Meaning of Stairway to Heaven

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/030425.html
The song would seem to be about Mother Mary, the Mother of Christ, let me walk you through it, see if you might see my proclivity to believe such.

Stairway to Heaven.
There’s a lady who’s sure
All that glitters is gold “faithful and knows the truth about God”
And she’s buying a stairway to heaven. “She was favored by God so much she bore His Son.”
When she gets there she knows
If the stores are all closed
With a word she can get what she came for. “She will be held above the angels as all the saints will be, how much more so shall Mother Mary?”
Ooh, ooh, and she’s buying a stairway to heaven. “But her faith, not deeds”

There’s a sign on the wall
But she wants to be sure
’cause you know sometimes words have two meanings. “Writing is on the wall, but don’t be fooled by the Adversary”
In a tree by the brook
There’s a songbird who sings,
Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven. “Sometimes we are fearful, as she was before the birth, being cast upon for being with child, before Husband.”
Ooh, it makes me wonder,
Ooh, it makes me wonder. “He, the singer/writer ponders weighty issues”

There’s a feeling I get
When I look to the west,
And my spirit is crying for leaving. “As the lightening shines from east even unto the west, so shall the sign of the coming of Christ will be, and then the saints will meet Him in the air.”
In my thoughts I have seen
Rings of smoke through the trees,
And the voices of those who standing looking. “This could be the dead saints rising to meet Christ as well, and the world watching?”
Ooh, it makes me wonder,
Ooh, it really makes me wonder.

And it’s whispered that soon
If we all call the tune
Then the piper will lead us to reason. “Son is calling us, or the Holy Spirit, God or a preacherman, disciple or apostle, take your pick.”
And a new day will dawn “New earth and New Heaven come down.”
For those who stand long “The faithful will prevail”
And the forests will echo with laughter. “The Lion will play with the Lamb.”

If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow “If there is sin or trouble in your life”
Don’t be alarmed now,
It’s just a spring clean for the may queen. “It to will pass”
Yes, there are two paths you can go by “Path of light or darkness”
But in the long run
There’s still time to change the road you’re on. “We can always turn to Jesus while still mortals”
And it makes me wonder. “Pondering it all again, like you do too.”

Your head is humming and it won’t go
In case you don’t know,
The piper’s calling you to join him,
Dear lady, can you hear the wind blow,
And did you know
Your stairway lies on the whispering wind. “God is calling.”

And as we wind on down the road
Our shadows taller than our soul. “Mankind see things in this world, and less of the spirit world.”
There walks a lady we all know “This Lady we all know.”
Who shines white light and wants to show “Is of the light, and gave birth to the light and wants everyone to know.”
How ev’rything still turns to gold.
And if you listen very hard
The tune will come to you at last.
When all are one and one is all “Speaks for itself within Christianity”
To be a rock and not to roll. “Be steadfast like Peter the Rock, could also be about Christ being the cornerstone”

And she’s buying a stairway to heaven. “Not by deeds but by faith”

I of course could give you verses to back and even further my perspectives on the matter. First time I heard it I was about 10 years old or so. . . . I’m now 42. What do you think?

I think it was in the wrong Forum for the desired discussion, so I have moved it to the proper Forum.

I am also not at all sure that we are on the proper side of the “fair use” clause of copyright law, so I may be doing a bit of editing.

[ /Moderator Mode ]

OK. I’m not close to an expert on copyright and I cannot see an easy way to disentangle the commentary from the lyrics (I know how to delete text; I am just not sure how much snipping I should do), so I’ve left it for the brave staff that oversees this Forum.

Here’s the Straight Dope column about the song. You’ve put sets of quotes next to each other, but I see no connection whatsoever. I don’t think the song is really about anything. The woman, whoever she is, is materialistic andh think she can buy anything… and that’s about all I get from it.

You’re not into Shakespeare, I take it?

If this line means anything at all, I think it refers to rite of spring type celebrations.

It’s drug-induced meaningless nonsense.

