What Robert Plant and Jimmy Page Told Ann Wilson After Heart’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’
The Kennedy Center broadcast showed Robert Plant watching Heart’s “Stairway to Heaven” from the balcony. Ann Wilson recently recalled the part the cameras missed. After the performance, over dinner, Plant and Jimmy Page told her they had really liked what she and Nancy Wilson had done.
Wilson shared the memory in a November 2026 interview with Guitar World. She recalled how imposing Led Zeppelin’s presence had felt when their paths crossed over the years. Hearing from the two men after singing their best-known song in front of them made the exchange especially meaningful to her.
The performance took place on December 2, 2012, in Washington, D.C. The Kennedy Center was honoring Led Zeppelin, and Plant, Page and John Paul Jones sat together in the audience. Nancy opened the song on acoustic guitar. Ann sang the early lines with enough space between phrases for the guitar part to stay in the foreground.
Jason Bonham played drums for the tribute. He had already joined the surviving members for Led Zeppelin’s 2007 reunion concert at London’s O2 Arena. At the Kennedy Center, his presence gave the song another link to his father, the late John Bonham, whose familiar bowler hat was echoed by the choir.
The choir’s entrance changes the scale of the performance. Nancy’s opening and Ann’s lead have already established the pace by then. As more voices gather around Ann, the arrangement gets bigger while the listener can still follow the same melody that opened the song.
In the Kennedy Center recording, watch the timing of the cuts to the balcony. The broadcast keeps moving between the musicians building the finale and the three men listening. Wilson’s account adds what happened when the applause was over.
The 2007 O2 recording offers a direct comparison. Jason Bonham is at the kit there too, with Plant singing and Page and Jones playing alongside him. In 2012, Bonham kept that link to the band’s live history while the Wilson sisters took the song in a different direction.
Heart’s acoustic take on “Going to California” offers a smaller-scale companion. The focus stays on the sisters and the guitar parts, which makes it easier to hear the intimacy that also gives the first minutes of the Kennedy Center performance their shape.
