Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin were an English rock band formed in 1968 by Jimmy Page (guitar), Robert Plant (vocals), John Paul Jones (bass guitar, keyboards) and John Bonham (drums). With their heavy, guitar-driven sound, Led Zeppelin are regarded as one of the first heavy metal bands. However, the band’s individualistic style draws from many sources and transcends any one genre. Their rock-infused interpretation of the blues and folk genres also incorporated rockabilly, reggae, soul, funk, classical, Celtic, Indian, Arabic, pop, Latin and country. The band did not release the popular songs from their albums as singles in the UK, as they preferred to develop the concept of album-oriented rock.

Close to 30 years after disbanding following Bonham’s death in 1980, the band continue to be held in high regard for their artistic achievements, commercial success and broad influence. The band have sold more than 300 million albums worldwide, including 111.5 million sales in the United States and they have had all of their original studio albums reach the U.S. Billboard Top 10, with six reaching the number one spot. Led Zeppelin are ranked No. 1 on VH1′s 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock. Rolling Stone magazine has described Led Zeppelin as “the heaviest band of all time” and “the biggest band of the 70s”.

The photo is of the first performance ever by Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham in a small club outside of Copenhagen, the Gladsaxe Teen Club, had booked The Yardbirds a few months before but the Yardbirds broke up and Peter Grant and Jimmy Page came with other musicians to fulfil those commitments. They signed a contract for a small tour in Scandinavia. Jimmy recruited 3 other guys and they played all the clubs where The Yardbirds were supposed to play. The first of these clubs was the Gladsaxe Teen Club.

Gladsaxe Teen Club was really a gymnasium of a progressive school built in the 1960s and located in the area of Gladsaxe and they held concerts there almost every Saturday between September and March.

They Yardbirds didn’t become Led Zeppelin until after their return from Scandinavia. They took the name Led Zeppelin after Keith Moon, the drummer of The Who suggested that they would “go down like a lead balloon”.

You Shook Me

“You Shook Me” is a blues song written by Willie Dixon and J. B. Lenoir. Earl Hooker first recorded it as an instrumental which was then overdubbed with vocals by Muddy Waters in 1962.

The song was recorded by various rock musicians, including Jeff Beck on his album Truth (1968), and most famously by English rock band Led Zeppelin on its debut album Led Zeppelin (1969).

Since the Led Zeppelin version was released in 1969, months after Beck’s, he accused them of stealing his idea. This, along with the overall similarity between the sound of Led Zeppelin and that of Truth, led to a long rift between Beck and Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page. Beck and Page had been friends for years at that point. Interestingly, Led Zeppelin bassist and keyboardist John Paul Jones had played the organ on Beck’s version of the song as well, while still a session musician.

You know, you shook me, you shook me all night long
You know, you shook me, baby, you shook me all night long
You shook me so hard baby, baby, baby, please come home

I have a bird that whistles and I have birds that sing
I have a bird that whistles and I have birds that sing
Ha-ha-ha, I have a bird won’t do nothin’, aah-ah, oh-whoa
Buy a diamond ring, yeah

Ow, ow
Huh, huh
Alright, ah, yeah

You know, you shook me, baby, you shook me all night long
I know you really, really did, babe
I said you shook me, baby, you shook me all night long
You shook me so hard, baby
Babe, I know, ah-ow, ah-ah, ah-ah-ah, ah-da-la, ah-ah-ah-da-la
You shook me aw-ooh-ooh-aw-ooh-ooh-aw-ooh-ooh-aw-ooh-ooh
aw-ooh-ooh-aw-ooh-ooh-aw-ooh-ooh-all night lo-ooh-ong

• Audio from the 1969 album, Led Zeppelin:

Tagged as: Led Zeppelin

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Led Zeppelin were an English rock band formed in 1968 by Jimmy Page (guitar), Robert Plant (vocals), John Paul Jones (bass guitar, keyboards) and John Bonham (drums). With their heavy, guitar-driven sound, Led Zeppelin are regarded as one of the first heavy metal bands. However, the band’s individualistic style draws from many sources and transcends any one genre. Their rock-infused interpretation of the blues and folk genres also incorporated rockabilly, reggae, soul, funk, classical, Celtic, Indian, Arabic, pop, Latin and country. The band did not release the popular songs from their albums as singles in the UK, as they preferred to develop the concept of album-oriented rock.

