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FBG'S TOP 81 LED ZEPPELIN SONGS: #1 - When The Levee Breaks from Led Zeppelin IV (1971) (1 Viewer)

I believe I mentioned way up thread I ranked zero from III, but this is probably an oversight.  I actually really like this song.  Mistakes have been made I suppose.

 
SteevieG said:
I believe I mentioned way up thread I ranked zero from III, but this is probably an oversight.  I actually really like this song.  Mistakes have been made I suppose.
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I also admittedly overlooked Since - should have been in my top 25 and would be if I re-did my rankings.

 
Pip's Invitation said:
They are MUCH more than a blues rock band.
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Yeah I know but you have to admit it's a core part of who they are. How many blues artists did they get "inspired" from to generate a large portion of their catalogue from?

When you say I just don't care for this or that Zeppelin song because you aren't a blues fan it is kind of a funny thing to say. Almost like saying you like Zeppelin but they would be better without Plant's vocals (one of the greatest in rock) or Page's guitar work (a guitar god). It's a major part of who they are.

 
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cap'n grunge said:
Yeah I know but you have to admit it's a core part of who they are. How many blues artists did they get "inspired" from to generate a large portion of their catalogue from?

When you say I just don't care for this or that Zeppelin song because you aren't a blues fan it is kind of a funny thing to say. Almost like saying you like Zeppelin but they would be better without Plant's vocals (one of the greatest in rock) or Page's guitar work (a guitar god). It's a major part of who they are.
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I'm fine until Plant yells a little or when Page plays a lot of notes.

 
I didn't write much about this song even though it's my #1. I almost feel like there isn't much I can write that would add anything.

It's actually cool to read a few of you saying you overlooked it and it would have made your list or should have been higher. 

To me, it has Plant singing at its finest. You can feel the emotion when he belts out the lyrics. I can't even sing along with this song. I think it might be the only song I feel that way about. You just kind of move your head and let him do the work. And when it comes to Plant's yells, this has the best one (6:13 in) as well as the 2nd best one (6:45 in) out of all their music, IMO. 

I also think this is Page's best guitar solo.

It's just the perfect song. It builds and builds with more intensity until it feels like it can't go any further, and then it does even more (see my 90 second timeframe above). You get to the end and just feel all of Plant's despair, the song ends, and you're left with nothing to do but hit repeat and listen to it again.

 
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Dwayne Hoover said:
Actually I think I know why I don't like it the most, going to use your term actually.  It's just a little too "cutesy" for my taste.

Other than that, its fine
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How are you defining cutesy? I picture cutesy as being a song like "Sugar, Sugar" by the Archies. I picture "Since I've Been Loving You" as a song playing in a dimly lit bar, a lot of people are stoned, it reeks of smoke, and whisky is flowing through it. 

 
My 10 yo son plays Roblox.  There is a game called Wild West and players can have instruments.  My son learned how to copy/paste MIDI links to have the AI play songs.  I walked by this morning and he and one of his friends were jamming Immigrant Song in the middle of the town in the game.  I felt no small amount of pride.  

 
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simey said:
How are you defining cutesy? I picture cutesy as being a song like "Sugar, Sugar" by the Archies. I picture "Since I've Been Loving You" as a song playing in a dimly lit bar, a lot of people are stoned, it reeks of smoke, and whisky is flowing through it. 
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He's not talking about SIBLY. He was talking about What Is and What Should Never Be.

 
gianmarco said:
He's not talking about SIBLY. He was talking about What Is and What Should Never Be.
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Oh.  :lol:   That song feels like a week ago. 😏  "What is and What Should Never Be" I picture someone being on a dreamy trip. 

 
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simey said:
How are you defining cutesy? I picture cutesy as being a song like "Sugar, Sugar" by the Archies. I picture "Since I've Been Loving You" as a song playing in a dimly lit bar, a lot of people are stoned, it reeks of smoke, and whisky is flowing through it. 
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Well said.

Rock & Roll on the other hand, cutesy.

 
gianmarco said:
I didn't write much about this song even though it's my #1. I almost feel like there isn't much I can write that would add anything.

It's actually cool to read a few of you saying you overlooked it and it would have made your list or should have been higher. 

To me, it has Plant singing at its finest. You can feel the emotion when he belts out the lyrics. I can't even sing along with this song. I think it might be the only song I feel that way about. You just kind of move your head and let him do the work. And when it comes to Plant's yells, this has the best one (6:13 in) as well as the 2nd best one (6:45 in) out of all their music, IMO. 

I also think this is Page's best guitar solo.

