The real pooch that inspired ‘Black Dog’ by Led Zeppelin
Most fans of Led Zeppelin would state that 1971’s Led Zeppelin IV is their masterpiece. Comprised of the sonic odyssey that is ‘Stairway to Heaven’, the wistful ‘Going to California’, and the mystical folk of ‘The Battle of Evermore’, the elements aligned when recording the album, and for the most part, it still holds up today.
Whilst the aforementioned tracks are undoubtedly masterworks, with ‘Stairway to Heaven’ perhaps the pinnacle despite it receiving its fair share of contemporary criticisms, in terms of the pulsating hard rock of Led Zeppelin IV, no song is better than ‘Black Dog’. Built around a call-and-response dynamic between frontman Robert Plant and the rest of the band, according to biographer Dave Lewis, its start and stop a cappella verses were inspired by an earlier piece of blues rock, Fleetwood Mac’s 1969 hit, ‘Oh Well’.
Bassist John Paul Jones is credited with writing the winding riff of ‘Black Dog’, inspired by those found on Chicago bluesman Muddy Waters’ contentious 1968 album, Electric Mud. A lifelong music scholar, he added the riff and the complex rhythm changes in a pattern that inverts itself as the track continues. Not done there, Jones complicated matters by adding shifting time signatures.
In Led Zeppelin: All the Songs, Jones explains why he made the song so intricate. “I wanted to try an electric blues with a rolling bass part,” he said. “But it couldn’t be too simple”. Given that the song is so complex, the quartet initially encountered difficulty dealing with the turnaround when playing it. However, drummer John Bonham figured out how to solve the challenge. He drummed 4/4 the whole way through.
Famously, Led Zeppelin IV was recorded at the band’s favourite country retreat, the former workhouse, Headley Grange. The inanimate fifth member of the group, it provided both a sanctuary from the outside world and unique acoustic properties that allowed Zeppelin to bring their increasingly potent sound to life. From augmenting John Bonham’s thunder to influencing guitarist Jimmy Page’s interest in the occult, the Hampshire property had a defining impact on the quartet.
Headley Grange was so inspirational for Led Zeppelin that it even gave them the title of ‘Black Dog’. As they revealed after the album was released, the name is a reference to an unknown black labrador retriever that wandered around the studios and grounds that they would feed. As fans know, the title does not appear in the lyrics and has nothing to do with the track itself. Led Zeppelin looked to the anonymous pooch when they couldn’t think of a title, so they went with ‘Black Dog’.
Listen to ‘Black Dog’ below.
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