AboutMike Caldwell Expertise Fortunately, or unfortunately, there are no Led Zeppelin questions I can't answer. My immediate specialty (or proclivity as it may be) has to do with concert performances and lyrical interpretations.
Experience Countless hours of biographical research and personal interaction with relevant individuals. Avid contributor to Led Zeppelin newsgroups since 1997 (check Google groups!)
Publications Bullseye News Magazine. The Vapid Voice.
Question Hi, One question that I can not find an answer to and no one who interviews them ever asks is this: Why, when Page and Plant toured together - and did some zep covers, did they not play stairway to heaven live? There are stories of the crowd begging for it to be played but they never did.
Answer Quite simply, that was because Plant got sick of it. He was getting tired of it as early as the late 1970s, and one of his famous quotes about not wanting to perform it anymore was :
"There's only so many times you can sing it and mean it ... It just became sanctimonious"
He mildly protested performing it for Live Aid in 1985, and vehemently protested playing it for the 1988 reunion as well. Plant's just sick of singing it, and there was no way he'd bend on this and perform it during those Page/Plant tours. They did, however, perform an acoustic version of the song for a Tokyo news station during that era - that was the only exception to the rule.
