Stairway To Heaven 20th Anniversary Commemorative Edition from 1992

This 20th anniversary promo book marks one of the few times “Stairway To Heaven” was released as a single. The band’s recording label wanted to release the song as a single but the Led Zeppelin’s manager refused in 1972. With that decision record buyers began to invest in the fourth album as if it were a single.

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From the descriptive insert:

In 1971, the members of Led Zeppelin—Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham—gathered at Headley Grange, a converted poorhouse in Hampshire, England, to begin recording their next album. One night, they started work on a new song…

Page recalls: “Bonzo (Bonham) and Robert had gone out for the night, and I worked really hard on the thing. Jonesy and I then routined it together… Later, we ran through it with the drums. Robert was sitting there by the fireplace just writing away, and suddenly there it was…

Plant picks up the story: “It was done very quickly. It was a very fluid, unnaturally easy track. There was something pushing it, saying ‘you guys are okay, but if you want to do something timeless, here’s a wedding song for you.’”

The song was “Stairway To Heaven,” and as Page once noted, it was the song which “crystallized the essence of the band.” The final, eight-minute version was recorded at Island Studios in London, and released November 8, 1971 on the untitled fourth Zeppelin album. Never edited and never released as a single, it nevertheless went on to become the most played song in the history of rock radio.

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of “Stairway To Heaven,” we are pleased to present you with this very limited, promotional-only edition. Twenty years on, the song remains the same—a magical moment in the history of rock and roll music.

—February 1992