An Irishman's Diary

Everybody who knows Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heavenends up either loving it or hating it. Is it the best rock song ever written, an ethereal masterpiece which takes you to another place and culminates in the most perfect guitar solo ever recorded? Or is it the worst song ever written, a bloated, pretentious relic of rock 'n' roll excess with the silliest lyrics in the long history of popular music, among no shortage of contenders.

The members of Led Zeppelin share the same ambivalence. Guitarist Jimmy Page thought it was the best thing they had done and the Led Zeppelin IValbum cover, which famously had no reference to the band, contains the lyrics of the song. Unfortunately, those lyrics have become an eternal scourge for the man who wrote them - singer Robert Plant, who is given to dismissing Stairway to Heavenas "that bloody wedding song".

Plant's attitude may be coloured by his intense irritation at being constantly asked to explain what he meant, variously, by: a lady who is sure that all that glitters is gold, by pipers leading us to reason, May queens bustling in the hedgerows, and stairways lying on the whisperin' wind. Ooh, as the song itself says, it makes you wonder.

Plant says the lyrics are ambiguous; so if he doesn't know what they are about, what hope is there for the rest of us? Like Bohemian Rhapsodyand Hotel California, those other monuments to 1970s bombast and ambition, the true worth of Stairway to Heavenhas been devalued by overexposure, or death by adult-oriented-radio (AOR). It was once calculated that in the 30 years since its release the song has been played for the equivalent of 44 years non-stop on US radio stations.

Tonight Led Zeppelin play their first full concert since 1980 at the O2 Arena in London. It is being described by breathless promoters as "twenty superbowls rolled into one". Although it seems inconceivable that they will not play their most famous song, the band members have frequently done the inconceivable. Page and Plant never played Stairway to Heavenwhen they re-formed in the mid-1990s to tour and record an "unplugged" album for MTV. Plant has spent his solo career ignoring calls to play it.

While it sounds like a song that has been around forever, it was very different when Led Zeppelin decided to unveil Stairway to Heavenbefore releasing that brilliant fourth album. There is a time and a place to reveal your most famous creation to an unsuspecting world and Belfast during the worst of the Troubles would be few people's idea of the right time or place.

On the morning of March 5th, 1971, an army search of houses in Leeson Street provoked an intense riot down the Falls Road. Women banged their dustbin lids on the streets while youngsters threw rocks, then petrol bombs at the police. The British army opened fire, shooting dead one rioter and injuring two others.

Only a few miles away, 1,200 music fans took refuge from the mayhem and madness all around them when Led Zeppelin began a short tour of Britain and Ireland with a gig at the Ulster Hall.

In the intervening years the gig has become the rock 'n' roll equivalent of the GPO in 1916, with the numbers who claimed to be there when Stairway to Heavenwas first played in public swelling as the song's reputation grew.

There are many apocryphal stories about how the song was greeted. According to some reports, invested with hindsight, the audience listened in rapt silence before responding with a standing ovation (it was a sit-down gig). The only extant bootleg version suggests otherwise. The song was merely greeted with polite applause. That, too, is how Led Zeppelin's unflappable bass player John Paul Jones remembers it.

Ever ready to demythologise the band's most mythologised song, he recalled many years afterwards: "They were all bored to tears waiting to hear something they knew".

Later that night, Plant acknowledged the good vibrations within the Ulster Hall. "If everybody was like this to each other every day, there would be no problems".

Problems there were, though, when the band's wild drummer, John "Bonzo" Bonham, and his chauffeur got caught up in the rioting on the Falls Road having taken a wrong turn after the gig. Eventually, the band wound on down the road, their shadows taller than their souls, to Dublin and the more sedate surroundings of the National Stadium for the second gig of their tour.

Stairway to Heaventurned out to be a slow burner as Led Zeppelin never released it, or any other song, as a single. Yet became the most requested in history, as popular with housewives as it was with teenagers.

In part its popularity is due to the tune, the dreamy A minor beginning, beloved and butchered by amateur guitarists everywhere (it is easy but sounds complicated), the gradual increase in the tempo and the brilliant guitar solo which Jimmy Page did in one take on a Telecaster and never played the same way again.

The lyrics too contributed to its enduring appeal, being so meaningful, or meaningless, depending on your point of view, that the song was played as often at wedding as it was at funerals. Ultimately, Stairway to Heavendefies analysis. As the song says, if you listen very hard, the tune will come to you at last, when all is one and one is all, to be a rock and not to roll.