The Most Classic Rock Song

The first time I heard it was just before Christmas in 1971. I was at a friend’s house and her older brother had brought the album home. He had already played it through several times but he wanted us to hear one song in particular – “Stairway To Heaven.”

The band Led Zeppelin was all over FM radio in 1971 and my group of friends were more than familiar with their first three albums. “Stairway To Heaven” and the untitled album referred to as Led Zeppelin IV did not change my life or even my opinion of Led Zeppelin but I knew it was one of the best rock songs I had ever heard.

Apparently I was not alone. The song was voted #3 by VH-1 on the list of 100 Greatest Rock Songs and was ranked #31 on Rolling Stone Magazine’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. In celebration of the song’s 20th anniversary, Esquire Magazine published these facts which show how big the song became.

As of January 7, 1991, the "Led Zeppelin IV" album had been certified platinum times ten (ten million copies sold). Also, “Stairway to Heaven” remains the biggest-selling sheet music in the history of rock. An average hit sells 10,000 to 15,000 copies. "Stairway to Heaven" has sold more than one million copies of sheet music.

The Esquire article offers a rough guess as to how many times it was played between 1971 and 1991. They figured that “the song was played five times a day on each AOR station in America during its first three months of existence; twice a day for the next nine months; once a day for the next four years; and two to three times a week for the next fifteen years.”

By 2001, the song had been played more than 3 million times on the radio, according to radio industry sources.

The song was so popular in the mid 70’s that it became uncool among the college crowd to like it. I tuned it out for many years but eventually bought the CD reissue and grew fond of it all over again - even without the scratches.

It’s certainly not the lyrics that made it popular. Even diehard Zeppelin fans are challenged to find meaning in lines like “If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow don’t be alarmed now; it’s just a spring clean for the May queen.”

Musically, it may not be the greatest rock song of all-time and a lot of music has come and gone in 41 years but baby boomers and their teenage kids still download the song and play air guitar to the climactic guitar solo. I sat in a parking lot once forcing my then 11 year-old son to wait for the “Stairway” to end before I turned the car off. It just wouldn’t be right to cut this song off, I explained.

Guitarist Jimmy Page grew tired of the song and publicly announced he would no longer perform it live. With a few exceptions he has held to that but the song continues to make best and worst lists. The song has served as the theme for thousands of proms and been performed at both weddings and funerals. It’s become more of a phenomenon than a popular song.

That’s why I am a little embarrassed to say I still listen to Led Zeppelin IV often and might be found in the Krogers parking lot strumming my air guitar as Robert Plant reminds us that “she is still buying a stairway to heaven.”

Country Radio Days - Rock & Roll Nights

The Voice of Country Music in Paris, Tennessee?

  I would say it was more of an ambition than a lifelong dream but I always wanted to be a radio DJ.

  In the days before the Sony Walkman and Apple IPOD, teenagers in the 70’s spent most of their time either spinning records at home or listening to the radio. The DJ determined what music you listened to and ultimately what records you were buying.

  It was that ambition that led me to “study” radio and television in college. The classical format of the radio station at Murray State University wasn’t exactly what I imagined. It was harder learning how to pronounce the composers than pushing the buttons but it was a start. The payoff came after 10 pm when WKMS was turned over to late night rock and roll. Only the upperclassmen who had served their time with Mussorgsky during the day could spin Emerson, Lake and Palmer at night.

  I finally got my first late night shift in 1977 and did my best imitation of DJs I had heard on WNEW FM in New York in high school. No recordings of those historic radio shows exist and that is probably a good thing.

  That same year I answered an ad for a DJ position at WTPR AM-FM in Paris, Tennessee. It was a weekend job that included spinning country music on the FM station on Friday nights, playing top-forty music on Saturday afternoons and airing church services on Sunday mornings.

  My vast exposure to country music was a 45 rpm recording of The Battle of New Orleans that my brother owned. So here I was 90 miles from Nashville trying to pass myself off as a country DJ each Friday night. It didn’t help that some of the lamest country music of the past 50 years made the charts in the late 70’s. First there was Heaven’s Just a Sin Away which was pushed out of the number one slot by Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue which was then buried by the classic Convoy. I think you see my point. “Breaker, breaker…we got ourselves a long hair Jersey boy in the control room!”

  Saturday mornings I got to spin 70’s top-forty music on the AM station which was only a little better than the country experience. The station’s program director created a formula that required a top 5 song to be played every ten minutes or so. That meant you could hear Barry Manilow’s Copacabana about 5 times too many in one shift. A frustrated colleague at the station extinguished a cigarette on the Manilow record one day but a new copy appeared the next morning. It was a losing battle.

  Anyone who has ever worked at a small town radio station has stories. My favorite was the night I put on a long playing record and ran down the street for some barbeque. I returned to find the station locked. The album eventually ended and so did my pride when I called the station manager from a pay phone to come back and let me in.

  Then there was the night the control board started smoking and the time I literally fell out of my chair while on the air. Another gem was the morning I played Beatles music over the First Baptist Church of Paris services. It was an honest mistake but it was not my finest radio moment.

 Despite the bad music, working as a DJ was still a blast and that short stretch as the voice of country music in Paris, Tennessee led to many more years of radio highs and lows. Tune in to The Flipside next week for radio daze, part two