‘Rock and Roll’: The Led Zeppelin song inspired by Little Richard
Few bands broke out in the 1960s without owing some debt of gratitude to Little Richard. The wailing singer and exuberant performer captured the hearts and minds of countless groups, including Led Zeppelin, who would not only channel the musician throughout their work but pay direct homage to their seminal hit ‘Rock and Roll’.
Every member of Led Zeppelin can be seen to trace much of their musical influence back to the mind-boggling brilliance of Little Richard. “If I hadn’t heard the Howlin’ Wolf, Robert Johnson, Little Richard music, I wouldn’t have been drawn to music,” noted lead singer Robert Plant in 2015. “Most of the music we [in England] were surrounded by was slush, without any commitment. … I was born again and saved and reincarnated by American music”.
John Paul Jones was also a noted fan of the ‘Tutti Frutti’ performer, even snagging some memorabilia in the process of his fandom: “The one I have went through Little Richard’s band, then through James Brown’s band before arriving in England,” Jones said of his beloved Gibson bass guitar. “In fact, I saw it on an old movie clip of Little Richard.”
The group’s adoration of the pioneering rock and roller wasn’t just left in the past, though. With Led Zep playing around with a 1971 number ‘Four Sticks’ that seemed impossible to finish, Little Richard would provide the perfect solution. Led Zeppelin were never afraid to lean on the work of others, and as the band struggled in the studio to bring the track to life, drummer John Bonham deferred to performing a rendition of Richard’s classic ‘Keep A Knockin”.
Perhaps because of the group’s love of Richard, soon enough, the band’s de facto leader, Jimmy Page, found his way into the groove of the tune, delivering a chugging rock and roll riff before John Paul Jones and Robert Plant added their own musical ad-libs. A song had been born, and Page yelled out, “Stop! Let’s work on this”.
“It actually ground to a halt after about 12 bars,” Page said when talking about the track back in 1977. “But it was enough to know that there was enough of a number there to keep working on it.” Within minutes, the track had developed into a structure they could build upon.
“When you have the chance to use a master at a specific style,” Page said, “You just step back and enjoy what comes out.” While these words could have easily been levied at Richard, they were, in fact, saved for The Rolling Stones keyboardist Ian Stewart, who so happened to be at the studio and filled in for Jones as he took on the bass. He provided a boogie piano line akin to Richard’s fragrant original on ‘Keep a Knockin”, and things began to cook.
With the musical bones of rock and roll brought forward two decades into the 1970s, the group were delivering on a promise they had set out to achieve. “We just thought rock ‘n’ roll needed to be taken on again,” Plant told Creem in 1988 with defiant poise. “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.”
Below, listen to the powerhouse Led Zeppelin song ‘Rock and Roll’ and the vibrancy of Little Richard that provides its intoxicating undercurrent.
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