Who is the “lady” from the Led Zeppelin song “Stairway to Heaven”?

The words he had written referred to “a lady who is convinced that all that glitters is gold.” This lady’s journey is the subject of the song’s first verse, and she returns late in the song’s penultimate section when Plant addresses her directly. As the song reaches its spectacular climax, he tells us she is “a lady we all know.”

And yet, over 50 years after the song was released on the band’s landmark album Led Zeppelin IVWe still don’t know the true identity of the mysterious lady in the song. Or do we? Maybe Plant can give us a clue.

Is it real or fictional?

The Zeppelin singer and lyricist would go on to describe the song’s theme as “a cynical remark about a woman who always gets everything she wants without thought or consideration.” He describes a “cynical hand gesture” in the opening lines, alluding to the obvious bribery and corruption involved in the lady “buying” her way into heaven. “It got mellower after that,” Plant adds, evident in the pastoral imagery of busy “hedges” and “woods” that echo “with laughter” later in the song.

His description of writing the text using “hand gestures” does not suggest that Plant encountered a real person worth writing about. His inspiration for the lady who buys a stairway to heaven seems abstract, or at least imagined.

Plant was known for his keen interest in Celtic and Norse mythology and was also an admirer of high fantasy novels. Lord of the RingsIn fact, he has admitted elsewhere that Led Zeppelin IV.

There is a Zeppelin fan theory that the “lady” in “Stairway to Heaven” is actually Tolkien’s half-elven character Arwen, who was played by Liv Tyler in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the rings film trilogy. They point to several lines in the lyrics that seem to be cryptic references to Arwen’s story, such as her “spirit crying to go” as she is torn between going with the elves or staying with the mortals.

“There are two paths you can take,” Plant tells her, perhaps alluding to the journey taken in the novel. “The Piper calls you to join him,” he continues, apparently referring to the pipe-smoking wizard Gandalf.

This interpretation of the song is quite far-fetched, and its followers seem to know more about Plant’s subconscious when he wrote “Stairway to Heaven” than he did himself. But at least it gives us an answer to the identity of the mysterious lady.

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