Every member of Led Zeppelin and their favourite Led Zeppelin songs
Picking your favourite song from a back catalogue as vast and impressive as Led Zeppelin‘s is never light work, and, sometimes, just choosing the one track can be wholly impossible to pull off. While dealing with such a question is a wonderful way to spend a jovial evening in the pub for band members of that band, it must be a tiresome query.
True enough, it’s a question all Led Zeppelin members have faced in their time as part of the biggest band in rock. Usually, the group’s members refused to answer the question, dodgy it like the slippery mud sharks they are, but on a few occasions, the media training slipped, and the band opened up about their trusted tunes.
Throughout eight studio albums, Led Zeppelin created an abundance of tracks that could all be possible contenders to be Plant’s favourite. If you ask any Led Zeppelin fan which track means the most to them, you are bound to get a different answer from one day to the next. That’s not only as you would imagine any real muso to answer, but it also speaks highly of the band’s dynamic variety that they brought to their work.
The four-piece, who formed in 1968 after the mercurial talent of Jimmy Page, saw him go in search of a new band. Having seen The Yardbirds fall apart, Led Zeppelin quickly made waves and made Page’s previous success look like a speck of dust in comparison. Recruiting Plant, Bonham and Jones, the group found their name thanks to Keith Moon, who said their new band would go down like “a lead balloon”. Little did Page know how wrong The Who man would be.
The group were quickly signed up as part of the growing roster of rock acts on Atlantic Records, which didn’t take long to become the hottest place in the music world. The band toured relentlessly and refined the idea of a rock show like no other band had done before them. With their touring schedule, the group showcased a vision of the future and laid the blueprints for most modern rock shows as we know them today.
Following drummer John Bonham’s tragic death, the band split, and the surviving three members have been inundated with questions about their favourite Led Zeppelin track. It’s fascinating to comprehend why these songs from Zeppelin’s impressive repertoire mean the most to each member and the poignant memories they have attached to their selection.
Led Zeppelin’s favourite Led Zeppelin songs:
Robert Plant’s favourite Led Zeppelin songs:
- ‘Kashmir’
- ‘All My Love’
- ‘In the Light’
- ‘Tea for One’
- ‘Achilles Last Stand’
First up for Robert Plant is the utter triumph of ‘Kashmir’ from 1975’s Physical Graffiti. Speaking to Rolling Stone once upon a time, Plant made the admission: “It’s one of my favourites… that, ‘All My Love’ and ‘In the Light’ and two or three others really were the finest moments,” reflected the singer.
There may have been fine moments but nothing was quite like the easter-influenced number: “‘Kashmir’ in particular. It was so positive, lyrically. It’s the quest, the travels and explorations that Page and I went on to far climes well off the beaten track… That, really to me is the Zeppelin feel.” The track was originally titled ‘Driving to Kashmir’ and in a 2010 interview with MOJO, the former Led Zep frontman spoke about the origin of the classic: “‘Kashmir’ came from a trip Jimmy and me made down the Moroccan Atlantic coast, from Agadir down to Sidi Ifni. We were just the same as the other hippies really.”
As recently as 2018, in a feature-length piece with Dan Rather he spoke in further detail about the intricacies of the track that make it so perfect to him: “It was a great achievement to take such a monstrously dramatic musical piece and find a lyric that was ambiguous enough, and a delivery that was not over-pumped,” said Plant. He told Louder Sound, “I wish we were remembered for ‘Kashmir’ more than ‘Stairway to Heaven’”, adding, “It’s so right; there’s nothing overblown, no vocal hysterics. Perfect Zeppelin.”
But alongside that hit, he picked out two other singles as the band’s top moments. “[‘Kashmir’], ‘All My Love’ and ‘In the Light’,” he would tell Rolling Stone, “really were the finest moments.” And, on another occasion, while speaking with John Bonham’s song, Jason, Plant would reveal two more tracks that were the archetypal vision of the band: “His favourite was… ‘Tea for One,’ he still loves, and ‘Achilles Last Stand.’ He said, ‘If I ever play somebody something from Led Zeppelin… This is it. Listen to this. This is what we had.’ He’s very proud of that. So that was a wonderful thing to have.”
