Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant has long been known to be a bit agnostic toward Stairway to Heaven, going so far as to tell the band Heart that he typically hates when other artists cover the eight-minute classic-rock touchstone.
It's a testament to Heart, then, that when they covered the song at the 2012 Kennedy Center Honors show – in tribute to Zeppelin, who were receiving the titular honor – their version left Plant in tears, and guitarist Jimmy Page and bassist John Paul Jones visibly stunned.
Heart's Nancy Wilson was on rhythm guitar duties – she would later tell Howard Stern that Page told her, “‘You nailed the guitar part!’” – but it was Shane Fontayne, a veteran guitarist most famous for his tenures with Bruce Springsteen and Lone Justice, who was given the lofty task of taking on the song's heroic solo, one of the most famous in rock history. Mind you, this meant that he had to play said solo in front of its author.
The thing was, though, Led Zeppelin never much figured in Fontayne's guitar journey. Somehow, he told Guitar World in a recent interview, he wasn't quite aware of just how much of a linchpin that solo is in the lead guitar catalog.
“I didn’t know it [the solo] was that iconic beforehand!” Fontayne told GW. “It was only when I started seeing all the comments that I realized it.”
Pressed on, erm, how this was possible, the guitarist explained, “I was a bit too young to be in that place.
“The hard rock thing, at the time, hadn’t so much been my kind of thing. So yes, Stairway is a classic rock staple, and I was obviously familiar with it, but it wasn’t something that had spoken to me so much – and it’s a long song!”
So! How did he approach such a lofty solo, having not known it super-well beforehand?
“You want to be respectful and do not necessarily what they would have done, because you’re not them,” Fontayne said. “Not necessarily what they would have done, because you’re not them. So, it’s about what I would want to hear if I was in the audience. In that regard, I wanted to recreate the solo that had been done on the record.
“With Stairway, because I’m not a Jimmy Page kind of player, even though I did get a Les Paul for that show, I listened to the solo. I wanted to try and emulate it with the right spirit and render it somewhat closely – but not just have it be a regurgitation. Fortunately, at the time, I didn’t realize how iconic it was. [laughs]”
Aware of the song's long-memed status or not, Fontayne was excited to meet Page after the show, taking the chance to ask him about the long-standing rumor that he played on the Kinks' epochal You Really Got Me (something that Kinks guitarist Dave Davies has vehemently denied.)
“In these moments – you’ve got a moment here, and somebody could be speaking a completely different language coming back at you – is he basically said that he’d been at that session, but I don’t think he played the solo,” Fontayne said.
“If I remember correctly, he’d been at the session or been on the session but didn’t play the solo.”
Keep an eye on Guitar World in the coming days for the full interview with Fontayne.