It doesn’t rhyme, and really it’s not even a good song. I can’t see why it’s considered so sacred when it’s just blah.

The first verse is about a woman who values money and doesn’t understand that it won’t buy her way into Heaven. The line “and she’s buying a stairway to Heaven” is irony. That’s all I’m going to say to refute the OP. I’m sure others will pick up from here (or not).

If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow
Don’t be alarmed now,
It’s just a spring clean for the may queen

A hedgerow is a manicured row of hedges, and if you have a bustle in it “unwanted activates”, you have troubles. The spring clean for the May Queen could denote a washing away of sins to of eligible virgins. I don’t believe he is talking of the lady, but rather all virgins, as the song goes on about the “calling”
Now there is also the concept that the “hedgerow is symbolic for Mother Marys womb”
If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow “If there activity in your womb, the Christ child, and without sex, a women would be alalrmed . . . . ”
Don’t be alarmed now,
It’s just a spring clean for the may queen “It’s just a washing away of sins (atonement by the Christ child in the womb of the virgin mary. Meaning what’s in her womb, will one day clean her sins as well”

Details on the May Queen
The Celtic tradition of Mayday in the British isles continued to be celebrated through-out the middle ages by rural and village folk. Here the traditions were similar with a goddess and god of the hunt.

As European peasants moved away from hunting gathering societies their gods and goddesses changed to reflect a more agrarian society. Thus Diana and Herne came to be seen by medieval villagers as fertility deities of the crops and fields. Diana became the Queen of the May and Herne became Robin Goodfellow (a predecessor of Robin Hood) or the Green Man.

The Queen of the May reflected the life of the fields and Robin reflected the hunting traditions of the woods. The rites of mayday were part and parcel of pagan celebrations of the seasons. Many of these pagan rites were later absorbed by the Christian church in order to win over converts from the ‘Old Religion’.

Mayday celebrations in Europe varied according to locality, however they were immensely popular with artisans and villagers until the 19th Century. The Christian church could not eliminate many of the traditional feast and holy days of the Old Religion so they were transformed into Saint days.

http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/5202/mayday.htm
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=may+queen&btnG=Google+Search

KingJehu

“Bustle” doesn’t mean “unwanted activities.”

Or it could be a stupid, stupid rhyme by a band not noted for the quality of its lyrics. This part of the verse (the “bustle” is a “spring clean?”) is nonsense.

Are you Dan Brown?

Look, KingJehu… Led Zeppelin were really big into the occult for a while. They actually snuck some references to Aleister Crowley into their albums, and some people insist that there are Satanic messages in Stairway. They’re wrong, but the fact that you’re suggesting it’s a Christian allegory is pretty funny.

But it does mean “unusual noise”. As I noted in another lyrics thread recently, I don’t know why this gets called nonsense…it seems pretty obvious to me it means “If your here noise in your bushes it’s the fairies doing they’re spring cleaning”.

That said that it’s “really” about the virgin Mary is pretty ridiculous. I doubt Led Zepplin had much interest in talking about the BVM, and if they did, why would they hide it in a bunch of obscure references? Beyond that if they did, who cares? If it was there intention to communicate something or other about Mary they failed. If Robert Plant came up to me and said yes, that song was really about the Virgin Mary, now you know, I would just say he did a piss poor job as an artist because I never once thought about Mary while listening to that song.

:smack: ok I was going to let “they’re” go but “your here” ? :smack:

How embarrasssing.

All these years, and I had thought it was one huge Zen koan. When people asked me what it meant, I said, “Moo.”

“And cheese balls on the stairway… to heaven…”

That’s by far the deepest commentary and interpretation of “Stairway” ever.

No, you’re thinking of “Black Dog,” which asks the musical question “Does a big-legged woman have the Buddha nature?”

I thought it meant that the DJ had to use the bathroom.

:smiley:

Of course not. The bustle is a lady’s undergarment which the May queen tossed out as part of her spring cleaning.

