WCSX Classic Cuts : The Rain Song
WCSX Classic Cuts
Led Zeppelin: “The Rain Song”
The Hook: Required a more subtle approach than usual from the group’s vocalist.
Album: Houses of the Holy; a live version is on The Song Remains the Same
Year: 1973/1976
Writers: Jimmy Page and Robert Plant
Stats: The seven-and-a-half-minute cut wasn’t released as a single.
Background: Robert Plant remembers that Jimmy Page had the majority, if not all, of the music written when he presented “The Rain Song” to the rest of the band. He tells what happened next.
Robert Plant on what happened after Jimmy Page brought “The Rain Song” to the rest of Led Zeppelin. OC:…to that. :25
“It developed in such a classy way, the sound of the recording, the sound of the kit, the bass, the way the song moved and breathed, the mellotron, which is just a little bit out of tune. It was a smoky song for a smoky jazz lounge, in a way, except for it wasn’t. It was just so pretty. And I heard it and I went ‘What do I do there?’ You can’t do ‘Runaround Sue’ to that.”
