One of the more striking things about Netflix’s trailer for Greta Gerwig’s forthcoming “Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew” was the teaser’s use of “Stairway to Heaven,” the eight-minute centerpiece of 1971 album “Led Zeppelin IV.”
The band is notoriously picky about who they choose to license their material to – and in particular, “Stairway to Heaven.” Big directors and huge projects have often tried and just as often failed to secure the song for their film or television project.
Per Stereogum, Cameron Crowe had not just written but filmed a scene for “Almost Famous” that featured “Patrick Fugit’s William, trying to convince his mother to let him follow the band Stillwater on the road for a Rolling Stone feature, plays ‘Stairway’ for his mother, played by Frances McDormand, attempting to use it to explain why music means so much to him.” When the band balked, Crowe cut the scene altogether.
And last week, former “Simpsons” writer and executive producer Josh Weinstein recounted on X how they had attempted to license “Stairway to Heaven” for the classic Season 7 episode “Bart Sells His Soul.” It’s in the opening bit, when Bart tricks the organist at the church to play a raucous song. It ended up being Iron Butterfly’s “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” (perhaps most memorably used in the climax of Michael Mann’s “Manhunter”). But it was supposed to be “Stairway to Heaven.”
According to Weinstein, the band wanted too much money (understandable), but as he wrote on X, “Sometimes budget concerns lead to extra creativity! Embrace that ethos.” He also said the alternate song choice, from the American rock band’s 1968 album “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” was “much funnier.”
As the Stereogum article notes, “Stranger Things” also attempted to license the song (again unsuccessfully). We guess they settled for Prince.
But perhaps the most astounding use of the song happened in “Wayne’s World,” Penelope Spheeris’ 1992 masterpiece starring Mike Myers and Dana Carvey. There’s a joke when Wayne and Garth go to a music store and Wayne starts to play “Stairway to Heaven.” He’s stopped by a clerk, who points to a sign that says, “No ‘Stairway to Heaven.’” Wayne shoots back, “No ‘Stairway?’ Denied.”
Well, from 1992, when the film was first put on home video, until 2022, you couldn’t actually hear the opening chords from the song. As GQ noted in a 2017 piece (about a “most unintentionally complicated gag”), “At some point after the U.S. release, Warner Music Group and Led Zeppelin refused the rights to even the first few notes of ‘Stairway’ for broadcast, video, or foreign release, resulting in the hasty, patchy edit.”
That’s right – the entire joke of Wayne beginning to play “Stairway to Heaven” was confusing because it wasn’t actually playing “Stairway to Heaven.”
Spheeris told Billboard at the time, “With ‘Stairway to Heaven’ we were told that we could only use two notes before we’d have to pay $100,000, so to sell that he’s gonna play ‘Stairway to Heaven’ in two notes is pretty difficult. I don’t know this to be absolutely true, but somebody told me that in the first version of the movie we play too many notes. So they had to go back in and edit a note or two out.”
Finally, in 2022 (!) the chord was reinstated as part of the movie’s 4K HD Blu-ray release (and was subsequently updated on streaming/digital platforms). The long national nightmare was over. After some extra cash exchanged hands (we assume).
But how did Gerwig land “Stairway to Heaven” for the “Narnia” trailer anyway?
At an event in New York City for the trailer’s launch, she told moderator Stephen Colbert that she showed the film to Zeppelin’s Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, who were moved by what she had created. “They saw the heart of the film,” Gerwig told Colbert. “The whole thing was very fortuitous.”
She also said the song represented the “story of the movie,” adding that the art pieces share the element of being a “spiritual quest.”