Inna Gadda Davida if he wants to grab a smoke, too.

Here’s what the song really means, taking it three lines at a time:

The first three lines introduce a woman. She highly values wealth, and is probably rich, hence her certainty about all that glitters being gold. Now, in her nice big mansion, the staircase that leads to the upper floor is starting to rot out to the point that she wants it torn out and replaced with a new one, so she’s looking around the hardware stores to see if they have the carpentry stuff she needs. The reason she’s doing it herself instead of hiring somebody else is because she’s a real tightwad.

The next three lines illustrate the fact that she has more clout with the stores than Oprah Winfrey does in Paris. She can shop after hours if she wants.

In the next verse, the first three lines have her pondering the philosophical implications of the sign hung outside the store that says “Sorry, We’re Closed”. It brings to mind Woody Guthrie’s song “This Land Is Your Land”, in which he comes across a sign that says “Private Property” which says nothing on the back, leading Guthrie to conclude that this land is made for all of us. In this song, the back of the sign would say “Open for Business”. Does this mean that the entire world is open for business?, she wonders.

The next three lines introduce the songbird, a literary device to provide commentary without the lyricist directly addressing the audience. Saying that “sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven” is its way of saying that the rich lady is wasting her time thinking about pointless things.

Of course, the lyricist doesn’t understand what the hell the bird is talking about, so he starts wondering about it.

The first three lines of the next verse describe a feeling the lyricist gets when he looks westward, of wanting to leave. Now, as everybody knows, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. So when he looks to the West and sees the sunset, he becomes homesick. Now, what is the land of the rising sun? That’s right, Japan. Robert Plant wants to go home to Japan.

The next three lines are hard at first. Rings of smoke? Voices of those who stand looking? Well, where would a ring of smoke come from? A Burning Ring of Fire, of course. He’s talking about attending a Johnny Cash concert, the voices of those who stand looking being the audience. As to what Johnny Cash has to do with Japan or a woman buying supplies to build a staircase, I dunno. It’s obviously stream of conscious, the lyrics were written in five minutes after all.

Next comes the piper. That’s an easy one. Remember the Disney version of Pinocchio? Jiminy Crickett, the conscience of Pinnochio, said that he would come to help out if Pinocchio whistled. So Robert Plant is urging people to follow their consciences to come back to reason.

The next three lines continue the Pinocchio theme. Those who stand tall and follow their conscience will live in joy, as the image of forests echoing in laughter illustrates. It’s a poetic way of referring to Pinocchio, since he’s made of wood, which comes from the forests. He laughs because he’s so happy.

After that, it goes back to the lady. Two burglars are snooping around her mansion, and when someone sees them rustling in the bushes, they tell the person that they are merely part of the cleaning crew.

The next part obviously refers to the Robert Frost poem “The Road Less Traveled”. Robert Plant is referring to the fact that more people get contractors to build their staircases than build them themselves, and is telling the lady that it’s not too late for her to hire someone else to do it.

The rest of the song means pretty much the same thing. Robert Plant believes in supporting our local contractors, and is saying that the lady’s conscience is calling her to hire one so that they can make a decent living.
However, it is too late and as a karmic punishment, the two burglers shoot her in the head. That’s what it means by “your head is humming and it won’t go”.
To pay for her greediness, she is forced to forever walk the road as a ghost, traveling to get supplies for her staircase but never getting there.

Conclusion: They lyrics of this song are a rambling mess. Plant realized this, and quickly threw together a vague and somewhat preachy meaning to add in the end.

oh, please. I’m not really a Zep fan, but its a great song. If you dont know anything about 70’s Rock, please dont comment on it.

Dolly Parton’s decided to help clarify them for us!

Has anyone here heard that abomination? :eek: :eek: :eek:

RE the OP, no one on the SDMB likes to read the Christian faith into things more than I, and even I think you’re reaching, King J.

A thread about this song, which contains a link to another thread about this song:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=179677&highlight=Stairway+Heaven+Tolkien+Plant