Close to 30 years after disbanding following Bonham’s death in 1980, the band continue to be held in high regard for their artistic achievements, commercial success and broad influence. The band have sold more than 300 million albums worldwide, including 111.5 million sales in the United States and they have had all of their original studio albums reach the U.S. Billboard Top 10, with six reaching the number one spot. Led Zeppelin are ranked No. 1 on VH1′s 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock. Rolling Stone magazine has described Led Zeppelin as “the heaviest band of all time” and “the biggest band of the 70s”.

The photo is of the first performance ever by Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham in a small club outside of Copenhagen, the Gladsaxe Teen Club, had booked The Yardbirds a few months before but the Yardbirds broke up and Peter Grant and Jimmy Page came with other musicians to fulfil those commitments. They signed a contract for a small tour in Scandinavia. Jimmy recruited 3 other guys and they played all the clubs where The Yardbirds were supposed to play. The first of these clubs was the Gladsaxe Teen Club.

Gladsaxe Teen Club was really a gymnasium of a progressive school built in the 1960s and located in the area of Gladsaxe and they held concerts there almost every Saturday between September and March.

They Yardbirds didn’t become Led Zeppelin until after their return from Scandinavia. They took the name Led Zeppelin after Keith Moon, the drummer of The Who suggested that they would “go down like a lead balloon”.

Stairway to Heaven

The recording of “Stairway to Heaven” started in December 1970 at Island Records’ new Basing Street Studios in London.  The song was completed by the addition of lyrics by Plant during the sessions for Led Zeppelin IV at Headley Grange, Hampshire, in 1971.  Page then returned to Island Studios to record his guitar solo.

The song originated in 1970 when Jimmy Page and Robert Plant were spending time at Bron-Yr-Aur, a remote cottage in Wales, following Led Zeppelin’s fifth American concert tour. According to Page, the instrumentals were written by him “over a long period, the first part coming at Bron-Yr-Aur one night”. Page always kept a cassette recorder around, and the idea for “Stairway” came together from bits of taped music.

Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones explained that, following the song’s genesis at Bron-Yr-Aur, it was presented to him:

“Page and Plant would come back from the Welsh mountains with the guitar intro and verse. I literally heard it in front of a roaring fire in a country manor house! I picked up a bass recorder and played a run-down riff which gave us an intro, then I moved into a piano for the next section, dubbing on the guitars.”

In an interview he gave in 1977, Page elaborated:

“I do have the original tape that was running at the time we ran down “Stairway To Heaven” completely with the band. I’d worked it all out already the night before with John Paul Jones, written down the changes and things. All this time we were all living in a house and keeping pretty regular hours together, so the next day we started running it down. There was only one place where there was a slight rerun. For some unknown reason Bonzo couldn’t get the timing right on the twelve-string part before the solo. Other than that it flowed very quickly.”

The first attempts at lyrics, written by Led Zeppelin vocalist Robert Plant next to an evening log fire at Headley Grange, were partly spontaneously improvised and Page claimed, “a huge percentage of the lyrics were written there and then”. Jimmy Page was strumming the chords and Robert Plant had a pencil and paper. Plant later said that suddenly,

“My hand was writing out the words, ‘There’s a lady is sure [sic], all that glitters is gold, and she’s buying a stairway to heaven’. I just sat there and looked at them and almost leapt out of my seat.” Plant’s own explanation of the lyrics was that it “was some cynical aside about a woman getting everything she wanted all the time without giving back any thought or consideration. The first line begins with that cynical sweep of the hand … and it softened up after that.”

The lyrics of the song reflected Plant’s current reading. The singer had been poring through the works of the British antiquarian Lewis Spence, and later cited Spence’s Magic Arts in Celtic Britain as one of the sources for the lyrics to the song.

In November 1970, Page dropped a hint of the new song’s existence to a music journalist in London:

“It’s an idea for a really long track…. You know how “Dazed and Confused” and songs like that were broken into sections? Well, we want to try something new with the organ and acoustic guitar building up and building up, and then the electric part starts…. It might be a fifteen-minute track.”

The complete studio recording was released on Led Zeppelin IV in November 1971. The band’s recording label, Atlantic Records was keen to issue this track as a single, but the band’s manager Peter Grant refused requests to do so in both 1972 and 1973. The upshot of that decision was that record buyers began to invest in the fourth album as if it were a single. A handful of rare original seven inch promos were pressed at the time, accompanied by a humorous in-house memo (Atlantic LZ3), which are now extremely sought-after collectors items.

