This Group's Stairway To Heaven Hit The Hot 100 — Led Zeppelin's Never Did

"Stairway to Heaven" is a classic rock classic, and out of every Led Zeppelin song, it's the one that stands above the rest. Reportedly inspired by "The Lord of the Rings," the lyrically magnificent and nearly eight-minute, multi-part hard rock odyssey from 1971 was curiously not a hit single back then. It was 15 years later, when covered by a studio collective called Far Corporation. 

Led Zeppelin had an arrangement with their label that gave them the power to deny the release of singles. They wanted their albums to be viewed as a singular entity, and rarely let singles happen, making them rock legends with zero No. 1 hits. Resisting a push from Atlantic Records to make a 45 of the instant classic "Stairway to Heaven" to promote the LP "Led Zeppelin IV," for years the only place anyone could acquire the legendary song was by purchasing that LP in full, pushing it to sales of 24 million copies.

But there was money on the table waiting to be grabbed by anyone who could make "Stairway to Heaven" more accessible, even well into the 1980s. Far Corporation recorded an extremely faithful version, and it was embraced by record buyers. Until the digital download era, where people could buy just the songs they wanted, it's the only version of "Stairway to Heaven" to ever reach the singles chart in either the U.S. or the U.K.

Producer Frank Farian worked extensively with session musicians in the 1970s and 1980s, particularly with Boney M., a dance-pop group that sold millions, and Milli Vanilli, scandalously presented to the world as two guys who didn't really sing on the act's numerous No. 1 hits. In the mid-1980s, Farian collected his favorite studio players and called them the Frank Farian Corporation. Ultimately shortening that to Far Corporation, Farian injected some star power. Session players Steve Lukather, David Paich, and Bobby Kimball had also been in Toto, best known for enduring smash hits like "Africa" and "Hold the Line." Robin McAuley, a singer in multiple hard rock supergroups, helped complete the lineup.

Far Corporation's album "Division One" arrived in 1986. Leading off the serviceable rock LP was a new take on "Stairway to Heaven." Clocking in at over nine minutes — longer than Led Zeppelin's original — it sounds eerily like the band that made it famous, but with the harder edges softened to make it more friendly to '80s pop radio. That approach, along with McAuley's uncanny vocal resemblance to Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant, worked. "Stairway to Heaven," as interpreted by the one-hit wonder supergroup Far Corporation, peaked at No. 89 on the Hot 100. In Led Zeppelin's U.K. home, this "Stairway to Heaven" was massive, heading up to No. 8.