in the dark and sing to the light, she is, I believe, outside the immediate frame of the battle, speaking not as the town crier but as a wise woman, a mystic juggler of pagan polarities, a witch. She is the Lady returned in the guise of the High Priestess. Denny was a significant enough presence onto get her own sigil on the inner sleeve, and when we consult Koch, we find that hersignifies the Godhead. In occult iconography, the downward pointing triangle also frequently represents the yoni, the female generative organs. Taking these two together, I’d read Denny’s glyph as a sign of the Triple Goddess. Town crier or not, she introduces Percy to the power of the sacred feminine.
For the rest of the album, Percy struggles with his desire to both serve and master this Lady. Here theanswer is clear and pagan: one honors the Goddess by bringing the balance back, the lost harmony of human labor and the great good earth. The valley’s bounty brings happiness, but it is our “tender care” and peaceful ways that keep the soil rich and the apples good. This labor is not just functional, but spiritual. That’s what Denny’s song and dance routine is about: We repay the earth through ritual; that’s how we cease to forget. In “Down By the Seaside” from
Physical Graffiti
, a song originally recorded in 1970, Plant gives a similar reason for why we should sing for the sunshine and pray for the rain: “show your love for Lady Nature and she will come back again.” After the energetic initiations of “Black Dog” and “Rock and Roll,” Percy discovers the war in heaven and the healing rituals of earth. Polarity brings ambiguity. Perhaps this is why Page joked to a reporter that this song about battle sounded “like a dance-around-the-maypole number.” 58 Even the tides of war, with their apocalyptic force of judgment, may serve as a spring-clean for the May Queen.
IN THE LIGHT YOU WILL FIND THE ROAD
“Stairway to Heaven” isn’t the greatest rock song of the 1970s; it is the greatest spell of the 1970s. Think about it: we are all very sick of the thing, but in someprimordial way
it is still number one.
Everyone knows it, everyone—from Dolly Parton to Frank Zappa to Pat Boone to Jimmy Castor—has covered it, and everyone with a guitar knows how to play those notorious opening bars. As far as rock radio goes, “Stairway” is generally considered to be the most-requested and most-played song of all time, despite the fact that it runs eight minutes and was never released as a single. In 1991,
Esquire
magazine did some back-of-the-envelope calculations and figured that the total time that “Stairway” had been on the air was about 44 years—and that was over a decade ago. Somewhere a Clear Channel robot is probably broadcasting it as you read these words. And no wonder: when classic rock stations roll out their Top 500 surveys, which they still do with disarming frequency, odds are overwhelming that this warhorse will take the victory lap. Even our dislike and mockery is ritualistic. The dumb parodies; the
Wayne’s World
-inspired folklore about guitar shops demanding customers not play it; even Robert Plant’s public disavowal of the song—all these just prove the rule. “Stairway to Heaven” is not just number one. It is
the One
, the quintessence, the closest AOR will ever get you to the absolute.
If any Zeppelin song deserves to be dubbed a “myth,” it is this one. But what does that mean, to call a song a myth? So far I have been too lazy to define the word,trusting, like the man said about porn, that you will know it when you see it. You could define myth in the romantic terms that probably informed Page and Plant: Myths are Big Stories that tell poetic truths about humanity and its role in the cosmos. The “hero’s journey,” the monomyth popularized by Joseph Campbell, is such a poetic archetype, and certainly informs my own view of Percy and his ramblings through the landscape of. After
For the rest of the album, Percy struggles with his desire to both serve and master this Lady. Here theanswer is clear and pagan: one honors the Goddess by bringing the balance back, the lost harmony of human labor and the great good earth. The valley’s bounty brings happiness, but it is our “tender care” and peaceful ways that keep the soil rich and the apples good. This labor is not just functional, but spiritual. That’s what Denny’s song and dance routine is about: We repay the earth through ritual; that’s how we cease to forget. In “Down By the Seaside” from
Physical Graffiti
, a song originally recorded in 1970, Plant gives a similar reason for why we should sing for the sunshine and pray for the rain: “show your love for Lady Nature and she will come back again.” After the energetic initiations of “Black Dog” and “Rock and Roll,” Percy discovers the war in heaven and the healing rituals of earth. Polarity brings ambiguity. Perhaps this is why Page joked to a reporter that this song about battle sounded “like a dance-around-the-maypole number.” 58 Even the tides of war, with their apocalyptic force of judgment, may serve as a spring-clean for the May Queen.
IN THE LIGHT YOU WILL FIND THE ROAD
“Stairway to Heaven” isn’t the greatest rock song of the 1970s; it is the greatest spell of the 1970s. Think about it: we are all very sick of the thing, but in someprimordial way
it is still number one.
Everyone knows it, everyone—from Dolly Parton to Frank Zappa to Pat Boone to Jimmy Castor—has covered it, and everyone with a guitar knows how to play those notorious opening bars. As far as rock radio goes, “Stairway” is generally considered to be the most-requested and most-played song of all time, despite the fact that it runs eight minutes and was never released as a single. In 1991,
Esquire
magazine did some back-of-the-envelope calculations and figured that the total time that “Stairway” had been on the air was about 44 years—and that was over a decade ago. Somewhere a Clear Channel robot is probably broadcasting it as you read these words. And no wonder: when classic rock stations roll out their Top 500 surveys, which they still do with disarming frequency, odds are overwhelming that this warhorse will take the victory lap. Even our dislike and mockery is ritualistic. The dumb parodies; the
Wayne’s World
-inspired folklore about guitar shops demanding customers not play it; even Robert Plant’s public disavowal of the song—all these just prove the rule. “Stairway to Heaven” is not just number one. It is
the One
, the quintessence, the closest AOR will ever get you to the absolute.
If any Zeppelin song deserves to be dubbed a “myth,” it is this one. But what does that mean, to call a song a myth? So far I have been too lazy to define the word,trusting, like the man said about porn, that you will know it when you see it. You could define myth in the romantic terms that probably informed Page and Plant: Myths are Big Stories that tell poetic truths about humanity and its role in the cosmos. The “hero’s journey,” the monomyth popularized by Joseph Campbell, is such a poetic archetype, and certainly informs my own view of Percy and his ramblings through the landscape of. After
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