Jimmy Page’s favourite Led Zeppelin songs:
- ‘Kashmir’
- ‘Whole Lotta Love’
- ‘Since I’ve Been Loving You’
Jimmy Page is in agreement with his former bandmate on this one, with the guitarist also finding it impossible to look past ‘Kashmir’ as their divine magnum opus. Speaking to Rolling Stone in 2012, Page said he felt the track contained the greatest Led Zeppelin riff, and even considering the myriad of songs he could have selected, he had only one choice in his mind. Page, famed for his evolving blues-rock sound, instead picked his Eastern-influenced gem from Physical Graffiti, the brilliant ‘Kashmir’, saying quite simply that the track “has to be the one.”
He acknowledges that while his riff may well be the biggest moment on some Zepplin songs, Led Zeppelin would never have reached the heights they did without the rest of the band’s incredible input. “It’s difficult to be asked, ‘What’s your favourite Zeppelin track?’ They all were,” Page told Fricke of with a knowing buoyance. “They were all intended to be on those albums.” But he decided to narrow it down soon after. “I suppose ‘Kashmir’ has to be the one,” he said.
“All of the guitar parts would be on there,” he said. “But the orchestra needed to sit there, reflecting those other parts, doing what the guitars were but with the colours of a symphony.” Her continued, “I just know that [Bonham] is gonna love it, and he loves it, and we just play the riff over and over and over, because it’s like a child’s riff,” Page remembered. It’s one of the band’s undying anthems and a bastion of what made Led Zeppelin one of the greatest bands on the planet.
But he, like plant, also had some other tunes which lay near the top. On anothe occasion, when asked to pickl his favourites, Page was bashful, explaining that all the songs mean something different to him, before confirming: “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,’” the reason why, for a studio brat as Page was, was simple. “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,” Page explained. ”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.”
‘Since I’ve Been Loving You’ may not represent the rip-roaring side of the band, but for Page, it deserves appreciation because of the technical prowess attached. ”That shows how the four of us worked so well together. Obviously, we rehearsed the number and count one, two, three, four, pressed the red light and that’s what you have,” he said.
John Boham’s favourite Led Zeppelin songs:
- ‘Trampled Under Foot’
Sadly, with the tragic passing of John Bonham, we don’t have as definitive a set of answers as the rest of the group. While the band was operational, they rarely discussed their favourite tracks, and considering the quartet didn’t stop working until Bonham passed, there are very few interviews in which Bonham discusses his pick of the group’s output.
But, there was one tune that we are sure he was enamoured with, ‘Trampled Under Foot’. “It’s great for me. Great rhythm for a drummer,” he explained in Led Zeppelin: The Oral History of the World’s Greatest Rock Band. “It’s just at the right pace, and you can do a lot of frills.” Couple this with the sheer joy on Bonham’s face when he’s playing the song compared to others, and you get a pretty clear image of the track being one of his favourites to perform.
John Paul Jones’ favourite Led Zeppelin songs:
- ‘Kashmir’
- ‘When The Levee Breaks’
- ‘What Is and What Should Never Be’
John Paul Jones is a talent that can be heard throughout Led Zeppelin’s catalogue particularly on the songs he selected as his favourite as part of an interview with Swedish TV back in 2003. Of course, he was happy to pay tribute to the brilliance of ‘Stairway To Heaven‘ but also noted the brilliant ‘Kashmir’ as a standout track from Physical Graffiti, calling the song “a great showpiece” and a “very theatrical, grand gesture.”
When pressed for his favourite song, he turned his attention to ‘Kashmir’ once again, sharing his appreciation for the song’s construction without noting his integral part in the creation. It’s a song that has been picked by Robert Plant and Jimmy Page as some of their favourite Led Zeppelin songs, too. But, where the others have often left it at that, Jones also shared a few others that he would call his favourites. “The atmosphere on ‘When The Levee Breaks’ is amazing,” he tells the interviewer.
Another one of Jones’ favourites is the brilliant ‘What Is and What Should Never Be’, the bassist recalled: “The way the rhythm [section] comes in — the way the drums come in is just magical, that changing of gear.”
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