Robert Plant, Berkeley, August 21, 2022
Photo: Getty Images, Steve Jennings. All rights reserved.
Robert Plant didn’t play the Led Zeppelin hit “Stairway To Heaven” live for more than 15 years. Now, to the surprise of the audience, he performed the song at a charity event in aid of the Cancer Awareness Trust on Saturday (October 21). The event in Oxfordshire, England was organized by former Duran Duran member Andy Taylor, who is himself battling stage four colon cancer.
Supported by Taylor and several other musicians, the Led Zeppelin lead singer not only played his own songs “Thank You” and “Black Dog”, but also the track “Season of the Witch” by Donovan. The highlight of the evening was of course “Stairway To Heaven,” which Plant last played at the Led Zeppelin reunion in 2007. Rock singer Andy Taylor dedicated the song to the Cancer Awareness Trust and his former band, “wherever they are.” Plant explained, “I know that in today’s digital age, there’s a good chance other people will see this.”
After the performance, Taylor joked, “I bet I had more fun than him.” The guitarist was alluding to Plant’s dissatisfaction with the song, which he has often expressed in the past. In 2019, he explained in an interview with Uncle Joe Benson on the “Ultimate Classic Rock Nights Radio Show” that although he found the musical construction of “Stairway To Heaven” incredible, he was still dissatisfied “lyrically and even vocally”.
In a more recent interview from January 2023 with the US online magazine “Vulture”, Plant explained that he felt “alienated” by the song. “It started off intimate and vulnerable and sincere, and then the years went by. It’s no longer ours, nor should it be. Now it’s out there and it’s driving people crazy,” the musician said in an interview. Today he is just a “voyeur” and “no longer responsible for it.”