#has a favorite zep album or song poll ever been conducted on here

[singemall-stayallnight]

Heart's Ann and Nancy Wilson on Led Zeppelin

Ann Wilson and Nancy Wilson of Heart perform ‘Stairway to Heaven’ at the 2012 Kennedy Center Honors. | Jeffrey R. Staab/CBS via Getty Images

The Wilson sisters love them some Led Zeppelin.

Ann Wilson's favorite Led Zeppelin song If you ask Ann Wilson what her favorite Led Zeppelin song is, she’ll answer right away: "The Rain Song."

Nancy Wilson: 8 songs that changed my life

Led Zeppelin - The Rain Song (Houses Of The Holy, 1973)

"This is one of the most melodically sophisticated songs in the history of rock‘n’roll and also one of the most beautiful pieces of written poetry ever. It’s such an insightful meditation on life through the seasons, and it balances poetry and rock ‘n’ roll perfectly in a way that no-one but Led Zeppelin has ever been able to do."

"Along with the other artists I’ll mention here, Zeppelin were one of the bands that saved my life in high school. There’s a real magical mystery to this song. Every good guitar player that I’ve ever been at a party with knows how to play this song, but every one of them plays it differently, everyone had their own interpretation. Only Jimmy [Page] truly knows I guess."

"If I could write a song like The Rain Song, I'd probably sprout wings and fly away!" -Nancy Wilson

Ann Wilson on Led Zeppelin IV

Onstage, Heart’s Ann and Nancy Wilson were joined by Jason Bonham to perform an emotional, devastating version of Led Zeppelin’s Stairway To Heaven. So perhaps it’s not much of a surprise when you ask Ann about the album that changed everything for her.

"I think it’d be Zeppelin IV. I would listen to the Beatles and listen to the Stones and Elton John and the other groups that I was listening to in my teens, but that album really hit me where I lived.

"I knew from the first that I have to reproduce that. This is a teaching album, I said to myself.

"I know it had a lot to do with Plant’s lyrics. I mean that’s my favourite part of the gig is getting to sing those words, our words, Zeppelin’s words, whoever, is just getting to recreate the poetry in song.

"And that’s the album when he really started to write in a more masterly way."

“Timeless”: the Led Zeppelin song that inspired Ann Wilson to become a musician

A single tear rolls down Robert Plant’s face as Wilson and Heart take to the stage to play ‘Stairway to Heaven’. Wilson’s voice pierces the room as she nails the outro that cemented Robert Plant as one of the greatest rock vocalists of all time. Many singers can only dream of hitting those notes, but Wilson did it with such ease that it moved the original singer to tears.

It’s a song that meant a great deal to Ann Wilson as it resonates as a classic rock song, and it’s one of the tracks that initially got her into music. "One of the main ones, in the beginning, was ‘Stairway To Heaven’ – because of the lyrics and the epic nature of it,” she said, “It starts out acoustic and gets as big as it can be, and it takes you on a real journey. I love that song."

With this song in particular, while the words resonated because of their ambiguity, they profoundly affected Wilson. It wasn’t just about the literal interpretation of the track but was about how it made her feel. "I think it’s timeless and ageless and beautiful. "Do you get the lyrics?" "Yeah, but I don’t think you get it with your cognition; I think it’s a felt thing.”

The 10 albums that changed Heart founder Nancy Wilson’s life

Led Zeppelin – Houses of the Holy (1973)

The follow-up to the band’s saving grace, Led Zeppelin IV, it’s not outrageous to posit that Houses of the Holy can be digested as something of a sister record to its forebear. It sees the band expand on their sonic palette, both in terms of instrumentation and dynamics, and across Houses of the Holy we get stellar moments ranging from ‘The Crunge’ to ‘Rain Song’. Holding a nostalgic place in Wilson’s heart, she’s acutely aware of Zeppelin’s power.

"The summer I graduated from high school was the summer of Houses of the Holy. This album conjures up the exotic, misty magic of Old English lore blended with the riffs and beats of deep south American blues", Wilson recalled. "Led Zeppelin is a big weather system moving over hill and dale. They shift and turn together like a school of fish through some deep, magical current.”

