Fretting time

Or: How I learned to stop worrying and play "Stairway to Heaven"

by Douglas Wolk

Jimmy Page

"It's pretty easy," our teacher said. "Take a look. Just barre the fifth fret, then play the seventh fret on the D string, and . . . well, try it." Ping ping ping ping ping. We giggled, then struggled through the whole phrase, note by note, tentatively, pausing as we figured out where to put each finger next. Then I looked up at my classmates, who from their expressions were all thinking something close to what I was: oh my God, I'm 29 years old and I've just played the beginning of "Stairway to Heaven" for the first time -- does this mean they'll let me into guitar stores now?

After years of making my living by listening, I'd decided that the way to get a better sense for guitar music was to learn how to play it. I'd groped around on a few instruments before, even played in a few bands, but it's pretty easy to pick up a bass or drumsticks and not embarrass yourself completely. The guitar, it was clear to me pretty quickly, is different: you need to think in terms of chords and voicing, which means you have to concentrate on doing a whole lot of things at once, as elegantly as possible. So I was in a position of approaching music with a beginner's mind: this is how we hold the guitar, this is how we tune the guitar, this is how we play "Blowin' in the Wind." (God bless our teacher: every time she wanted to demonstrate how not to do something, she played "Blowin' in the Wind" the wrong way.)

Taking guitar classes also meant making my peace with classic rock, which was the hardest part. I've spent pretty much my entire life as a listener looking for the particular kinds of sounds I crave: chasing down oddities, curiosities, things that will never ever be cultural touchstones. I never quite backlashed against Led Zep and Neil Young and Eric Clapton and their radio mates, but I'd developed a sort of mild contempt for them: why would I want to think about them when all I had to do to hear them was walk into any store? There is no room for snobbery in the standard guitar-pedagogical technique, though. You learn a few basic chords and then you play "Heart of Gold," which all of a sudden seems like a miracle of elegance and simplicity, like the Pythagorean theorem. After years of lunging for the radio dial every time I heard the beginning of "Tears in Heaven," I found myself having to play the damn thing, over and over and over. I also found myself liking the damn thing. I briefly considered inflicting my version of it on the nearest subway station but thought better of it.

Soon, I was listening to classic-rock radio with new ears. Like millions of other people, I'd basically internalized "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman," but I went over the sheet music one night, marveling at the gorgeous logic of its chord progression, and called up my bemused friends to rant about what a great song it is. I started spending evenings in front of my computer, downloading song after song from illicit tablature archives, some of which even included the weird stuff I'd grown up on. I bonded with the person who'd posted the chords for Swell Maps' punk obscurity "Vertical Slum" to a Usenet newsgroup, and we started dating.

But "Stairway to Heaven": that was a tough one to wrap my brain around. It's the epitome of obviousness, the quintessential asshole-with-a-guitar song, so much a cliché that I could barely think about it unironically. The name alone conjured up images of everything I was scared I'd become. The difference between "Stairway" and most of the other standards we'd attempted in our stumbling where-do-I-put-my-fingers way, though, is that it's actually pretty tough -- not just a way of applying chords and techniques we'd already learned, but a way of picking up things we didn't know yet. Slowed down to the pathetic crawl that our neophyte hands demanded, the song, and its formal grace, clicked in my head in a way that it never had before: the way its tonality moves in multiple directions at once, the long curlicued call-and-response of its introduction. That I was able to play it with my own hands astonished me. I thought, "Wow -- this is really beautiful," and almost instantly realized that this was about as profound as realizing that the sea is very wet. Then I amended myself: better to catch on to what's good about "Stairway" this late in the game than never, right?

I've determined pretty thoroughly that I'll never be a guitar hero, I still can't deal with hearing Led Zep IV everywhere I go, and I'm still frustrated when I look at books of sheet music and realize that titles like The Complete Robert Wyatt for Easy Guitar don't exist. But I understand a lot of the classic artifacts of guitar rock a lot more now than I ever have before, just from reaching my hands into their guts and groping out their basic shapes. And my Swell Maps-transcribing sweetie and I sit around at night, guitars in hand, figuring out how to play our favorite songs.