A seven-and-a-half minute blues number with some electric piano played by Led Zeppelin bass player John Paul Jones, this was a live favorite for the band. They started working on the song during the sessions for Led Zeppelin II, but was bumped for "Whole Lotta Love." By the time they recorded it for Led Zeppelin III, they had worked out the song in live performances, but according to Jimmy Page, it was still the hardest track to record for the album. The guitarist says they were getting very self-critical around this time.
Before this song was committed to tape, Led Zeppelin performed it at their famous January 9, 1970 concert at Royal Albert Hall in London. The show was filmed and recorded, but the keyboards didn't make it into the mix on this track, so the song was not included on the 2003 DVD Led Zeppelin, which featured footage from the show.
This is a very difficult song to sing, and it showed off Robert Plant's vocal range quite well. He said in a 2003 interview with Mojo: "The musical progression at the end of each verse - the chord choice - is not a natural place to go. And it's that lift up there that's so regal and so emotional. I don't know whether that was born from the loins of JP or JPJ, but I know that when we reached that point in the song you could get a lump in the throat from being in the middle of it."
See your Spotify stats (with number of plays and minutes listened) and discover new music.
Music data, artist images, album covers, and song previews are provided by Spotify. Spotify is a trademark of Spotify AB.