Led Zeppelin: the drum introduction that started Rock and Roll
Led Zeppelin were recording something else when John Bonham began playing a familiar drum introduction. It came from Little Richard's Keep A-Knockin', and Jimmy Page heard a new possibility in it. He answered with a chord and half a riff already in his head, then urged the band to follow the idea. Rock and Roll grew from that unexpected turn during another piece of work. Page later described its arrival as coming out of the ether, a sudden opening in a session where the drummer's reference and the guitarist's partly formed material could find each other.
Page's love of blues informed his work across Led Zeppelin's music. Whole Lotta Love, The Immigrant Song, Kashmir and Stairway to Heaven all carried riffs credited to the guitarist. Ideas often emerged while he practiced at home, as little sections appeared in the course of playing. He then selected or rejected them, moving elsewhere if a fragment felt too close to something already familiar. An interesting idea could instead become material to build upon. Jones initially attributed Black Dog's influence to Muddy Waters' Electric Mud.
Little Richard's music offers another example of a musician adapting a familiar opening. Little Richard said he took Ike Turner's piano opening from Rocket 88 for Good Golly, Miss Molly. He liked the figure and had used it in his act before trying it as a lead-in to the later song. It fit the new purpose. Little Richard had also heard the phrase Good golly, Miss Molly from a Southern disc jockey, Jimmy Pennick. He changed the words after hearing Pennick, making the lyric more suggestive.
Good Golly, Miss Molly was written by John Marascalco and producer Robert Bumps Blackwell. Little Richard recorded it at J&M Studio in New Orleans, with piano and voice alongside tenor and baritone saxophones, guitar, bass and drums. An October 1956 session produced at least ten takes, with the ninth chosen for the later single and album. The Valiants released their version before Little Richard's hit reached listeners in January 1958. His performance subsequently became a rock and roll standard. Lee Allen played tenor saxophone, Alvin Tyler baritone saxophone, Roy Eustis Montrell guitar, Frank Fields bass and Earl Palmer drums. The Valiants' earlier release was produced by Blackwell and imitated Little Richard's fast first version. Little Richard's hit reached number four on the Billboard R&B chart and number ten on the pop chart.
Within Led Zeppelin, another riff took a very different path toward a finished song. John Paul Jones wrote Black Dog on a train after rehearsal at Page's house. His father had taught him to notate music using numbers and note values, so the back of a train ticket could take the place of manuscript paper. Jones wanted a rolling figure that seemed ready to end and then continued somewhere else. He later identified Howlin' Wolf's Smokestack Lightning as the inspiration. Jones described the train journey in a February 2008 interview with Bass Player.
Turning that figure into a band performance required rhythmic adjustments. Jones said the first version was in 3/16, which the other musicians could not keep up with. He and Page changed it to 4/4 and slowed it down, yet Bonham still had trouble locating the first beat as the pattern shifted. Jones told him to keep four beats to the bar throughout, letting the riff work its way back to the beat. Jones explained that enough repetitions of 5/8 would bring it back onto the beat.
Page found room for Robert Plant's voice in Black Dog by following Peter Green's approach to Oh Well, Part 1. Green alternated instrumental repetition with vocal breaks, and the same principle let Led Zeppelin put the voice between statements of Jones' riff. Jones and Page played the main figure together, while the bassist held back in middle-eight breaks to leave room for the guitarist. Jones preferred fingerstyle but used a pick for the bass part on this song. It gave him a more metallic, guitar-like sound and the phrasing he wanted for that particular performance.
The band gave the guitar on Black Dog another layer of character through the studio chain. Page used his Number 1 Gibson Les Paul, ran it through a direct box into a microphone channel, and used the mixing board's microphone amplifier for distortion. Two compressors followed in series. He then recorded the part three times, creating a layered guitar sound that later reminded him of an analog synthesizer. The title came from a black Labrador wandering around Headley Grange, the band's working home in Hampshire. Plant believed the dog was having sex in the woods and used that premise for the blues-style lyrics; the title never appears in them.
- https://www.guitarplayer.com/music/jimmy-page-on-led-zeppelins-black-dog — www.guitarplayer.com
- Wikipedia, Good Golly, Miss Molly — en.wikipedia.org