By January 1971, Jimmy Page had hit a wall.
Led Zeppelin was holed up at Headley Grange, a drafty Victorian house in Hampshire converted into a makeshift studio. The band was deep into recording their fourth album. Tracks like “Black Dog” were coming alive with triple-tracked Les Paul riffs, and “When the Levee Breaks” thundered with John Bonham pounding the stairwell drums. But “Stairway to Heaven”—their masterpiece in progress—was missing its final piece: the solo.
Page had tried for hours. Take after take, nothing worked. The crescendo that should crown the song’s eight-minute journey kept falling short. Frustrated, he gave up, deciding the solo would have to wait.
Weeks later at Island Studios in London, Page returned to finish overdubs. Alone, as was his habit, he set up in front of massive Tannoy monitors instead of headphones, wanting to feel the music like a live performance. But this time, he didn’t reach for his trusty 1959 Les Paul, the guitar behind most of the album’s riffs. He needed a different voice.
He picked up an old Fender Telecaster, a relic Jeff Beck had given him back in June 1965 at Page’s parents’ house in Epsom. Page had painted it with a psychedelic dragon, used it through the Yardbirds era, and recorded much of Led Zeppelin I with it—but it had been tucked away for years. Page later described it as a “talisman”, a guitar with a strange, almost magical power.
Plugged into a small Supro amp—the same setup that had delivered the crunch on Led Zeppelin I—Page began warming up. He had the first phrase and a few link ideas worked out; the rest he planned to improvise. To him, the solo was “almost like a meditation on the song,” something that needed to flow perfectly with the rest of the music.
Engineer Andy Johns noticed the tension rising. “I could see he was getting a bit paranoid,” Johns recalled, “and so I was getting paranoid… It was a silly circle of paranoia.”
And then it happened.
Page tore into the solo. Some accounts say he nailed it in one take; others, including engineer Digby Smith, recall comping the final solo from three different takes. Either way, the Telecaster delivered what hours with the Les Paul couldn’t. Its piercing tone sliced through the descending Les Paul rhythm and became the legendary solo that Guitar World later ranked the number one rock solo of all time.
The guitar Page hadn’t touched in years—the one Beck handed him on a doorstep six years earlier—had held the key all along. It was the familiar magic of an old friend that finally brought “Stairway to Heaven” to life.