There’s a lady who’s sure all that glitters is gold
And she’s 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 she’s buying a stairway to heaven

There’s 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, there’s a songbird who sings
Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven
Ooh, it makes me wonder
Ooh, it makes me wonder

There’s 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 stand looking
and it makes me wonder
really makes me wonder

And it’s 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 forest will echo with laughter

If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow, don’t be alarmed now,
It’s just a spring clean for the May Queen
Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run
There’s still time to change the road you’re on
Ooh, it makes me wonder
Ooh, Ooh, it makes me wonder

Your head is humming and it won’t go, in case you don’t know
The piper’s calling you to join him
Dear lady, can’t 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 everything still turns to gold
And if you listen very hard
The tune will come to you at last
When all is one and one is all, yeah
To be a rock and not to roll.

And she’s buying the stairway to heaven

• Audio from the 1971 album, Led Zeppelin IV:

Tagged as: Led Zeppelin

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Led Zeppelin were an English rock band formed in 1968 by Jimmy Page (guitar), Robert Plant (vocals), John Paul Jones (bass guitar, keyboards) and John Bonham (drums). With their heavy, guitar-driven sound, Led Zeppelin are regarded as one of the first heavy metal bands. However, the band’s individualistic style draws from many sources and transcends any one genre. Their rock-infused interpretation of the blues and folk genres also incorporated rockabilly, reggae, soul, funk, classical, Celtic, Indian, Arabic, pop, Latin and country. The band did not release the popular songs from their albums as singles in the UK, as they preferred to develop the concept of album-oriented rock.

Close to 30 years after disbanding following Bonham’s death in 1980, the band continue to be held in high regard for their artistic achievements, commercial success and broad influence. The band have sold more than 300 million albums worldwide, including 111.5 million sales in the United States and they have had all of their original studio albums reach the U.S. Billboard Top 10, with six reaching the number one spot. Led Zeppelin are ranked No. 1 on VH1′s 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock. Rolling Stone magazine has described Led Zeppelin as “the heaviest band of all time” and “the biggest band of the 70s”.

The Battle of Evermore

“The Battle of Evermore” is an acoustic guitar and mandolin song by the English rock band Led Zeppelin, featured on their fourth album, Led Zeppelin IV, released in 1971. The tune for this was written by guitarist Jimmy Page at Headley Grange while he was experimenting on the mandolin owned by bassist John Paul Jones. As Page explained in 1977:

“‘Battle of Evermore’ was made up on the spot by Robert (Plant) and myself. I just picked up John Paul Jones’s mandolin, never having played a mandolin before, and just wrote up the chords and the whole thing in one sitting.

Vocalist Robert Plant had recently been reading about Scottish folklore and this inspired him to compose the lyrics to this song. Plant felt he needed another voice to tell the story, and for the recording of this song folk singer Sandy Denny was invited to duet with Plant. Denny was a former member of British folk group Fairport Convention, with whom Led Zeppelin had shared a bill in 1970 at the Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music. Plant played the role of the narrator and Denny represented the town crier. Page elaborated:

“It sounded like an old English instrumental first off. Then it became a vocal and Robert did his bit. Finally we figured we’d bring Sandy by and do a question-and-answer-type thing.”

To thank her for her involvement, Denny was given the symbol on the album sleeve of three pyramids (the four members of Led Zeppelin each designed their own symbols for the album). This is the only song Led Zeppelin ever recorded with a guest vocalist.

“The Battle of Evermore” was played live at Led Zeppelin concerts during the band’s 1977 concert tour of the United States. For these live performances, Jones sang Denny’s vocals with Plant and played acoustic guitar whilst Page played mandolin. Sometimes drummer John Bonham sang Denny’s vocals instead of Jones.

I was going to post some rare footage of the 1977 Seattle concert at the King Dome, where Bonham is singing the part of Sandy Denny, but frankly I considered that particular concert the worst Zeppelin concert I ever went to.  (I’ve seen them over fifty times and even had the privilege of interviewing them twice at the Edgewater Hotel in Seattle for my radio show back then.

The following is the a “video” I put together.  It is directly off the Zeppelin IV album.

If you want to see the Seattle concert version, I posted it at the bottom of this page.

