WCSX Classic Cuts
Led Zeppelin: “Rock and Roll”
The Hook: John Bonham started playing Little Richard on the drums and Jimmy Page joined in and immediately came up with the riff.
Album: Led Zeppelin IV
Year: 1971
Writers: Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham
Stats: Peaked at number-47 on the Billboard Hot 100
Background: Led Zeppelin started working on its fourth album at Island Studios in London, but then moved into a Victorian house called Headley Grange in East Hampshire, England where the band could take a more spontaneous approach to writing and recording. As Jimmy Page tells it, that’s exactly how the song “Rock and Roll” came about.
Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page on how their song “Rock and Roll” came about. OC:…was it. :27
“We were recording another number entirely at Headley-Grange, which was a place we used to stay in in a house that had a huge hall — we used to set the drums up in there. And Bonzo just had started this drumming track, which is actually from a Little Richard number, ‘Keep a Knockin’.’ But I didn’t think it. I just heard this and I started doing this thing straight off, the guitar riff. And we got up to the end of twelve bars and, ‘Hey, stop this, work on this.’ And that was it.”
