ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
A landmark study undertaken by Australia’s peak scientific body, Bauer Media, has concluded that Led Zeppelin’s seminal 1971 song ‘Stairway To Heaven’ was most probably about drugs.
The $223m report was commissioned in early 2006 after a number of executives at Bauer, the publisher of popular men’s interest zine Picture Mag, got into an argument over what the song actually meant.
“Some thought it was about sex,” said Dennis Hooper, from Bauer’s research department.
“That’s a pretty fair guess, but most of us agreed that it was about heroin or some other scary needle drug like that. Most Led Zeppelin songs are about sex, drugs or JRR Tolkien books,”
“Or in the case of Misty Mountain Top, all three.”
Mr Hooper then went on to justify the outrageous cost of the study, which reportedly cost close to a quarter of a billion dollars.
In addition to the cost, the 11 and half years it took to come to a conclusion also needed to be justified.
“Basically, we went to Morrocco and smoke a lot of hashish and kind of lost track of time. We also partied and drank a quite a bit. It was a very Gonzo research project,”
“Totally necessary, however.”
More to come.
