“Everything else was better”: Why Jimmy Page refused to release ‘Baby Come on Home’
Led Zeppelin weren’t just a band that was put together on a whim. A lot of the time, when bands initially start making music, there isn’t a whole lot of direction there. People come together because they like the same style of music; they jam for a bit, and then after some gigs and bad original songs, they find out what they want their definitive sound to be like.
Led Zeppelin was a lot different than that. They were older and had been in bands before; they had mastered their instrument, and Jimmy Page, who was responsible for bringing everyone together, already had a clear idea of what he wanted the band to sound like. His plan was to merge different styles of music to create a strange combination that had never been done before.
Page had been waiting a long time to be in a band. The first group he ever toured with was Neil Christianson and The Crusaders, which was a childhood dream come true as he had been playing the guitar for years and wanted nothing more than to be in a band. The lifestyle got on top of him, though, as the awkward sleep and party schedule proved too much, and Page collapsed one night before going on stage.
He worked as a studio guitarist for some time and then did a stint in The Yardbirds. After all of this time spent in the studio and as a contributing voice to The Yardbirds, Page had a very clear idea of what he wanted the band to sound like, the styles of music he was keen on them merging and the high standard they would be held up to.
“I had a lot of ideas from my days with The Yardbirds. The Yardbirds allowed me to improvise a lot in live performance, and I started building a textbook of ideas that I eventually used in Zeppelin,” explained Page, “I wanted Zeppelin to be a marriage of blues, hard rock and acoustic music topped with heavy choruses – a combination that had never been done before […] Lots of light and shade in the music.”
After their first jam session, the band knew they were on to something special. Led Zeppelin was able to combine all of these different genres in a unique and exciting way, and they were excited about taking this new style of music to the people.
“I remember the little room, all I can remember it was hot and it sounded good – very exciting and very challenging,” said Plant, “Because I could feel that something was happening to myself and to everyone else in the room. It felt like we’d found something that we had to be very careful with because we might lose it.”
That being said, because it was so clear to the band that they were on to something special, they set themselves a high standard that every song had to meet before it could be released. This didn’t just apply to how a song was written but also to how well it was recorded and sounded technically.
‘Baby Come on Home’ was a track the band started recording during the Led Zeppelin I sessions, but it wasn’t finished until the second album. “I don’t think we finished it — the backing vocals weren’t very clever. And, at the time, we thought everything else was better. Simple as that, really,” said Page, “But don’t get me wrong, the track is good. It’s just that we set such a high standard for ourselves.”
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