The Cat with the Crooked Tail by Once Upon a Dance

Of the many cover versions of 'Stairway,' two in particular have earned praise from the members of Led Zeppelin: Dolly Parton's version on her 2002 album Halos and Horns, and a 2012 performance at the Kennedy Center by Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart as part of a concert honoring Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones. There are a lot of people who are making money there, and if that's the way they need to do it, then do it without my lyrics.

I walked around, and I couldn't actually believe, I couldn't take people seriously who could come up with sketches like that. The first time I heard it was early in the morning when I was living at home, and I heard it on a news program. Robert Plant addressed the issue in an interview with Musician magazine: ''Stairway To Heaven' was written with every best intention, and as far as reversing tapes and putting messages on the end, that's not my idea of making music. In his books, Crowley advocated that his followers learn to read and speak backwards. This is rumored to contain backward satanic messages, as if Led Zeppelin sold their souls to the devil in exchange for 'Stairway To Heaven.' Supporting this theory is the fact that Jimmy Page bought Aleister Crowley's house in Scotland, known as Boleskine House. Bands would go there to get some privacy and focus on songwriting, as the biggest distractions were the sheep and other wildlife. Headley Grange may not be as enchanting as Bron-yr-Aur, but the place had some character: It was a huge, old, dusty mansion with no electricity but great acoustics. Plant corroborated the story in his testimony. Page told a different story under oath: When he was called to the stand in 2016 as part of a plagiarism trial over this song, he said that he wrote the music on his own and first played it for his bandmates at Headley Grange in Liphook Road, Headley, Hampshire, where they recorded it using a mobile studio owned by The Rolling Stones. Page sometimes told a story of the pair sitting by a fire at the cabin as they composed it, a tale that gives the song a mystical origin story, as there could have been spirits at play within those walls. Page and Plant explained that they started working on it at a 250-year-old Welsh cottage called Bron-yr-Aur, where they wrote the songs for Led Zeppelin III.

In October 1970, after about 18 months of near constant touring, the song took shape. By April, he was telling journalists that their new song might be 15-minutes long, and described it as something that would 'build towards a climax' with John Bonham's drums not coming in for some time. Jimmy Page would work on the song in an 8-track studio he had installed in his boathouse, trying out different sections on guitar. Led Zeppelin started planning 'Stairway' in early 1970 when they decided to create a new, epic song to replace ' Dazed And Confused' as the centerpiece of their concerts.

The Cat with the Crooked Tail by Once Upon a Dance