant later said that suddenly,
The lyrics of the song reflected Plant's current reading. The singer had been poring over the works of the British antiquarian Lewis Spence, and later cited Spence'sMagic Arts in Celtic Britain as one of the sources for the lyrics to the song
In November 1970, Page dropped a hint of the new song's existence to a music journalist in London:
Page stated that the song "speeds up like an adrenaline flow". He explained:
The complete studio recording was released on Led Zeppelin IV in November 1971. The band's record label, Atlantic Records was keen to issue this track as a single, but the band's manager Peter Grant refused requests to do so in both 1972 and 1973. The upshot of that decision was that record buyers began to invest in the fourth album as if it were a single.[8] In the US, Atlantic issued "Stairway to Heaven" as a 7" promotional single in 1972.
Composition[edit]
The song consists of several distinct sections, beginning with a quiet introduction on a finger-picked six-string guitar and four recorders in a Renaissance music style[18] (ending at 2:15) and gradually moving into a slow electric middle section (2:16–5:33), then a long guitar solo (5:34–6:44), before the faster hard rock final section (6:45 to 7:45), ending with a short vocals-only epilogue. Plant sings the opening, middle and epilogue sections in his mid vocal range, but sings the hard rock section in his higher range which borders on falsetto.
Written in the key of A minor, the song opens with an arpeggiated, finger-picked guitar chord progression with a chromatic descending bassline A-G#-G-F#-F. John Paul Jones contributed overdubbed wooden bass recorders in the opening section (he used a Mellotron and, later, a Yamaha CP70B Grand Piano and Yamaha GX1to synthesise this arrangement in live performances)[16] and a Hohner Electra-Piano electric piano in the middle section.
The sections build with more guitar layers, each complementary to the intro, with the drums entering at 4:18. The extended Jimmy Page guitar solo in the song's final section was played for the recording on a 1959 Fender Telecaster given to him by Jeff Beck (an instrument he used extensively with the Yardbirds)[16] plugged into aSupro amplifier, although in an interview he gave to Guitar World magazine, Page also claimed, "It could have been a Marshall, but I can't remember".[13] Three different improvised solos were recorded, with Page agonising about deciding which to keep. Page later revealed, "I did have the first phrase worked out, and then there was the link phrase. I did check them out beforehand before the tape ran." The other guitar parts were played using a Harmony Sovereign H1260 acoustic guitar and a Fender Electric XII guitar (a 12-string guitar that was plugged directly to the soundboard); these can be heard on the left and right recording channels respectively. For live versions, Page switched to a Heritage Cherry Gibson EDS-1275 6/12 Doubleneck guitar. The final progression is a i-VII-VI (natural minor) progression (Am-G-F), a mainstay of rock music.
Another interesting aspect of the song is the timing of the lead-up to the famous guitar solo. While staying in 4/4 throughout this section, most of the accents shift to the eight notes. This makes the rhythm figure challenging for some musicians, but adds a feeling of anticipation to the approaching guitar solo.
Sound engineer Andy Johns recalls the circumstances surrounding the recording of Page's famous solo:
According to Page, "Stairway to Heaven"
Spirit copyright infringement lawsuit[edit]
Over the years, a number of people have put forth the opinion that the song's introduction, and opening guitar arpeggios, bear a close resemblance to the 1968 instrumental "Taurus" by the group Spirit.[12][23] In the liner notes to the 1996 reissue of Spirit's debut album, songwriter Randy California writes:
In May 2014, Mark Andes, bassist of the group Spirit, and a trust acting on behalf of Randy California, filed a copyright infringement suit against Led Zeppelin and injunction against the "release of the album containing the song" in an attempt to obtain a writing credit for the late California.[26] A lack of sufficient resources is cited as one of the reasons that Spirit’s members and their survivors did not file the suit earlier. A friend of California's mother explained: "Nobody had any money, and they thought the statute of limitations was done", adding, "It will be nice if Randy got the credit". If the Spirit lawsuit is successful, past royalties earned by the song—estimated at more than US$550 million—will not be part of the settlement, but the publisher and composers may be entitled to a share of the future profits
Live performances
The inaugural public performance of the song took place at Belfast's Ulster Hall on 5 March 1971. Bassist John Paul Jones recalls that the crowd was unimpressed: "They were all bored to tears waiting to hear something they knew". However, Page stated about an early performance at the LA Forum, before the record had even come out, that:
The world radio premiere of "Stairway to Heaven" was recorded at the Paris Cinema on 1 April 1971, in front of a live studio audience, and broadcast three days later on the BBC. The song was performed at almost every subsequent Led Zeppelin concert, only being omitted on rare occasions when shows were cut short for curfews or technical issues. The band's final performance of the song was in Berlin on 7 July 1980, which was also their last concert until 10 Dec 2007 at London's O2 Arena; the version was the longest, lasting almost fifteen minutes, including a seven and a half-minute guitar solo.
When playing the song live, the band would often extend it to over ten minutes, with Page playing an extended guitar solo and Plant adding a number of lyrical ad-libs, such as "Does anybody remember laughter?", "And I think you can see that" (as seen in the filmThe Song Remains the Same), "Does anybody remember forests?" (As seen on the live performance in Seattle 1977), "wait a minute!" and "I hope so". For performing this song live, Page used a Gibson EDS-1275 double neck guitar so he would not have to pause when switching from a six to a twelve string guitar.
By 1975, the song had a regular place as the finale of every Led Zeppelin concert. However, after their concert tour of the United States in 1977, Plant began to tire of "Stairway to Heaven": "There's only so many times you can sing it and mean it ... It just became sanctimonious."
