The Led Zeppelin classic written in just 15 minutes: “It was just that exciting”
After trumping the most successful band of all time, The Beatles, as the newly instated most exciting act on the planet, Led Zeppelin set to work recording their magnum opus, 1971’s Led Zeppelin IV.
Recorded at their grandiose retreat, the Headley Grange mansion in Hampshire, England, the album was a resolute reaction to the negative press their third and most experimental album yet, Led Zeppelin III, had garnered.
When faced with such issues, there are usually two ways a band can go. They can fight fire with fire and double down on a new and experimental way forward. Claiming evolution over conformity and finding themselves a new playground to spend their time. Or, indeed, they can go back to basics and give the audience what it wants.
Refining the expansive outlook of the 1970 album and making good on the folk foundations it laid whilst reining in the scope of experimentation, the band delivered a blinder on Led Zeppelin IV. It reaffirmed to everyone, both fans and detractors, that the 1970s was their decade. The greatest triumph of their fourth album is that it captured the mercurial energy of the band’s early days whilst also setting a new course, as evidenced in tracks such as ‘Stairway to Heaven’, ‘Black Dog’ and ‘Going to California’.
One of the most significant cuts on Led Zeppelin IV is ‘Rock and Roll’. A visceral piece of classic-sounding rock ‘n’ roll, it energised the influence that early heroes such as Chuck Berry had on the group. It is complete with a thumping beat from John Bonham, one of guitarist Jimmy Page’s signature performances and a wailing turn from frontman Robert Plant.
Notably, the song emerged out of the struggle that was completing another album track, ‘Four Sticks’. As the piece had a nearly unplayable drum pattern, Bonham got so frustrated that he started playing a completely different rhythm based on the 1957 Little Richard hit ‘Keep A-Knockin”.
As Robert Plant recalled, Bonham “did the [Little Richard’s ‘Keep A Knocking’] drum intro and we just followed on. I started doing pretty much that half of that riff you hear on ‘Rock And Roll’ and it was just that exciting so we thought, ‘Let’s work on this’.” That’s not all, though. In one of the most vivid displays of the collective power of Led Zeppelin, in just 15 minutes, ‘Rock and Roll’ was completed. It became the second song on the album.
Page explained the song to Uncut: “We were recording something else when John Bonham started playing the drum intro to ‘Keep a Knockin’ by Little Richard, and I immediately started playing the riff for ‘Rock And Roll.’ Instead of laughing it off and going back to the previous song, we kept going. ‘Rock And Roll’ was written in minutes and recorded within an hour.”
“We just thought rock and roll needed to be taken on again,” Plant later told Creem in 1988. “I was finally in a really successful band, and we felt it was time for actually kicking ass. It wasn’t an intellectual thing, ’cause we didn’t have time for that – we just wanted to let it all come flooding out. It was a very animal thing, a hellishly powerful thing, what we were doing.”
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Led Zeppelin Newsletter
All the latest stories about Led Zeppelin from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.