The Led Zeppelin song Jimmy Page wants to be remembered for: “One of my favourites”

When Jack Black was talking about the powerful music of Led Zeppelin, he was bold in saying that there is no such thing as somebody who doesn’t like Led Zeppelin; rather, there are people who haven’t listened to the band in the right way. What is the right way? Well, if you take Black’s advice, it’s to listen to the band in one fell swoop.

 

“Led Zeppelin…the greatest rock and roll band of all time. Better than the Beatles, better than The Stones,” he said. “And if you don’t agree with me, that’s because you haven’t done the Zeppelin marathon. It’s when you sit your ass down and listen to all nine Zeppelin albums in a row. The jams of Led Zeppelin are second to none.”

 

 

While this might seem like a very bold claim, there is some truth behind what Jack Black is saying. Led Zeppelin is famous not just for being a great heavy metal band but also for having an incredibly diverse sound. In days when bands were strict about sticking to a genre, they were happy to merge multiple styles and sounds together in a bid to give listeners something that they hadn’t experienced before.

 

Jimmy Page had worked as a session musician before joining Led Zeppelin, and he also had some experience playing in The Yardbirds. As such, when he eventually got in a room with the rest of his bandmates, he had lots of ideas that he wanted to explore, and given the range of music he had been exposed to, these ideas weren’t confined to one specific sound.

 

When the band met for the first time, they played some Yardbirds covers and experimented with blues, R&B, hard rock and acoustic music. This combination would be incredibly tricky for most bands, but Led Zeppelin managed to make it work.

 

So, while the band might have a diverse mix of music to listen to, that the most die-hard of fans would tell you to listen to in one big go, what songs do the band members want to be remembered for the most? It’s always interesting seeing what songs mean the most to musicians, and it tends to be the case that they connect with something different from that which the listener does, given they were involved in the creation as well as just the consumption.

 

“It’s very difficult to say with Led Zeppelin,” said Jimmy Page in a press conference when he was asked what his favourite Led Zeppelin song was. “Because I have separate memories for each one, how they were recorded, the sentiment, what they mean is all about.”

 

After some pondering, he eventually decided on ‘Whole Lotta Love’ as one of his favourites. This is also a favourite amongst Led Zeppelin fans; however, for Page, it’s a lot more than just how the song sounds, but also how they came to achieve that sound. Page was a dab hand in the studio and on the guitar, and the huge sound on ‘Whole Lotta Love’ reflects not just the band’s musical excellence but also their innovative recording techniques. They implemented various methods when laying this track down, including recording the drums in a room with high ceilings and playing around with “every knob known to man,” to achieve the unique sound of this loving ballad.

 

“I would say a track, to actually be able to access the idea of what comes with these companion disc audio, and the release would be ‘Whole Lotta Love’,” Page concluded. “Because it shows it’s a mix down at the end of that night of recording and it’s really tough, it’s really good […] When you hear it, you see just how much work went into the final version of ‘Whole Lotta Love’. I think that’s one of my favourites.”