Why the Choir Wore Bowler Hats During Heart’s “Stairway to Heaven”
The bowler hats are easy to miss when Ann Wilson is singing the last full-throated lines of “Stairway to Heaven.” Look behind her at the Kennedy Center Honors, though. Jason Bonham has one on at the drum kit. As the choir comes into view, a whole row of singers is wearing the same style. They are saluting John Bonham, the Led Zeppelin drummer who played on the original record and the father of the man onstage that night.
Heart performed at the December 2, 2012 gala in Washington, D.C., and CBS aired the ceremony on December 26. Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones watched from the balcony. Jack Black’s introduction had given the room a chance to laugh and cheer. The Wilson sisters and the stage band then had the room quiet enough for the familiar guitar figure and Ann’s first lines to carry the opening.
That quiet opening matters because it gives the song somewhere to go. Ann keeps the first phrases close to the guitar. The arrangement grows as strings and more voices enter, and Jason’s drums become easier to pick out once the band has found its pace. The impact comes from hearing the smaller sound for long enough to feel the change.
Jason came to the part with an unusual relationship to it. He had played with the surviving members of Led Zeppelin at the 2007 reunion. This time he would be playing his father’s part in front of those same men, alongside musicians with their own ideas about where the song could go. In a 2013 interview he recalled being surprised at the choice of “Stairway” because of how difficult it is to pull off.
The first bowler gives the audience a clue. The hats on the singers make the reference clear across the room, even to someone too far away to study the drummer’s face. The camera gives viewers at home a second way to pick it up, cutting between the people playing the song and the people who first recorded it. The choir and Jason can be heard at the same time the connection becomes visible.
On a second viewing, follow Jason as the arrangement reaches the last vocal section. The drums have to keep their place while Ann and the choir are working at full volume. Then look behind the singers when the stage widens in the frame. The hats come into focus right when the extra voices give the last stretch of the performance its scale.
How the tribute came together
Ann told interviewer Trent Moorman that the organizers wanted “Stairway” to close both the Zeppelin tribute and the show. The Wilson sisters took a light rehearsal with the band and Jason, flew out for a Heart show in Florida and returned to Washington. Ann recalled staying calm and focused while she sang. The reaction in the room became clear to her when the audience broke into applause.
The sisters went back over the performance with Howard Stern in 2024. Their recollections give the clip some scale. The audience gets a few minutes of a song it already knows, while the people onstage have to make an unfamiliar arrangement work through every change of pace and every new entrance.
Where it sat in the evening
Jack Black’s introduction is a useful companion to the performance. He put the emphasis on what made Zeppelin exciting to him as a fan, and the wider tribute featured other performers taking on the band’s songs. By the time Heart closed the ceremony, the evening had already explored several sides of Zeppelin. This was the one that could begin with an almost bare stage sound and build all the way to a choir.
The bowler you notice the second time
Plant’s reaction gives the broadcast one of its most memorable images. The stage tells another part of the story during the same passage. A drummer is playing music his father helped make, and the singers behind him are dressed in a way that lets the back row see who they have in mind. By the time Ann comes back down from the song’s final peak, the tribute has room for both what the original band made together and the man who was missing from the balcony.
