Stairway to Heaven Guitar Tabs.

Stairway to Heaven is a song by the English rock band Led Zeppelin. It was composed by guitarist Jimmy Page and vocalist Robert Plant for the band's fourth studio album, Led Zeppelin IV (1971). It was voted #3 in 2000 by VH1 on their list of the 100 Greatest Rock Songs.

It is the most requested and most played song on FM radio stations in the United States, despite never having been released as a single there. In November 2007, through download sales promoting Led Zeppelin's Mothership release, the song hit #37 on the UK Singles Chart.

The recording of Stairway to Heaven started 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 later returned to Island Studios to record his guitar solo. 

Three different solos were recorded, with Page agonizing about deciding which to keep. The other guitar parts were played using a Gibson J-200 acoustic guitar and Fender Electric XII (12-string); these can be heard on the left and right recording channels respectively. For live versions, Page switched to  The final progression is a i-VII-VI (natural minor) progression (Am-G-F), a mainstay of rock music. 

When playing the song live, the band would often extend it to over ten minutes in length, with Page playing a lengthy guitar solo and Plant adding a number of lyrical ad-libs, such as "Does anybody remember laughter?". For performing this song live, Page used a  Heritage Cherry Gibson EDS-1275 6/12 Doubleneck guitar so he would not have to pause when switching from a six to a twelve string guitar .

The first attempts at lyrics, written by Led Zeppelin vocalist Robert Plant next to an evening log fire at Headley Grange, were spontaneously improvised and Page claimed, "a huge percentage of the lyrics were written there and then". Jimmy Page was strumming the chords and Robert Plant had a pencil and paper.

The song originated in 1970 at a time 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, the instrumentals were written by him "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. The lyrics of the song reflected Plant's current reading. The singer had been poring through the works of the British antiquarian Lewis Spence, and later cited Spence's Magic Arts in Celtic Britain as one of the sources for the lyrics to the song.

Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones explained that, following the song's genesis at Bron-Yr-Aur, it was presented to him:

The complete studio recording was released on Led Zeppelin IV in November 1971. The band's recording 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. A handful of rare original seven inch promos were pressed at the time, accompanied by a humorous in-house memo (Atlantic LZ3), which are now extremely sought-after collectors items.

The song consists of several distinct sections, beginning with a quiet introduction on finger-picked acoustic guitar and three recorders (ending at 2:15) and gradually moving into a slow electric middle section (2:16-5:33), before the faster hard rock final section (5:34 to the end). Page stated that the song "speeds up like an adrenaline flow".

Written in the key of A minor and mainly in common time, 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 GX1 to synthesize this arrangement in live performances) 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 1958 Fender Telecaster (an instrument he used extensively with the Yardbirds) plugged into a Supro 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".

The inaugural public performance of the song took place at Belfast's Ulster Hall on 5 March 1971. "Stairway to Heaven" was performed at almost every subsequent Led Zeppelin concert, only omitting the number on rare occasions. By 1975, the song had a regular place as the finale of every Led Zeppelin concert. The band's final performance of the song was in Berlin on 7 July 1980, which was also their last concert for 27 years; this version was also one of the longest, lasting almost fifteen minutes.

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.

"Stairway to Heaven" continues to top radio lists of the greatest rock songs, as well as topping a recent Guitar World poll. 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.

As of 2000, the song had been broadcast on radio over three million times. It is also the biggest-selling single piece of sheet music clocking up an average of 15,000 copies yearly. In total, over one million copies have been sold. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine put it at number 31 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

The song has been covered a number of times. Rolf Harris's didgeridoo-and-wobble board interpretation reached number seven in the UK charts in 1993. Rolf Harris's version was one of 25 different versions of the song that were performed live by guest stars on the early 1990s Australian show The Money or the Gun. Plant spoke highly of Dolly Parton's stripped down acoustic cover of the song in 2002, noting that he was pleasantly surprised with how it turned out.

Guitar Video - Performance of Stairway to Heaven

For various other versions of Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven guitar tabs take a look at ultimate guitar tabs.