It's just the perfect song. It builds and builds with more intensity until it feels like it can't go any further, and then it does even more (see my 90 second timeframe above). You get to the end and just feel all of Plant's despair, the song ends, and you're left with nothing to do but hit repeat and listen to it again.
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Perfect song yet over half the people left it off their list.  Maybe not quite so perfect.

 
simey said:
How are you defining cutesy? I picture cutesy as being a song like "Sugar, Sugar" by the Archies. I picture "Since I've Been Loving You" as a song playing in a dimly lit bar, a lot of people are stoned, it reeks of smoke, and whisky is flowing through it. 
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This sounds awesome - I’d like to change my ranking.

 
I can't imagine any LZ song being described as cutesy, but this is the internet, where bad takes are the norm, so I guess I am not surprised.  

 
I looked this on my phone, so I might have missed something.  But it looks like my top 10 songs are still to come.  I can feel the judgmental stares already.  :D

1. 

2.

3.

4.

5. 

6. 

7. 

8. 

9. 

10. 

11. Tangerine (28)

12. Communication Breakdown (18)

13. Achilles Last Stand (33)

14. 

15. Ten Years Gone (22)

16. The Song Remains the Same (23)

17. What Is and What Should Never Be (16)

18. 

19. Since I've Been Loving You (15)

20. No Quarter (19)

21. The Rain Song (17)

22. 

23. Celebration Day (52)

24. Baby I Can't Quit You (50)

25. Hey, Hey, What Can I Do (24)

 
#14 - Rock And Roll from Led Zeppelin IV (1971)

Appeared On: 34 ballots (out of 62 . . . 54.8%)
Total Points: 475 points (out of 1,550 possible points . . .  30.6%)

Top 5 Rankers: @Ilov80s@Witz@Sinn Fein@Andrew74@fatguyinalittlecoat
Highest Ranking: 2

Live Performances:
LZ: 218 (Belfast - 1971-03-05 (First Performance), Osaka - 1971-0-29, Long Beach - 1972-06-27, New York - 1973-07-28, London - 1975-05-25, Seattle - 1977-07-17, Knebworth - 1979-08-04, Berlin - 1980-07-07 (Last Time W/Bonzo),
Philadelphia - 1985-07-13, London - 2007-12-10)
Page & Plant: 115 (Knebworth - 1990-06-30, Unknown, New York - 1995-10-27)
Plant: 211 (Nashville - 2011-02-09, Stockholm - 2015-07-14, Toronto - 2018-06-15)
Coverdale / Page: 8 (Osaka - 1993-12-20)

Covers: Heart, Train, Stevie Nicks, Foo Fighters, Def Leppard, Van Hagar, John McEnroe & Roger Daltrey, Great White, John Waite, Alvin & The Chipmunks, Double Trouble, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bare Naked Ladies, Zebra, Tenacious D, Living Colour, Vandenberg, Max Weinberg, Alison Moyet, Sheryl Crow, Alter Bridge, David Cook, Skid Row & Motley Crüe, Gretchen Wilson, Everclear, Journey, Miranda Lambert, Extreme, Dee Snyder & Spin Doctors, Cyndi Lauper, (Sammy Hagar, David Coverdale, Michael Anthony, Joe Satriani), Bad Religion, Generation X (Billy Idol), Wynona Judd, "Weird Al" Yankovic, Icicle Works, Lita Ford, Steve Lukather (Toto), Juliana Hatfield

Ultimate Classic Rock Ranking (out of 92 songs): 6
Vulture Ranking (out of 74 songs): 16
Rolling Stone Ranking (out of 40 songs): 9
Louder Ranking (out of 50 songs): 12
Uproxx Ranking (out of 50 songs): 23
WMGK Ranking (out of 92 songs): 1
SPIN Ranking (out of 87 songs): 32
Ranker Ranking (out of 87 songs): 10
Anachronarchy Ranking (out of 80 songs): 13

I wasn’t originally expecting this one to be controversial, but it’s been causing friction for weeks by this point. I’m Switzerland, but others are going to defend their side of the argument. It’s one of three remaining songs without a first-place vote. It only saw five Top 5 votes (fewest of the remaining songs) and saw 28 zeroes (most of any remaining song). But it did earn sixteen Top 10 votes. Some of the outside rankers LOVED IT. Four of them ranked it in the Top 10. WMGK had it as their #1. It’s our first song to crack the 30% possible point barometer. Given the insane amount of covers out there (I only listed a drop in the bucket), it's safe to say plenty of people love the song (no matter what any of us think).

The band was in the studio working on Four Sticks and had hit a creative wall. From out of nowhere, a frustrated Bonzo suddenly kicked into the opening drum section from Little Richard’s Keep A Knockin’. RNR was originally called It’s Been A Long Time.

Page described, “If something felt right, we didn’t question it. If something really magical is coming through, then you follow it. It was all part of the process. We had to explore, we had to delve. We tried to take advantage of everything that was being offered to us. We were recording something else when John Bonham started playing the drum intro to Keep a Knockin', and I immediately started playing the riff for Rock And Roll. Instead of laughing it off and going back to the previous song, we kept going. I played the opening riff automatically, and we got through the whole first verse. We said, ‘this is great, forget Four Sticks,’ let’s work on this and things were coming out like that. It was a spontaneous combustion. The song was written in minutes and recorded within an hour.”

