Black Sheep Hit: "Stairway to Heaven". Robert Plant once called it a "bloody wedding song".
Creator Backlash: Robert Plant has come to abhor "Stairway to Heaven" — and refuses to play it in concerts. His lengthy refusal to take part in a Led Zeppelin reunion was due to his disgust with the fact that he would inevitably be forced to sing it.
Pop-Culture Urban Legends: Many Moral Guardians claimed in the '80s that if certain portions of "Stairway to Heaven" are played backwards, one can hear lines such as "Here's to my sweet Satan," "The one whose little path would make me sad whose power is Satan," "He'll give you, he'll give you 666," and "There was a little tool shed where he made us suffer, sad Satan." The band and engineer Eddie Kramer repeatedly denied the claims, and their vanity label, Swan Song Records, issued a public statement ensuring buyers that "Our turntables only play in one direction — forwards."
"Going To California" was featured in the series' finale of Entourage, playing over the end credits.
Wayne's World has a joke where a guitar store owner has a sign forbidding customers to try out a guitar by playing "Stairway To Heaven" on it.note This was edited out in TV editions to be replaced with a Suspiciously Similar Substitute—it probably makes the joke funnier because of that.
"Stairway To Heaven" has also lead to subversions, including "Hairway To Steven" by Butthole Surfers and "Highway To Hell" by AC/DC from Highway to Hell (1979).
Sad Satan is named after a line that Moral Guardians claimed was audible when playing "Stairway to Heaven" backwards. The offending portion of the song, accordingly played backwards, appears in the game as a soundbyte.
Screwed by the Lawyers: When "Stairway To Heaven" was released, many called attention to the fact that the opening chords sounded suspiciously similar to the opening notes of "Taurus" by the Californian band Spirit. The band had opened for Spirit very early in their career which meant Plant and Page would have definitely heard Spirit play Taurus. Led Zeppelin was then taken to court in for alleged copyright infringement and a trial began in 2016. The band ended up winning the case, but two years later in 2018, another judge ruled there were errors in the previous trial, and threw out the verdict. A new trial was ordered and the matter has yet to be resolved.
Tribute to Fido: "Black Dog" is a reference to a nameless black Labrador Retriever that wandered around the Headley Grange studios during recording.
Miscellaneous Trivia:
The "red target" CD release of the album, so named because of its label design consisting of a clear crosshair on a red background, is widely considered one of the biggest holy grails of CD collecting thanks to a number of factors. In addition to the album's fame, the red target disc was scarcely issued and features an unusual disc label design, with other target CDs by Atlantic Records typically using a red crosshair on a teal background. Additionally, it was made in Japan by the manufacturing wing of Columbia Records, who were only rarely contracted for other target CDs by Warner Music Group. Finally, some copies of the red target are packaged slightly differently than other CD editions from the 1980s, featuring the four symbols on the spine next to the band name.
CD release of the album, so named because of its label design consisting of a clear crosshair on a red background, is widely considered one of the biggest holy grails of CD collecting thanks to a number of factors. In addition to the album's fame, the red target disc was scarcely issued and features an unusual disc label design, with other target CDs by Atlantic Records typically using a red crosshair on a teal background. Additionally, it was made in Japan by the manufacturing wing of Columbia Records, who were only rarely contracted for other target CDs by Warner Music Group. Finally, some copies of the red target are packaged slightly differently than other CD editions from the 1980s, featuring the four symbols on the spine next to the band name.