Ann Wilson: 'Singing Led Zeppelin taught me how to sing rock 'n' roll - loud and high'

It took her a while to believe that she could sing rock ‘n’ roll. “I was maybe 23 or 24, and I was in Heart, but I was just like the chick singer in the band. But then I realised that by singing Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, covering those bands, it taught me how to sing rock ‘n’ roll – loud and high.”

Heart’s Nancy Wilson on their long road to the top, grunge friends – and that cover of Stairway to Heaven

Her favorite Heart guitar moment, however, is from a deep cut, Mistral Wind, the closing track on the 1978 album Dog & Butterfly.

"I really like the way Jimmy Page used dissonance, and his acoustic guitar playing, too," she begins.

"There’s that sort of element to the heaviness of Zeppelin. That made them one of the coolest bands on planet, because they were so versatile. So when I was working on the intro part of Mistral Wind, I was definitely channelling a Jimmy Page mentality, trying to evoke something darkly mysterious."

One of Heart’s most viewed videos is their 2012 Kennedy Center Honors performance of Stairway To Heaven for the surviving members of Led Zeppelin, including a visibly tearful Robert Plant. When Nancy remembers a moment from that night, she retains a sense of amazement.

"Jimmy Page came up later and said, ‘Wow, I love the way you play that song’. "I was like, ‘God, I could die now’". "I was just in shock to hear that coming out of him." "Then Plant said, ‘I’ve really come to hate that song. But wow, you guys did a great job.’" "Jimmy Page telling me he thought I played great was so incredibly life-altering! It made me want to get better. Keep working it!”

Heart's Ann and Nancy Wilson: Our Life in 15 Songs

“Stairway to Heaven” (2012)

Ann: "When we were asked to come and participate in the Led Zeppelin tribute [Ed. note: Heart performed for the surviving members of Led Zeppelin, as well as President and Michelle Obama, at the Kennedy Center Honors in Washington D.C.], I thought, 'Yeah, that's good. We should be there!' 'But I didn't think they'd ask us to do "Stairway." Maybe "Rock and Roll," something like that. A song that's cool, but not the ultimate anthem."

Nancy: "It was an interesting couple of days. It was beyond. It's like, Led Zeppelin … and the president! And it was Christmastime in D.C., so it was really cold. My hands were sort of frozen during the rehearsal. I could hardly play. And I hadn't really played the song too much in advance. So the rehearsal went very poorly. And the musical director was like, 'Oh, don't worry. I can just kind of shadow you during the performance. …' And I said, 'No, no, no. I'll just get my fingers warmed up first. I've got this!' And when we did it, we were just really, really nervous. But we looked at each other and took a huge, deep breath. Exhaled. Didn't hurry it and just stayed on it all the way through."

Ann: "Nancy and I went up there to do it and we were like, 'We cannot fuck this up. This has to be right on.' And to calm ourselves we said, 'Well, what's the most obvious meditation technique we can grab onto right now?' And it was the thing about holding the bowl of water in front of you and not spilling a drop. And that's what we thought about when we went out there. Then after we came offstage, we spilled the bowl all over the place!" [Laughs]

Nancy: "It turned out really cool. Afterward there was a dinner, and the Zeppelin guys came up to us individually to say how much they liked the performance. Robert [Plant] told us, 'I've grown to hate that song so much because people just murder it all the time.' And it's like, 'What?' But then he said, 'But you guys did a great job with it.'"

"And people like to tell us, 'You made Led Zeppelin cry!' But I think it was more about their family. The fact that Jason Bonham was drumming on the song with us, and wearing the bowler hat like his dad used to wear, was one of the things that really affected them emotionally. For them to see him up there was, I'm sure, the bigger reason for them to get emotional – more than just watching us!"

Heart's Ann Wilson Recalls How It Felt to Perform 'Stairway to Heaven' in Front of Led Zeppelin Members "'Let's just go out right now and keep our eyes on the ball and do the song the way we know we can and make it good.'" "The mission was to please the Led Zeppelin guys, really. And I think we did."

Led Zeppelin playing at the Sydney Showground, in Sydney, Australia of 1972.

Source: Twitter