Stairway to...well, it definitely ain't Heaven
The story of how Jimmy Page’s iconic guitar intro came to be known among guitar players as “the forbidden riff,” and why.
Why is the intro to “Stairway to Heaven” called the forbidden riff?
Well, there’s an old question and one that everyone who frequented guitar shops all over the world during the 70’s and early 80s would know the answer to.
Jimmy Page is arguably one of the greatest guitarists of all time. His work with Led Zeppelin was nothing short of genius. But the one song that everyone knows by Led Zep is the one that is the least challenging for budding guitarists.
It comprises an easy ascending progression which is pleasing to the ear and resolves quickly in less than 20 seconds. Hence it provides a quick and easy sequence to play on any guitar to impress your friends. On top of that, at the time of its release and for about 10 years after, Jimmy Page was considered to be the best guitarist ever (arguably of course) so playing anything by him when you are starting out on the guitar was a real confidence booster - or so you thought when you were starting out.
However, the propensity for beginners to go into a guitar shop and attempt to “wow” the staff or customers with this intro to Stairway To Heaven made this particular refrain soon became tiring for those that had to suffer it several times daily. So much so, some guitar shops put notices up saying “please refrain from playing Stairway to Heaven” or the like. I saw various versions of that including one which threatened a permanent ban from the shop.
Now you might think this is going too far. But when you worked in a guitar shop during the 70s and 80s, much of your business came from the regulars who frequented them. They were serious guitarists, often session players, who were there to meet other serious musicians, look at the musicians wanted adverts, and have a coffee while they waited, perhaps play a couple of guitars and maybe buy one if they needed that sound, or an amp or something else of medium to high value; certainly they would regularly buy strings, picks, leads and other consumables from you. The last thing they wanted to hear was a nubie playing that song that shall not be named …. badly. Not to mention the poor staff who had it inflicted on them many times a day like the Christmas song that drives you nuts only it didn’t go away after 12 days …. It just goes on and on for years as the boom in learning guitar was at its height.
It actually got so bad in the early 80s that serious players simply frequented other places to meet their other musician friends instead of the local guitar shop. That’s bad news for the proprietor as they were now spending all their cash in the emerging coffee shops so they didn’t have the money for the medium to high priced items any more.
I imagine this was happening all over the western world at that time - good players would be testing a piece of equipment in the shop and someone would be playing stairway to heaven loud because it was the first thing they learned to impress their friends who didn’t know any better, and that would literally put the serious player off from buying because he couldn’t hear himself think.
I have to admit that when I started playing in the early 80s I did play that refrain - but I was looking to buy a medium priced item from a little shop in Norwich UK where I lived. I could play a bit then, but I’d learnt by ear. The lovely owner of the shop didn’t throw me out, he very kindly showed me how to play the pieces that I was playing incorrectly. I bought my first electric guitar from him and a 100w sold state amp. Later, when I was a much better player, I returned and spent a large amount of money with him.
I became a session player during the mid 80s and even then the stigma of stairway to heaven intro was still in place. But now nubes were playing VanHalen Eruption or even some Vai - it might have been the only thing they could play but they were actually playing it. It didn’t make me leave the shop but the temptation to go over and show them how it should be played was quite hard to resist after 2 hours of it.
Now it’s a very different scene. Guitar shops are no longer as prevalent as they were. General music shops are the norm now with a small guitar section selling uninteresting stuff aimed at the new players and those that want to upgrade to medium levels. I never hear anything being played any more.
That may be the case over in Merrye Olde, but last time I was in one of the music megastores like Guitar Center or Sam Ash on a Saturday afternoon, which in my gigging days was quite frequently, I assure you it was NOT.
Ash in CLT was my preferred haunt; I had good connections there, particularly with the head of the guitar section—a very nice, savvy, and extremely knowledgeable young Hawaiian dude who called himself “Pineapple,” go figure—who just happened to also be tight with the only guy I allowed to work on my guitars besides me once I’d gotten to know him, an incredibly gifted luthier by the name of Craig Landau.
Everybody in the guitar department at Sam Ash knew me well, and knew I was a professional, not just another of those pimply teenybopper hot-shoes sitting there on a drum-throne obliviously shredding away through a Marshall half-stack cranked up to eleven, showcasing the latest Vai, Satriani, or Malmsteen licks they’d spent months half-learning in their bedroom at Mom’s house—which I was confident would be the only gig they’d ever play.
