by Al Drinkle
In Which Al Derides The Most Beloved Rock Song in the History of Recorded Music
(WARNING: The views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the opinions held by the Metrovinians in general, and will almost certainly cause Led Zeppelin fans some degree of consternation. If you are offended by any part of what follows, please direct your anger towards Al specifically, and not towards Metrovino as a business).
I hadn’t heard Led Zeppelin's “Stairway to Heaven” for at least a couple of decades, but a recent encounter with the overrated song proved to be illuminating. In fact, it inspired many disparate considerations, particularly the frequent asininity of popular music; the impressionability and naivety of juvenescence; and the shortcomings of turntables in busy restaurants.
My personal relationship with “Stairway” began in early childhood. I was obsessed with music, but my entire known universe of the medium was my father's record collection. It's incredible to think of how many of my early, instinctive responses to his records seem absolutely rational to me as an adult. I was compelled by the curse words employed by Guns N’ Roses on Appetite For Destruction, though the musical content quickly wore thin; Sabbath's Paranoid simultaneously horrified and enthralled me; I noticed that the songs became progressively polished and boring on the chronologically-assembled Who's Greatest Hits; and although I loved Zeppelin stompers like “Communication Breakdown” and “Rock and Roll”, I found that their records required constant interaction in order to skip over the frequent dribble to find the rare rockers.
At age nine, I borrowed a gigantic Yamaha acoustic guitar from my aunt and began to take lessons. I longed for an electric guitar so that I could rock like my heroes, and my father said that he would buy me one once I had learned to play “Stairway to Heaven". Not long after, I saw Wayne's World on the big screen and was perplexed by the scene in which Wayne was prohibited from playing the song in the guitar shop. “No Stairway! Denied!”. Considering that my fingers could scarcely reach around the neck of the guitar, it was with considerable effort that I learned the song, and given my boundless curiosity, I also became interested in the lyrics along the way.
I recall sitting on the side of my bed, studying the “Stairway” lyric sheet with my mother. She had the patience of a saint, answering all of my questions about the seemingly cryptic lyrics the best that she could. “What's a ‘May Queen'? Are the rings of smoke through the trees from drugs? Is ‘to be a rock and not to roll’ an insult to The Rolling Stones, or a reference to rock and roll?”. We must have picked it apart for an hour or more! A few days later I was in the car with my father and asked him what he thought the lyrics were about. “Maybe a warning against greed,” he said. “I'm not really sure".
After scouring the Bargain Finder for months on end, my mother drove me to a home address in Kensington to look at a $75 Mann Les Paul copy with a cigarette burn between two of the tuning pegs, and a $50 Harmony amplifier with a built-in 12-inch speaker. We bought them both and my life changed forever. From that point forward, I never again voluntarily listened to “Stairway to Heaven”—and who needed Led Zeppelin anyway? I had discovered AC/DC, whose records were sans acoustic guitars and packed with hits (or at least they are if you're 10 years old).
Many, many years passed, and my 40th birthday came and went. One day while on vacation to celebrate this milestone, I was the first, and perhaps most eager lunch guest at a noteworthy destination for wine lovers in London, England. I was greeted and seated and while perusing the menu, a vaguely familiar song began emanating from the speakers. Upon hearing a droning chipmunk, I realized that somewhere in the restaurant, Lou Reed's Transformer was spinning at 45 rpm. Despite the idleness of the staff, it took a full two and a half songs for any of them to realize that there was something amiss with the soundtrack.
When restaurants use a turntable instead of a streaming device, it's hard not to appreciate their atavistic tendencies, even if it's just to reinforce how hipster they are. However, there are at least three possible shortcomings. The first is that, perhaps with the exception of special events, it's rare that whoever is in control of the music is able to devote their full attention to it. A side of a record will play for an average of 20 minutes or so, which to somebody participating in a busy service might seem like 5 seconds. I've had countless restaurant experiences during which the music was only playing half of the time. Admittedly, I'd rather that my food and drinks arrive in a timely manner instead of compromising these positives for a seamless soundtrack, but the intermittency of music will rarely go without the notice of diners.
