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The idea Led Zeppelin ‘pinched’ from Chuck Berry

Sat 16 September 2023 17:30, UK

Jimmy Page formed Led Zeppelin in 1968 following the exodus of his previous band, The Yardbirds. With a discerning eye for musical talent and rock ‘n’ roll spirit, he procured three masters in their respective fields: Robert Plant front and centre, John Paul Jones on bass and keyboards, and John Bonham at the drum kit.

Although Page would have undoubtedly seen the band as a beast of his own creation in its formative rise to prominence, all four members ultimately stepped forward as indispensable links in the Led Zeppelin chain. For this reason, the band could see no way of moving on as a unit following the tragic death of John Bonham in 1980.

“We wish it to be known that the loss of our dear friend and the deep respect we have for his family, together with the sense of undivided harmony felt by ourselves and our manager, have led us to decide that we could not continue as we were,” the band stated at the time.

For the most part, Led Zeppelin worked as a well-oiled machine, with all components pulling in the same direction, but occasionally, the material would be steered by one member in particular. As the band’s early leader, Page tended to take the reins compositionally, leaving Plant to channel the concepts.

However, in the late 1970s, bassist John Paul Jones remembered shouldering much of the load while the band worked on their final album, In Through the Out Door. “It just seemed that Robert and I got to rehearsals first, and we basically wrote the album, just the two of us,” Jones recalled in an interview with Ritchie Yorke in 1991.

“We were left alone quite a lot of the time, along with John [Bonham], so we tended to get on with it, I think. I suppose you could say that In Through The Out Door is my album, the way Presence was Jimmy’s album,” the bassist added.

These later albums seemed to reflect dissonance between the members. However, they operated as a harmonious unit early on, sometimes leaning on their luminaries for compositional inspiration. Famously, Led Zeppelin reimagined Willie Dixon’s blues classic ‘I Can’t Quit You Baby’ on their debut album of 1968. This cover was correctly credited to the songwriter, but a more subtle grab from Chuck Berry guided much of Page’s guitar composition in these early LPs.

“On the first LP, there’s a pedal steel,” Page told Guitar Player in 1977. “I had never played steel before, but I just picked it up. There’s a lot of things I do first time around that I haven’t done before. In fact, I hadn’t touched a pedal steel from the first album to the third. It’s a bit of a pinch really, from the things that Chuck Berry did. Nevertheless, it fits. I use pedal steel in ‘Your Time Is Gonna Come’. It sounds like a slide or something. It’s more out of tune on the first album because I hadn’t got a kit to put it together.”

Listen to Jimmy Page’s early experimentation with the pedal steel guitar in ‘Your Time Is Gonna Come’ below.