'They were all bored to tears waiting to hear something they knew,' Jones told the BBC. The song and the album were released on November 8, 1971, but the band had been playing the eight-minute epic live since March of that year to a somewhat underwhelming response, as the band's bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones recalled. The band was impressed enough to include the lyrics on the inner sleeve of the album - the first time Led Zeppelin had done so. 'I just sat there and looked at the words and then I almost leapt out of my seat.' 'Then all of a sudden my hand was writing out the words, 'There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold/And she's buying a stairway to heaven.' 'I was holding a pencil and paper, and for some reason I was in a very bad mood,' Plant recalled years later, according to Mick Wall's exhaustive band biography When Giants Walked the Earth. Plant recalled sitting by the fire with Page to write the lyrics in the freezing cold, run-down Headley Grange. The song was recorded over the winter of 1970-71 as part of the sessions for the band's technically untitled fourth album - better known as Led Zeppelin IV. However, under oath during the song's recent copyright tussles (more on that later), Page revealed it was actually written at the less romantic Headley Grange, a former workhouse-turned-recording studio south-west of London - a disclosure that no doubt disappointed the thousands of Led Zeppelin fans who made the pilgrimage to western Wales to visit 'the birthplace of 'Stairway to Heaven''. The story of this song being written in the Welsh hills in a cottage with no running water or electricity or toilet has become part of the Led Zeppelin legend.

The song was believed to have been written in a Welsh cottage named Bron-Y-Aur, where Led Zeppelin members Robert Plant and Jimmy Page (along with their partners and a couple of roadies) retreated after gruelling back-to-back European and North American tours in early 1970. Photo: Supplied / Lloyd Godman 'Sometimes words have two meanings.' 'Stairway to Heaven' is now 50 years old and continues to enjoy/endure its much-loved/overplayed status, something all the more remarkable when you consider it was never released as a commercial single and that it clocks in at eight minutes long, or more than twice the length of your typical radio track. In fact, the scene was reportedly based on a real sign that was beginning to pop up in American music stores around that time.

Led Zeppelin's rock epic was only 21 years old when this scene from the 1992 hit comedy Wayne's World was released, but already the reputation of the song was evident - that this much-loved guitar classic had been played to death. The employee points at a sign reading 'No Stairway to Heaven', and Mike Myers, as his popular Saturday Night Live character Wayne, looks down the barrel of the camera and utters the iconic line, 'No 'Stairway'? Denied!' Robert Plant, left, and Jimmy Page, former members of Led Zeppelin, at the 'Rock over Germany' Festival in Schwalmstadt, from 24th to 25th June 1995.

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