Power, Mystery And The Hammer Of The Gods

According to Led Zeppelin legend, a pretty, young groupie came up to Cole's room while he and Bonham were fishing. She was disrobed and tied spread-eagle to the bed, then the band members stuffed pieces of shark into her. Richard Cole says it didn't happen that way. "We caught a big lot of sharks, at least two dozen, stuck coat hangers through the gills and left 'em in the closet... But the true shark story is that it wasn't even a shark. It was a red snapper. Bonzo was in the room, but I did it. Mark Stein [of Vanilla Fudge] filmed the whole thing."

Cole blames Led Zeppelin's debauchery on alcoholism. "All the so-called Led Zeppelin depravity took place the first two years in an alcoholic fog. After that, we got older and grew out of it. It became a realistic business."

It would be a long time, though, before Led Zeppelin lost its taste for the wild life. The band adopted Los Angeles as its American home and recorded 'Led Zeppelin II' on the road in 1969. That record was followed by another American tour — and another round of frolic with groupies.

The next year the band recorded the folkish 'Led Zeppelin III,' which was blasted by the press as imitation Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. But the record was another instant hit, and late in 1970, Page and Plant went back to the cottage in Bron-Y-Aur, Wales, where they had written 'Led Zeppelin III,' to work on material for their fourth album.

In wales, Robert and Jimmy began to develop the introduction and work out the separate sections of a new song, an anthem that would replace "Dazed and Confused" as the centerpiece of Led Zeppelin's concerts. In November, Jimmy dropped a hint of the new song's existence to a music journalist in London: "It's an idea for a really long track.... You know how 'Dazed and Confused' and songs like that were broken into sections? Well, we want to try something new with the organ and acoustic guitar building up and building up, and then the electric part starts.... It might be a fifteen-minute track."

By the time Led Zeppelin began to record at Island Studios in Basing Street, London, in December 1970, Jimmy thought the band might end up with enough music for a double album. Part of "Stairway to Heaven" — the six-string intro that had been composed in Wales — was recorded there. But soon the group decided to move the rehearsals and recording to a country house in Hampshire. One evening, after Rolling Stones road manager and boogie-woogie piano virtuoso Ian Stewart had arrived with the Stones' mobile studio, Jimmy and John Paul Jones finished and wrote down the chord changes to "Stairway." The next day, the band ran through "Stairway to Heaven" for the first time.

As the various sections began to come together, the musicians began to smile at one another. Again, they felt the magic of their first rehearsal. They knew they had something. Bonzo had problems with the timing on the twelve-string section before the solo, and they had to play it a few times before they got it the way Jimmy wanted it. While this was going on, Robert was listening and penciling in lyrics. "He must have written three-quarters of the lyrics on the spot," Jimmy said later. "He didn't have to go away and think about them. Amazing, really."

The lyrics of "Stairway" reflected Robert's current reading. He had been poring through the works of the British antiquarian Lewis Spence. He later cited Spence's Magic Arts in Celtic Britain as one of the sources for the lyrics to "Stairway." With its starkly pagan imagery of trees and brooks, pipers and the May Queen, shining white light and the forest echoing with laughter, the song seemed to be an invitation to abandon the new traditions and follow the old gods. It expressed a yearning for spiritual transformation deep in the hearts of a new generation. In time, it became Led Zeppelin's anthem.