The first song on Led Zeppelin's debut album, John Bonham, John Paul Jones and Jimmy Page are the credited songwriters on this track. Page explained how it came together in his 2012 Rolling Stone interview: "John Paul Jones came up with the riff. I had the chorus. John Bonham applied the bass-drum pattern. That one really shaped our writing process. It was like, 'Wow, everybody's erupting at once.'"
The lyric is a little disjointed, but the song rocks so hard, most listeners don't notice. Robert Plant sings about coming of age, falling in love at 16 and losing his woman to a brown-eyed man (possibly inspired by Chuck Berry's "Brown Eyed Handsome Man." The end of the song finds him proclaiming his love for his woman back home, telling her they will never part.
Jimmy Page passed his guitar through a Leslie speaker to create a swirling effect. The Leslie contains a rotating paddle and was designed for organs, but some musicians used it to process guitars and vocals. Eric Clapton used it on "Badge."
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