‘Stairway to Heaven’: the story of an unexpected sneeze
‘Stairway to Heaven’ by Led Zeppelin has a legitimate claim as one of the most analysed and discussed recordings in rock history. Every detail of the song has been dissected—whether it’s the delicate intro, famously crafted by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant around a campfire and now the scourge of guitar shops everywhere; the flute section, which lends the track a Tolkien-esque aura of mysticism; or the legendary guitar solo that countless aspiring guitarists attempt to replicate. But wait… what was that about a sneeze?
It’s true, according to MusicFactoids, a humble sneeze was enough not just to disrupt the recording process of one of the most iconic songs in rock history but also to remind the band why they were doing the whole thing in the first place. How could this be? Well, it all begins, as music does, in the studio. As anyone who’s made music will tell you, music is not made the way it is in the biopics.
It’s not a case of having an argument with your partner/wife/mistress/bandmate, saying something meaningful, sitting at a piano once and then immediately playing it at Wembley Stadium. Music is work. Hard, time-consuming work that never, ever feels done to boot. You just have to find it in yourself to stop tinkering with your creation and accept that it’s done, whether you feel it is or not. ‘Stairway to Heaven’, as you can imagine, was one of those songs.
A track that the band put in months of work on at a macro and micro level to get right. Nowhere was this more apparent than Page’s obsession with getting his iconic guitar solo just right. As famously sloppy as Page was on stage, he was absolutely militant with his playing in the studio. I can imagine his background as a session musician wouldn’t let him be any other way.
His standards even extended to the feel of the room they were recording in, and clearly, he liked the way dust sounded on record because the room he recorded the guitar solo in was full of it. Page recorded three attempts at the solo in total, and as he was getting ready to record the third, some of that dust got to his nose (not like that, for a change), and he sneezed, missing his cue with the whole band watching.
The band cracked up, and something changed about the tension in the room. When you’re that focused on the specifics, it’s easy to miss the forest for the trees, and the forest, in this case, was that this was all meant to be a bit of fun!
They were creating art with their friends, and while it’s great to take it seriously, one should never lose track of that fact the way that fateful sneeze made them realise what they were doing. With the pressure off, the band and Page more relaxed; the take that Page took next ended up being the one you heard on the record. Not bad for an errant piece of dust, I’m sure you’ll agree.
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