Queen of Light took her bow, And then she turned to go,
The Prince of Peace embraced the gloom, And walked the night alone.

Oh, dance in the dark of night, Sing to the morning light.
The dark Lord rides in force tonight, And time will tell us all.

Oh, throw down your plow and hoe, Rest not to lock your homes.

Side by side we wait the might of the darkest of them all.

I hear the horses’ thunder down in the valley below,
I’m waiting for the angels of Avalon, waiting for the eastern glow.

The apples of the valley hold, The seeds of happiness,
The ground is rich from tender care, Repay, do not forget, no, no.
Dance in the dark of night, sing to the morning light.

The apples turn to brown and black, The tyrant’s face is red.

Oh war is the common cry, Pick up your swords and fly.
The sky is filled with good and bad that mortals never know.

Oh, well, the night is long, the beads of time pass slow,
Tired eyes on the sunrise, waiting for the eastern glow.

The pain of war cannot exceed the woe of aftermath,
The drums will shake the castle wall, the ringwraiths ride in black, Ride on.

Sing as you raise your bow, shoot straighter than before.
No comfort has the fire at night that lights the face so cold.

Oh dance in the dark of night, Sing to the morning light.
The magic runes are writ in gold to bring the balance back. Bring it back.

At last the sun is shining, The clouds of blue roll by,
With flames from the dragon of darkness, the sunlight blinds his eyes.

Ooh, Bring it back, Bring it back…

Okay, here is that terrible Seattle concert version (don’t say I didn’t warn you):

Tagged as: Led Zeppelin

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Led Zeppelin were an English rock band formed in 1968 by Jimmy Page (guitar), Robert Plant (vocals), John Paul Jones (bass guitar, keyboards) and John Bonham (drums). With their heavy, guitar-driven sound, Led Zeppelin are regarded as one of the first heavy metal bands. However, the band’s individualistic style draws from many sources and transcends any one genre. Their rock-infused interpretation of the blues and folk genres also incorporated rockabilly, reggae, soul, funk, classical, Celtic, Indian, Arabic, pop, Latin and country. The band did not release the popular songs from their albums as singles in the UK, as they preferred to develop the concept of album-oriented rock.

Close to 30 years after disbanding following Bonham’s death in 1980, the band continue to be held in high regard for their artistic achievements, commercial success and broad influence. The band have sold more than 300 million albums worldwide, including 111.5 million sales in the United States and they have had all of their original studio albums reach the U.S. Billboard Top 10, with six reaching the number one spot. Led Zeppelin are ranked No. 1 on VH1′s 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock. Rolling Stone magazine has described Led Zeppelin as “the heaviest band of all time” and “the biggest band of the 70s”.

In My Time Of Dying

While Led Zeppelin made this song famous in the 1970s, it is a much older song than that.  It was originally recorded in the 1930s by Josh White, and again on Bob Dylan’s first album in 1962.

In my time of dying, want nobody to mourn
All I want for you to do is take my body home

Well, well, well, so I can die easy
Well, well, well, so I can die easy

Jesus, gonna make up my dyin’ bed.
Meet me, Jesus, meet me. Meet me in the middle of the air
If my wings should fail me, Lord. Please meet me with another pair

Well, well, well, so I can die easy
Well, well, well, so I can die easy

Jesus, gonna make up.. somebody, somebody…
Jesus gonna make up… Jesus gonna make you my dyin’ bed

Oh, Saint Peter, at the gates of heaven… Won’t you let me in
I never did no harm. I never did no wrong

Oh, Gabriel, let me blow your horn. Let me blow your horn
Oh, I never did, did no harm.

I’ve only been this young once. I never thought I’d do anybody no wrong
No, not once.

Oh, I did somebody some good. Somebody some good…
Oh, did somebody some good. I must have did somebody some good…
Oh, I believe I did

I see the smiling faces
I know I must have left some traces

And I see them in the streets
And I see them in the field
And I hear them shouting under my feet
And I know it’s got to be real
Oh, Lord, deliver me
All the wrong I’ve done
You can deliver me, Lord
I only wanted to have some fun.

Hear the angels marchin’, hear the’ marchin’, hear them marchin’,
hear them marchin’, the’ marchin’

Oh my Jesus… (repeat)

Oh, don’t you make it my dyin’, dyin’, dyin’…cough

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