GOD, but it was literally painful; Sam Ash on any given Saturday was a special corner of Hell for any working guitarist, believe you me. So much so that, whenever I could manage it, I’d put off stopping in to grab another case of D’Addario Jazz Rocks and/or a gross of Dunlop Tortex picks until Monday or Tuesday. Wasn’t always possible, of course, but boy, did I ever try. I tried hard.
My lifelong friend Tim Conard, one of the finest Fender P-bassists I ever did have the privilege of knowing or playing with, actually landed a job at Ash years ago; he lasted about three months before bowing out due to the awful torture inflicted by those interminable Sam Ash Saturday sessions. First cpl-three times I walked in when Tim was pulling a shift, he’d breeze up to say hi with a broad smile on his mug. After those halcyon early days, though, he’d have that blank, thousand-yard-stare not unfamiliar to combat vets, staggering over towards me like one of the undead. The transformation from friendly, happy-go-lucky fella to shambolic, groaning zombie was something to see, it really was.
By the time I started frequenting Sam Ash as a serious player, The Forbidden Riff had long since faded from the hack's lexicon, supplanted by more contemporary—and infinitely more irritating—hair-farmer metal, duuuude! My own gripe with “Stairway” was more personal, operating as it did on a somewhat different plane. It was the same with Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird,” actually. For one thing, I’d heard those damned chestnuts plenty enough times already on classic rock radio, til I was sick unto death of both of them, regardless of how much I always liked Zep and Skynyrd.
You probably are too by now, I’d bet.
Numero dos, an agony fully understood only by those of us who actually do, y’know, perform regularly in public for pay, was the never-ending parade of inebriated rednecks, frat boys, and sundry other species of amateur drunk who’d lurch their way up to the stage towards the end of the set to request—nay, demand—that we play one of those two songs for them, spritzing me in the face with a fine mist of beery, pickles-and-vomit-reeking spittle. Occasionally, these interlopers would be waving a small wad of crumpled singles in one fist by way of incentive. Or so they thought, anyway; they always seemed quite shocked to learn just how little an enticement that really amounted to, every single time.
Sometimes, instead of launching a heedless frontal assault against the sacred stage-audience boundary, the drunked-up music connoisseurs would gather with a small gaggle of amused friends at the back of the room to yell their song requests at the top of their lungs. As if we hadn't heard it a blue million times before; as if they’d thought it up all by their lonesome; as if they deserved applause for this unique new wrinkle in the annals of impromptu roadhouse song-requests.
This could yield some unexpectedly hilarious results, such as the time some guy kept yelling out song after song, vainly trying to coax us into another encore which just wasn’t no way no how gonna happen. Can’t remember where exactly we were playing that particular night, but the guy got the ball rolling with the typical litany of “Free Bird!” “Stairway!” “Sweet Home Alabama!” before working his way through a dozen or so songs of every imaginable R&R sub-genre—none of them bearing even a passing resemblance to the one we’d been playing all night—finally capping his effort as the house lights came up with “AIR SUPPLY! COME ON, WE’RE DESPERATE!!!"
Heh. I still laugh about that one. Gotta give the guy points for originality and creativity, if nothing else.
Then there was the time this drunk-as-a-boiled-owl Yuppie chick staggered her way to the stage, leaned over unsteadily, and implored me to “play some Celine Dion for me, pleeeaaase?” I responded with what to me was the obvious riposte: “Sorry, honey, but I just ain’t plumbed the right way to be able to pull that off.” Whereupon she blearily whined, “C’mon, can’t you just at least try?!?” My response: “Probably. But I really don’t want to."
Whereupon I, in turn, unshipped my guitar, racked it in its stand, switched my amp off, and then exited, Stage Right, with no little alacrity. And that put a gratifying end to that wholly pointless dialogue, you betcher.
