March 5th: First public performance of "Stairway to Heaven"

The inaugural public performance of the song took place at Belfast's Ulster Hall on 5 March 1971. Here are 10 facts about the song:

1. The song was composed by guitarist Jimmy Page and vocalist Robert Plant for Led Zeppelin's fourth studio album Led Zeppelin IV.
2. After the first performance Bassist John Paul Jones commented on its reception by the audience: "They were all bored to tears waiting to hear something they knew."
3. The song is eight minutes and two seconds long, although live versions were often extended to last up to fifteen minutes. It was too long for the full version to be released as a single. Atlantic Records tried to get the band to authorise editing of the song for single release, but they weren't having any of it! Hence, Stairway to Heaven is one of the most well-known and popular rock songs never to have been released as a single.
4. Despite never being released as a single, it was the most requested song on FM radio stations in the United States in the 1970s. On the 20th anniversary of the first release of the song, U.S. radio sources claimed that the song had been played 2,874,000 times on the radio – back to back, that would run for 44 years solid.
5. The world radio première of Stairway to Heaven was recorded at the Paris Cinema on 1 April 1971, in front of a live studio audience, and broadcast three days later on the BBC. The song was performed at almost every subsequent Led Zeppelin concert, only omitted on rare occasions when shows were cut short for curfews or technical reasons. The band's final performance of the song was in Berlin on 7 July 1980.
6. It is the biggest-selling single piece of sheet music in rock history, selling an average of 15,000 copies a year.
7. It has often been said over the years that the song's introduction, and opening guitar arpeggios, bear a close resemblance to a 1968 instrumental Taurus by the group Spirit. As it happens, Led Zeppelin had supported Spirit in an early American tour, so members of Led Zeppelin would have heard the Spirit song before Stairway to Heaven was written. You can listen to the recording of Taurus at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Spirit-Taurus.ogg and make up your own mind!
8. The song was played so extensively that some people got tired of hearing it, especially employees in music shops, as customers looking to buy a guitar would often play it. Some shops went as far as to ban the playing of it, and threatened to throw out anyone who did. This is alluded to in Wayne's World, when Wayne starts to play the song in a shop and the shop assistant points out a sign which says "No Stairway."
9. In the early 1980s it was rumoured that the song contained hidden Satanic messages if played backwards. For example, a message is said to appear in the section ("If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now..."), which, when played backward, was purported to say: "Here's to my sweet Satan" and "I sing because I live with Satan". Band members denied it, on the grounds that why should they bother, and in any case, turntables only run forwards! Again, you can follow this link, listen and make up your own mind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:STH_reverse.ogg.
10. The many cover versions include a 2002 acoustic version by Dolly Parton and Rolf Harris's didgeridoo and wobble board interpretation which reached number seven in the UK charts in 1993.