Heart’s “Stairway to Heaven” Tells Two Stories From the Same Room

Heart’s “Stairway to Heaven” at the 2012 Kennedy Center Honors begins with the musicians onstage and an audience that knows the song by heart. As it goes on, the broadcast develops another center of gravity. Led Zeppelin are in the balcony, and the camera keeps returning to the people who once had the job of making this piece work themselves.

Nancy Wilson’s acoustic part and Ann’s entrance set up the first few minutes. There is space around both of them, and the softness draws attention to the words and the figure that repeats beneath them. That early intimacy stays in your ear when the arrangement gets bigger later.

Jason Bonham’s role gives the occasion a family connection that is audible and visible. He is playing a song his father John recorded with Led Zeppelin, in front of his father’s surviving bandmates. The hat he wears adds a small visual reminder at a set where the scale could easily swallow a detail like that.

The cameras show Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones listening from above the stage. Each has a different expression at different points in the song. Plant’s reaction has become the image many viewers remember, especially when the cut returns to him as the full arrangement gathers behind Ann.

The choir changes how a familiar melody fills the room. It gives the end of the piece a weight the opening deliberately held back. Ann’s lead still gives a listener a clear line to follow, even as the number of people contributing to the sound expands.

Try watching the whole performance once from the stage outward and once with the balcony in mind. The clip rewards both ways of looking. The reactions carry the history, while the musicians give those reactions a reason to happen.

Ann Wilson and another kind of rock tribute

A solo concert gives Wilson a different sort of room. Her live “Dream On” starts in a quieter register and builds across the song without the ceremony of the Kennedy Center. The parallel is in her pacing. Listen to how long she lets the early phrases remain small before asking the band for a wider sound.

Hear the other Wilson take the lead

In Heart’s Edmonton performance of “These Dreams,” Nancy is the singer in front and Ann is beside her. As well as showing a different arrangement, it changes the center of the partnership. At the Kennedy Center Nancy’s instrument holds the opening together, while here her vocal gives the band its shape.

Come back to the balcony cut

This is a television recording in which where the camera looks changes what you hear. The pauses in the first verse and the size of the ending would work with a fixed camera. The cut to Plant lets that musical contrast land alongside a human reaction.