Second, just as I found very few of my father's records to be enjoyable throughout an entire side, it requires careful curation to engender or maintain the intended mood and vibe of a room when one is relying on an in-house vinyl collection. I'm not saying that it can't be done, but having the right records and the right people to spin them at the right time is an art. (I recall eating a particularly early breakfast in a Portland diner some years ago to the rambunctious strains of Songs the Lord Taught Us by The Cramps! I loved it, but I'm positive that I was in the minority). This leads me to my last point.
Some people have inherently bad taste in music, or at least an inherently poor grasp of pairing music to situations. Admittedly, such people's taste is equally abhorrent whether they’re selecting music on vinyl or from a streaming device, but at least in the case of the latter there's a chance that a decent song might randomly arise. Now back to my lunch in London…
That afternoon I spoiled myself with excellent wines and incredible food. Lou Reed was slowed down to the intended speed, and the restaurant filled up. It was a memorable people-watching experience from my corner booth, with a vantage point of both the dining room and the patio. I took my time. Another record played, but it must have been innocuous because I can't recall what it was. Then, having hedonistically sated my thirst and hunger, I was ready to settle the bill and be on my way. But the servers had become far too busy with other guests to enable this.
I sat at my table, enjoying my buzz as a long paucity of music was corrected with a song that I hadn't heard in decades. It was “Black Dog”, the album-opener of Led Zeppelin's 4th record. Decent song, I suppose, despite my disdain for how sexy Robert Plant finds his own voice to be. But when “Rock and Roll” began afterwards, I recalled the establishment's use of the turntable and thought to myself, “surely they won't allow this record to play any further than this song…”. Of course I was wrong. I began to suffer from indigestion, anxiety and the onset of an existential crisis by the time we were halfway through the ponderous, ingratiating minstrel-like ukulele-wank that came next. (Yes, I know it's a mandolin, not a ukulele). Since I'm on a computer, I can tell you that this song is called “The Battle of Evermore", and based on my recent empirical evidence, I can report that it's potentially the biggest party-killer that could possibly be played in a restaurant or bar. “Surely, now, they'll select a new record,” I thought to myself, “or at least they'll let me pay so that I can get out of here”. But I was wrong on both fronts, and it was to get worse.
All of a sudden I was 9-years-old again, trying to wrap my tiny fingers around the neck of a massive Yamaha acoustic guitar. “Stairway to Heaven” had begun, and the guitar shop in Wayne's World had been right to ban it. I honestly can't think of a more asinine or clichéd song that a restaurant could play, particularly in the town in which it was born. “Local music,” I had laughed to my wife as a Rolling Stones song came on in a pub the night before, whereas this time, all alone in dining purgatory with “Stairway” as my insulting soundtrack, I considered throwing myself down the spiral staircase that led to the toilets.
Instead, I waited for my bill and listened to the lyrics for the first time since I was a kid. I thought about how patient and indulgent my parents had always been to my siblings and I, and how supportive they were to our interests. My mother will never get back that hour that she spent analyzing the meaning of the song with her 9-year-old son, and even my father's laconic comment about Plant's lyrics had been overly generous to my curiosity. Personally, I probably wouldn’t have been so accommodating.
If I had children and they asked me what the lyrics to “Stairway to Heaven” meant, I'd tell them that it was the tepid result of a bunch of smug, drug-addled, self-indulgent, unjustifiably-wealthy, barely-literate twenty-somethings attempting meaningful songwriting. I'd tell them that what Led Zeppelin's partisans view as lyrically cryptic, layered and symbolic is actually vapid, delusional and incoherent, only noteworthy for demonstrating that the band had perhaps graduated beyond their propensity towards outright plagiarization. I'd explain to them why the song should never be played at a party, in a place of business or during a meal. But if any of them played guitar, I'd insist that they learn the song as my father insisted that I did, and that after doing so they should immediately proceed to forget it. Then I'd introduce them to The Ramones’ first record to showcase what drug-addled, barely-literate twenty-somethings could achieve if they aimed for and struck the gut and the heart instead of ineffectually courting the intellect.
The song ended, my bill arrived, and I spilled onto the streets of London, wondering how long it was going to take the restaurant staff to flip the record.
