A stairway to heaven

The other day my son comes to me and says: «Dad, listen to this cool song!», and presses play on his list... I think to myself: make sure it's not Tony Effe! Make sure it's not Tony Effe! But at the second chord I look at him and instinctively want to hug him. The song in question came out in 1971 and lasts about 8 minutes.

Immediately I think again: but in the era of shorts that we are more or less all victims of, where do you find a young man who has 8 minutes to listen to the same song and get to the end without skipping? And I say to myself: luckily I found him and he's my son! At the end of the song, Robert Plant's amazing voice says more or less this: «How everything turns to gold... and if you listen very carefully, the melody finally comes to you. When everyone is one and one is everything, to be a rock and not to roll, and she's buying a stairway to Heaven». The amazing thing about this piece is that it has the ability to pick you up from the deepest abysses and then take you to really very high places. It's not a question of music of our times or theirs. I think we can still write another Stairway to heaven and new Led Zeppelins can still be born.

It's more than anything a question of desires. Of wanting to aim high or low, of wanting to sink or to rise.
What's more beautiful than a thirteen-year-old who doesn't yet know who Jimmy Page is, but while walking with his headphones on in Via Po he has beautiful dreams walking towards the future!

Andrea Gotico
NP January 2025