Led Zeppelin - Stairway to Heaven

This is one of those songs where taking ANY part of it and removing it kills the song for me.

I'll stick with my 8 minutes of blissful joy, thank you :)

PopArchivist wrote: This is one of those songs where taking ANY part of it and removing it kills the song for me. I'll stick with my 8 minutes of blissful joy, thank you :)

I agree! A few others I didn't like to see edited:

Steppenwolf - Monster
Iron Butterfly - In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida
Meatloaf - Paradise By The Dashboard Light (Was there a shortened version?)
Rare Earth - Get Ready (Now that I know about the album version, I like that much better.)
Chicago - Dialogue Parts 1 and 2 in succession (The single of that is an abomination IMHO)

AdvprosD wrote: A few others I didn't like to see edited: Steppenwolf - Monster Iron Butterfly - In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida Meatloaf - Paradise By The Dashboard Light (Was there a shortened version?) Rare Earth - Get Ready (Now that I know about the album version, I like that much better.) Chicago - Dialogue Parts 1 and 2 in succession (The single of that is an abomination IMHO)

The long version of "In-A-Gadda" was cool to hear...once. Tedious after that with 10 minutes of drum noodling. I was in college when it came
out...hated it when a band would play it at a dance. You didn't want to sit down because the song wasn't over, but you couldn't dance to the
drum solo, and it was too loud to talk.
While the single of "Get Ready" was faded a bit too soon, the rest of the LP version was boring.
Didn't really care for "Dialogue", so the 5 minute single was more than enough for me.
Yes there was a short version of "Paradise..". The commercial single was an early fade of the LP, there also was a 5:25-ish promo edit (that
also was the B side of "You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth"). Don't think I ever heard it played on the air, like "Stariway To Heaven"
it's not a song that you can edit without ruining the flow.

Hykker wrote: "Stariway To Heaven" it's not a song that you can edit without ruining the flow.

Well in response to whether or nor not the song should have been edited or not, I wasn't digging into the principle of the matter. I just wondered if anyone ever heard the WFIL edit when the song aired in Philly in 1972. Moreover, I just wondered what they came up with.

As for an edit ruining the flow, I'm not so sure. Like most edits, you'd have to assume you heard the edit first, and then hearing the LP version later seemed like some sort of new revelation. Most of us that preferred edits feel that's how we remembered the song from the radio. In this case, it's reversed. We all know the LP version inside out, so it's hard to imagine this Zeppelin track any way else. Mind you, in a post on this forum regarding promotional discs of non-hits, the person who heard the WFIL edit was none the wiser until he later heard the LP version.

For giggles, I've tried my hand at it and come up with some workable edits. I don't think it's so much affecting flow, but rather that the song seems somehow sacred to those of you who've responded.

Oh well, this was more of a curiosity than anything else.


Edited by Jody Thornton

kaqueno wrote: As PopArchivist says, it's one of those songs that any edit kills. According to discogs in the 70s in the USA the full version of 8:00 was released, but in 1990 in Brazil a promo version of 5:22 was released, here is the information with the discogs link and I also leave the youtube link to listen to it. https://www.discogs.com/release/2710662-Led-Zeppelin- Stairway-To-Heaven https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kky6FZjNazo

I did listen to that one before posting. I take it that was released long after the
airplay run though, correct? Thanks for the link


Edited by Jody Thornton