#54 - You Shook Me from Led Zeppelin I (1969)
Appeared On: 7 ballots (out of 62) . . . 16.1%
Total Points: 75 points (out of 1,550 possible points . . . 4.84%)
5 Highest Rankers: @Tom Servo@In The Zone@wildwombat@Dwayne Hoover@SteevieG
Highest Ranking: 6
Live Performances:
LZ: 129 (
San Francisco - 1969-04-27, London - 1969-10-08,
Paris - 1969-10-10)
Plant: 8 (
Montreux - 1993-07-02) <-- Plant with extended
guitar solo!!!!
Page & Plant: 1 (
Osaka - 1996-02-15) <-- Completely different arrangement, leads into Break On Through
JP & Black Crowes: 2 (
Los Angeles - 1999-10-19)
Ultimate Classic Rock Ranking (out of 92 songs): 65
Vulture Ranking (out of 74 songs): 25
Rolling Stone Ranking (out of 40 songs): Not Ranked
Louder Ranking (out of 50 songs): 41
Uproxx Ranking (out of 50 songs): Not Ranked
WMGK Ranking (out of 92 songs): 71
SPIN Ranking (out of 87 songs): 76
Ranker Ranking (out of 87 songs): 38
Anachronarchy Ranking (out of 80 songs): 47
Track three of the debut album settles in here. The song was recorded by blues maestro
Muddy Waters in 1962, which itself was the instrumental
Blue Guitar by Earl Hooker the year before. Willie Dixon and J.B. Lenoir wrote the lyrics for Waters.
This song was one of what would turn into many controversies for LZ involving stealing people’s ideas or material. The Jeff Beck Group (with Rod Stewart) had recorded
You Shook Me In 1968 in a similar style and tempo. Beck was more than peeved the LZ recorded the song right after he did. Page denied having heard the arrangement or having any knowledge of Beck recording the song. However, Page’s side of the story doesn’t seem to hold water, as John Paul Jones played organ on Beck’s version.
Guitarist and producer Jimmy Page employed his 'backward echo' technique on the 'call-and-respond' segment between Plant's vocals and Page's 1958 Fender Telecaster guitar. The recording process involved hearing the echo before the main sound instead of after it, achieved by turning the tape over and employing the echo on an unused track, then turning the tape back over again to get the echo preceding the signal. Page had initially conceived the technique when recording the 1967 single 'Ten Little Indians' with the Yardbirds.
"To play slow and groove is one of the hardest things in the world," John Paul Jones explained. "We [he and John Bonham] could both do it, and we both recognized that in each other."
Rehearsal Track (1968),
First Take (1968)
AllMusic critic Bill Janovitz describes it as "a heavy, pummeling bit of post-psychedelic blues-rock, with healthy doses of vocal histrionics from Robert Plant and guitar fireworks from Jimmy Page.” Led Zeppelin biographer Keith Shadwick said, "It is very tightly arranged, even down to Bonham's strict limitation of his cymbals to a ride splash in each bar and hi-hat beats in unison with his bass-drum pedal.” Sheldon Pearce of Consequence of Sound called it "a masterpiece with slow-strutting tempo and Plant crooning like he's plunging down a rabbit hole."
You Shook Me was performed regularly throughout the multiple tours in 1969. It migrated from being a standalone song to one of several songs melded together into their medleys. Other than snippets in later concerts, the song was cut from the set list at the end of 1969. It was the 19th most performed song by the band. In case you missed it, I linked a version by Plant where he actually handles the guitar solo in the song. I was shocked the first time I saw it.
Ultimate Classic Rock (65 of 92 songs): This is why critics hated Zeppelin when they first appeared. Overwrought blues that was probably ripped off from Jeff Beck's similar take on a WIllie Dixon-penned song that Beck released nine months earlier. Skip both and go for Muddy Waters' original instead.
Vulture (25 of 74 songs): Zeppelin’s early blues workouts don’t mean much to us today. Almost 50 years ago, they were audacious reinterpretations of a catalog still considered sacred. Even Clapton’s “Crossroads”— a high-octane version of a Robert Johnson classic — seemed tame next to Zeppelin’s unbridled, just-not-all-that respectful takes. This wild and screechy rendition, complete with some call-and-response guitar ‘n’ voice work at the end, was a new high, or low, in hard-rock blues. Upped five notches for documentary value.
Louder (41 of 50 songs): It may never appear on Jeff Beck’s Spotify – he was legendarily peeved on hearing it, having released a similar arrangement a couple of months earlier on 1968 solo album Truth – but Zep’s orgiastic take on Willie Dixon’s standard rightly took the plaudits. Built upon Bonham and John Paul Jones’ titanium-strength slow groove – Jones also supplies scintillating solos on both electric piano and Hammond organ – it finds a fired-up Zeppelin flagging up their blues credentials. With Plant’s squalling harmonica and larynx-busting vocal matched by Page’s grinding guitar, it puts the original through the shredder, building to a feverish finale where Page’s groundbreaking use of backwards echo is matched by Plant’s eye-watering vocal howls. The result? A very different kind of blues.
WMGK (71 of 92 songs): This cover of Willie Dixon’s “You Shook Me” isn’t bad, but compared to other Zeppelin blues arrangements and interpretations, it just doesn’t measure up.
SPIN (76 of 87 songs): The band’s least-successful early blues reinterpretation, aiming for slow and seductive, but overshooting the mark and ending up just kind of sluggish.
Next, we finally get to a track from the legendary fourth album . . . and the quest to have all the songs on it in the Top 50 falls just short.