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Stairway to Nick John

I am so desperate with the cinemas closed that I've resorted to watching Amazon Prime series. There's Hunters which isn't bad, a hunt between Jews and Nazis in late 1970s America.

It's a Saturday morning, I'm in pajamas in the living room with the aroma of (generic brand) coffee that has already spread (so to speak) in the room. I really don't know what to do, I'm even working from home because I just don't know what the hell to do. I miss the joy of Debasio. I miss the thrill of the review.

So I'm proposing something "light" in terms of mental commitment. A beautiful, rigorous cover deeply respectful of the original. Not everyone loves them, but to me, they are masters of metal from the last twenty years, and I struggle to find bad songs in their seven albums (which will soon become eight).

Last year they redid... scandal... they redid Stairway to Heaven. The EP is titled Stairway to Nick John. Nick John was their manager who unfortunately passed away in September 2018. It was his favorite song, and they wanted to immortalize the tragic moment in music. On the web, you can find interviews; they are very attentive to human relationships, and often their music springs from losses or serious illnesses affecting friends and family. The disc contains a studio version and a live version.

It's a cover that doesn't tire, maintaining the identical magic of the original, but it's as if it's viewed from a different angle. It could be the quality of the recording, or the technical emphasis of the four, serving a piece less intricate than usual. But it feels like seeing a giant soften, kneel to whisper its humanity in your ear.

Even musically - and not just humanly - the listening isn't pointless. It seems to isolate with great clarity some background phrasings that were less noticeable in the Zeppelin version. They are nearly imperceptible touches, but here we are discussing among music aficionados, so it's fair.

It's like running the same race, but from the perspective of a more trained runner (technically, mind you) and this allows you to observe the surrounding landscape with more calm. With Zeppelin, you can't detach from the expressive emphasis, the piece goes down in one breath. And it's beautiful that way. But with ours, you can ramble, because obviously, the urgency can't be the same, allowing you to enjoy even that very slight nuance you hadn't had the chance to savor before.