The song was played again by the surviving members of Led Zeppelin at the Live Aid concert in 1985; at the Atlantic Records 40th Anniversary concert in 1988, with Jason Bonham on drums; and by Jimmy Page as an instrumental version on his solo tours.
By the late 1980s, Plant made his negative impression of the song clear in interviews. In 1988, he stated:
However, by the mid-1990s Plant's views had apparently softened. The first few bars were played alone during Page and Plant tours in lieu of the final notes of "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You", and in November 1994 Page and Plant performed an acoustic version of the song at a Tokyo news station for Japanese television. "Stairway to Heaven" was also performed at Led Zeppelin's reunion show at the O2 Arena, London on 10 December 2007. This song is played a whole step lower.
Plant cites the most unusual performance of the song ever as being that performed at Live Aid: "with two drummers (Phil Collins and Tony Thompson) while Duran Duran cried at the side of the stage – there was something quite surreal about that."
Footage of the song being played live is preserved on the band's concert film The Song Remains the Same, featuring a performance from Madison Square Garden in 1973, and on the Led Zeppelin DVD, featuring a performance from Earls Court Arena in 1975. Official audio versions are also available on The Song Remains the Same's accompanying soundtrack, on Led Zeppelin BBC Sessions (a performance from London's Paris Theatre in 1971) and on How the West Was Won (a performance from the Long Beach Arena in 1972). There are also hundreds of audio versions which can be found on unofficial Led Zeppelin bootleg recordings.
Success and legacy
"Stairway to Heaven" is often rated among the greatest rock songs of all time. According to music journalist Stephen Davis, although the song was released in 1971, it took until 1973 before the song's popularity ascended to truly "anthemic" status. As Page himself recalled, "I knew it was good, but I didn't know it was going to be almost like an anthem ... But I knew it was the gem of the album, sure."
"Stairway to Heaven" continues to top radio lists of the greatest rock songs, including a 2006 Guitar World readers poll of greatest guitar solos. On the 20th anniversary of the original release of the song, it was announced via U.S. radio sources that the song had logged up an estimated 2,874,000 radio plays – back to back, that would run for 44 years solid.[8] As of 2000, the song had been broadcast on radio over three million times. In 1990 a St Petersburg, Florida station kicked off its all-Led Zeppelin format by playing "Stairway to Heaven" for 24 hours straight. It is also the biggest-selling single piece of sheet music in rock history, clocking up an average of 15,000 copies yearly. In total, over one million copies have been sold.
The song's length precluded its release in full form as a single.[citation needed] Despite pressure from Atlantic Records the band would not authorise the editing of the song for single release, making "Stairway to Heaven" one of the most well-known and popular rock songs never to have been released as a single. It did, however, appear on two promotional discs in the United States, one of them featuring the 7:55 track on each side, and the other as a 7" 331⁄3 record produced for jukebox operators with "Stairway..." on one side and both "Black Dog" and "Rock And Roll" on the other. Other "single" appearances were on an Australian EP, and in 1991 as an added bonus with a 20th anniversary promo book.
The group's recording of this song also appeared as the sole Led Zeppelin track in the 1977 Atlantic Records 2-LP promotional sampler album, We've Got Your Music, marking the first time that Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" made its official debut appearance in an American-released various artists compilation collection.
On the 20th anniversary of the song's release, Esquire magazine featured an article on the song's success and lasting influence. Karen Karbo wrote:
In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine put it at number 31 on their list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time". An article from the 29 January 2009 Guitar World magazine rated Jimmy Page's guitar solo at number one in the publication's 100 Greatest Guitar Solos in Rock and Roll History. Since 2001, the New York City-based classic rock radio station Q104.3 has ranked "Stairway to Heaven" no. 1 on their annual "Top 1,043 Classic Rock Songs of All Time".
Erik Davis, a social historian and cultural critic, commented on the song's massive success, subsequent backlash and enduring legendary status:
Page has himself commented on the song's legacy:
Robert Plant once gave $1,000 to listener-supported radio station KBOO in Portland, Oregon during a pledge drive after the disc jockey solicited donations by promising the station would never play "Stairway to Heaven". Plant was station-surfing in a rental car he was driving to the Oregon Coast after a solo performance in Portland and was impressed with the non-mainstream music the station presented. Asked later "why?" Plant replied that it wasn't that he didn't like the song, but he'd heard it before.
Claims of backward masking
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In a January 1982 television program on the Trinity Broadcasting Network hosted by Paul Crouch, it was claimed that hidden messages were contained in many popular rock songs through a technique called backward masking. One example of such hidden messages that was prominently cited was in "Stairway to Heaven." The alleged message, which occurs during the middle section of the song ("If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now...") when played backward, was purported to contain the Satanic references "Here's to my sweetSatan" and "I sing because I live with Satan."
Following the claims made in the television program, California assemblyman Phil Wyman proposed a state law that would require warning labels on records containing backward masking. In April 1982, the Consumer Protection and Toxic Materials Committee of the California State Assembly held a hearing on backward masking in popular music, during which "Stairway to Heaven" was played backward. During the hearing, William Yarroll, a self-described "neuroscientific researcher," claimed that backward messages could be deciphered by the human brain.
The band itself has for the most part ignored such claims. In response to the allegations, Swan Song Records issued the statement: "Our turntables only play in one direction—forwards." Led Zeppelin audio engineer Eddie Kramer called the allegations "totally and utterly ridiculous. Why would they want to spend so much studio time doing something so dumb?" Robert Plant expressed frustration with the accusations in a 1983 interview in Musician magazine: "To me it's very sad, because 'Stairway to Heaven' was written with every best intention, and as far as reversing tapes and putting messages on the end, that's not my idea of making music."[
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