At Just 27, Jimmy Page Laid Down One Of The Best Guitar Solos Of All Time

While most 27-year-olds are still figuring out life, Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page created a guitar solo that changed rock music forever. "Stairway to Heaven" — off the legendary group's 1971 untitled album — is widely regarded as one of the greatest songs of all time. A distinctively softer number than Zeppelin's other famous hits for the most part, the track allows Robert Plant's shamanic vocals to burn over the melody of Page's weeping guitar.

Around the five-and-a-half-minute mark, Page's fingers loosen, dancing around the fretboard to unleash a guitar lesson that no YouTube playthrough video could ever teach. It's two minutes for the master to step up to the plate and take center stage in a band bursting with incredible talent. By no means is Page shredding like a madman in DragonForce, but he balances the output between technical wizardry and euphony. It's as if his guitar hums and wails for the listener's pleasure.

When it's all over, Page holsters his guitar like a marksman who just hit his target on the first shot and walks into the sunset for the rest of the song. Plant completes the ascent to musical nirvana, as his isolated and haunting vocals remind us that "she's buying a stairway to heaven." Magic. Pure magic.

Jimmy Page played a vital part in the entire configuration of Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven." He was the producer of the album and carefully orchestrated the biggest song on the record before coming in at the end with his sensational string-bending solo. As Page revealed to Classic Rock, he chose the classic Fender Telecaster for its "bite," adding that the process of laying down the guitar track didn't take as long as some people may have imagined. "It wasn't something that was an all day thing and if I hadn't have pulled it off that day, I would have moved onto something else, then come back to it," he said. "I worked out how I was going to actually come into it, the first two or three notes, but after that I didn't work it out, I just played it."

While "Stairway to Heaven" has become a bona fide classic, Robert Plant isn't as fond of it as others might be. In fact, he's one of the musicians who can't stand their own hits. "If I had been involved in the instrumentation, I would feel that it's a magnificent piece of music, which has its own character and personality," Page told AXS TV. Oh, everybody wishes the same, because who wouldn't want to tell their friends and family that they created the guitar solo for "Stairway to Heaven"?!