Theres a lady whos sure
All that glitters is gold
And shes buying a stairway to heaven.
When she gets there she knows
If the stores are all closed
With a word she can get what she came for.
Ooh, ooh, and shes buying a stairway to heaven.
Theres a sign on the wall
But she wants to be sure
cause you know sometimes words have two meanings.
In a tree by the brook
Theres a songbird who sings,
Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven.
Ooh, it makes me wonder,
Ooh, it makes me wonder.
Theres a feeling I get
When I look to the west,
And my spirit is crying for leaving.
In my thoughts I have seen
Rings of smoke through the trees,
And the voices of those who standing looking.
Ooh, it makes me wonder,
Ooh, it really makes me wonder.
And its whispered that soon
If we all call the tune
Then the piper will lead us to reason.
And a new day will dawn
For those who stand long
And the forests will echo with laughter.
If theres a bustle in your hedgerow
Dont be alarmed now,
Its just a spring clean for the may queen.
Yes, there are two paths you can go by
But in the long run
Theres still time to change the road youre on.
And it makes me wonder.
Your head is humming and it wont go
In case you dont know,
The pipers calling you to join him,
Dear lady, can you hear the wind blow,
And did you know
Your stairway lies on the whispering wind.
And as we wind on down the road
Our shadows taller than our soul.
There walks a lady we all know
Who shines white light and wants to show
How evrything still turns to gold.
And if you listen very hard
The tune will come to you at last.
When all are one and one is all
To be a rock and not to roll.
And shes buying a stairway to heaven.
Jeroen Offerman (1970) werkt en verblijft veel in Londen waar hij momenteel als researcher verbonden is aan het Goldsmith´s College. Zijn werk is `licht conceptueel´ en heeft vaak een performance-achtig karakter. In het verleden werkte hij veel met planten en dieren. Bij het Fonds BKVB toont Offerman onder meer the Stairway at St.Paul´s. Voor deze video oefende hij drie maanden totdat hij in staat was om Stairway to Heaven van Led Zeppelin geheel achterste-voren te zingen. De video van het door Offerman in 2002 op de trappen van St. Pauls Cathedral achterstevoren ingezongen nummer, wordt achterstevoren afgespeeld zodat de tekst weer min of meer verstaanbaar wordt, maar de bewegingen van de kunstenaar en de mensen om hem heen zijn daarom juist weer omgekeerd, waardoor de passanten achteruit lijken te lopen. Momenteel werkt Offerman aan een serie foto´s en miniaturen die teruggrijpen op zijn eerdere werk met levend materiaal.
The performance is two-fold: An initial, Dadaistic ten-minute backward performance of the song is first videotaped a cappella. Then after a half-hour break during which the performer goes backstage to reverse the recording and synchronize it to a karaoke track, the audience is then shown the final composite result on the big screen.
Offerman developed his work “The Stairway at St.Paul’s” into a live-performance that is being booked at various major art events. Noteworthy performances include FACT (Liverpool/UK), Hara-Museum (Tokyo/JP) and Bandits Mages (Bourges/F)
Offerman developed his work “The Stairway at St.Paul’s” into a live-performance that is being booked at various major art events. Noteworthy performances include FACT (Liverpool/UK), Hara-Museum (Tokyo/JP) and Bandits Mages (Bourges/F)
"My parents are Jehovah's Witnesses and so I had a very strict Christian upbringing. There was a suspicion of rock and pop music, and some music, Led Zeppelin in particular, was branded downright evil. The rumor was that if you played Stairway to Heaven in reverse you could hear messages that would urge you to follow the devil's path. Supposedly even if you listened to the music in a normal manner you would subconsciously pick up these messages and act accordingly. In my early teens, I destroyed some music that I thought I shouldn't listen to or have at home. Stairway to Heaven was a difficult one for my friends and me. We thought the song and the lyrics were so utterly beautiful and yet we couldn't listen to it out of fear of what could happen to us if we did. That's the tension I felt by listening to this record: a teenage attraction to something dangerously beautiful. I am still intrigued how these myths are created and the effect they can have. So I started to learn to sing the song and its lyrics in reverse. After three months the job was done. I went up to the steps outside Saint Paul's Cathedral in London and performed it for an audience of confused passers-by, pigeons, and a video camera. Back home I reversed the tape and put a karaoke track underneath."