For many years I've told people that the worst part of being in a band is that you get to see the whole world at its absolute worst:
The bombed-out-of-her-gourd chick in the parking lot begging you to come over to her car and let her blow you, the aforementioned revolting pickles-and-vomit reek wafting off her in nearly visible waves—a blow job that you already know only too well is going to conclude with her upchucking all over your bare crotch, so thanks, but, well...no thanks. Never happened to me, thankfully, but I have at least two (2) musician friends it DID happen to, so I was forewarned, you might say
The two-bit crooks, sleazy, greasy grifters, and on-the-make con artists—usually draped in enough gold rope-chain to make Mr T blush (probably available by the yard at wherethehellever such things are sold) and shoddy, ginormous knock-off “Rolex” watches—who make their living entirely by ripping off bands: club owners who don’t pay when the show is over; promoters who don’t promote anything but themselves; managers scheming to sell you off to the lowest bidder, fast as they can; booking agents who lie outrageously about the purely notional “charms" of the venues they’re pocketing a nice sub rosa percentage from in addition to what they’re charging you for the service, etc
The low-level record label flunkies pathetically trying to impress you and anybody else who’s willing to listen with their nonexistent power, prestige, and influence in The Biz: seducing you with promises of incalculable riches; intergalactic fame; limousines, private jets, and supermodels; a succession of chart-topping multi-platinum albums recorded in the most prestigious studios by the most renowned producers and engineers; sky’s-the-limit advance checks; unlimited label support, promo, and PR for the extended world tour with Aerosmith, The Black Crows, and The Rolling Stones (them as support, you the headliner, natch) he’s lining up for you; and myriad other things they can’t possibly deliver, throwing around weight they just don’t have all over the landscape
The obnoxiously-sozzled young pussyhounds who should have been cut off and 86’d by the bartender hours ago (and surely would have been in any reputable establishment), in hot, desperate pursuit of any and every unaccompanied female in sight as last call creeps up on them—be their intended prey fugly or attractive; well-built or corpulent as a sedentary manatee; basically-sweet girls or snooty, quarrelsome bitches, neither Miss Right nor Miss Right Now—who can’t get away from them fast enough; no kidding, I’ve actually seen these doofi quite literally running after some poor girl, arms outstretched, as said girl kicks out of her pumps and takes to her heels in hopes of making good her escape
The guy (or, once in a rare while, girl) who spends the entire night insisting that really, I can play, I’m good, so why don’t ya let me get up onstage and “jam” with you guys, huuuuh? These would-be local gloryhounds will often recruit accomplices to assist them in their quest for fame and glory, in the shape of friends and/or girlfriends who likewise assure you that, oh yes, he really IS good! But, with the lone exception of a guy at NYC’s long-gone Louisiana Bar and Grill who played rub-board, they never, ever are (against my better judgment, I finally agreed to let Rub-Board Man, who I later learned was from NOLA, up with us, and damned if dude didn’t completely blow me away! He played a cpl songs, then started to politely walk offstage, which is when I grabbed him by the arm and insisted he play the whole danged night with us; yes, he was THAT good)
Kissing cousins with, but even worse than the previous type are the supremely nervy fucksticks who will just barge up onto the stage uninvited in the middle of a song, wrest the mic away from you, and start in “singing”—if you want to call what they’re doing singing. Which, in every case I’ve experienced so far, you simply can’t, not if you want to hold onto whatever integrity you may possess. NEVER have I known one of these excrescences to be any good at all; usually what happens is, after massacring a line or two, they look sheepishly over one shoulder at you with that deer-in-the-headlights stare, as if to say, “OH SHIT, I FUCKED UP! WHAT HAVE I DONE!! HELP MEEEE!!!” Best way I know of to deal with such are to refuse them rescue; just step back and let them stew in their own self-inflicted public humiliation until the song ends—then, as they’re scurrying offstage to the familiar safety and anonymity of the crowd, get on the mic yourself and rave about what a GREAT job they did: “Wasn’t that GREAT?!? Let’s give him a HUGE round of applause, everybody!” with the sarcasm dripping so heavily off every word it can physically burn the skin. That way, at least you can expect it to be a good, long time before he ever attempts such a bodaciously rude thing again.
Yep, the glitz and glamour of showbiz. Nothing like it but more of it, amIright? But I have to confess: even in light of all the above horror-stories of affront, insult, and witless imposition—every word of which I swear is true and accurate—I do miss the life terribly, and I will until the day I die.