3. Stairway to Heaven, Led Zeppelin

This is the song that defined how I define this list. It was in the mid-70s, driving back with the guys from touch football, and we reached my apartment on West End and 77^th maybe two minutes into Stairway to Heaven. I can’t just leave in the middle of this song, I said; the other guys in the car concurred, and we sat there for the full eight minutes, till Robert Plant squeezed out the final, “…And she’s buying…a stairway…to..heaven.” It starts out like Greensleeves, a simple country ballad, then builds inexorably, adding guitars, reverb, drums into an all-out heavy metal frenzy, then back to quiet. The progression is like sex, isn’t it – and is that the point? For Americans, too, everything British sounds quaint and esoteric; so it sounds like art when we hear incomprehensible, if not indecipherable, lines like, “If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow,” and “It’s just a spring clean for the may queen.” I’m not a particular Zeppelin fan, and I have little interest in the metal bands that followed, but this song transcends genres, spans generations, grabs hold of you and won’t let go…and leaves you slightly exhausted but always a bit happier when it’s over.