“The record that made me want to play guitar was Baby, Let’s Play House by Elvis Presley. With RNR, it was enough to know that there was enough of a number to keep working on it. Robert even came in singing on it straight away.” Page developed a riff that blended hard rock and rockabilly. After that brief improvisation session with Bonham, the group took just 15 minutes to work out the structure of the entire song. Rolling Stones pianist Ian Stewart was there visiting, and he boogied and recorded the piano section. From Bonham’s initial pivot to the song, mapping out the music, writing the lyrics, and laying down three takes to record the song took less than an hour.

Plant wrote the lyrics in response to critics who claimed LZ III, wasn't really rock and roll. “We just thought rock and roll needed to be taken on again. I was finally in a really successful band, and we felt it was time for actually kicking ###. 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.” The song was released as a single and snuck into the Billboard Top 50, peaking at #47.

Alternate Version, Isolated Drum Track, 2007 Rehearsal

Rock And Roll had a long shelf life in live performances (9th most played song), starting in 1971 and running through the band’s remaining run through 1980. It also was played at Live Aid, Jason’s wedding reception, Carmen’s birthday, and the 2007 reunion show. Unless things change, it will go down as the last song the band ever performed, as it closed out the 2007 gig.

RNR was the first Led Zeppelin song used in a commercial. Cadillac used it to kick off a new advertising campaign in 2002 with the tagline "Breakthrough." The company was going for a hip, new image, since their audience was slowly dying off. The spots aired for the first time on the Super Bowl, and sales rose 16% the next year.

Ultimate Classic Rock (6 of 92 songs): There are so many arena-ready anthems on Led Zeppelin's fourth album, there's no surprise why it's their most popular (and best) LP. The record pretty much doesn't let up from the start, and this early song (Side One, Track Two) is a glorious straightforward rock 'n' roll song celebrating – what else? – rock 'n' roll.

Vulture (16 of 74 songs): Zoso’s first side continues with these unbridled three and a half minutes of cataclysmic rock ‘n’ roll. One of the most dramatic guitar attacks ever captured on record; Page’s tone has a depth and a fullness no other band could match. Note how, in contrast to the severe crispness of most of his guitar riffs, here he lets the chords reverberate. The result: an utterly anachronistic nostalgic hymn to the 1950s.

Rolling Stone (9 of 40 songs): Zeppelin were struggling to rehearse Four Sticks when Bonham spontaneously played the now-famous snare and open-high-hat drum intro to Rock and Roll" which imitates the first few bars of Little Richard's 1957 hit Keep A Knockin'. The song – initially called It's Been a Long Time – expresses a palpable longing for youth and the innocence of Fifties rock: Plant refers to the Stroll, an old dance, and to The Book of Love, by the Montones, from 1958. But the music recasts rock & roll as something fierce and modern.

Louder (12 of 50 songs): An instantly identifiable Zeppelin anthem, this track came out of a jam with Rolling Stones’ mentor Ian Stewart guesting on piano. Bonzo played the intro of Little Richard’s Keep A Knockin, and Page quickly added a suitable 1950s type riff. Fifteen minutes later, the nucleus of Rock And Roll was down on tape and a classic was born.

Uproxx (23 of 50 songs . . . based on live version): The Song Remains The Same is rightfully considered one of the most ridiculous and tedious rock films of the 1970s. I’ve watched it at least 20 times but I don’t think I’ve ever actually finished it once without falling asleep. (Consider that I normally start watching The Song Remains The Same very late at night, and never in the most sober frame of mind.) People love to make fun of the Peter Grant sequences, where he struts around pompously in his vintage gangster clothes like a white English Suge Knight. But for me the least coherent scene is when John Paul Jones is seen reading Jack And The Beanstalk to his kids while dressed like Dirk Diggler. (Were they trying to make John Paul look like a huge dork?) All of that aside, The Song Remains The Same is a five-star rock movie for me solely because of the performance of “Rock And Roll,” which is an incredible portrait of arena rock at its absolute peak. The shot behind the band as Bonzo kicks into the opening drum fill while still in the dark, and then the explosion of light as the rest of Zeppelin falls in feels like having a rocket ship strapped between your legs.

WMGK (1 of 92 songs): There have been a lot of rock and roll songs about rock and roll, and this one is surely one of the very best. Borrowing elements from the early days of rock and roll - a Chuck Berry-esque riff, rolling Jerry Lee Lewis piano and a drum intro reminiscent of Little Richard’s Keep A-Knockin' - Zep’s Rock And Roll is a love letter to the founders of the genre. Led Zeppelin’s members have always been passionate music fans so it’s fitting that on this, their greatest song, they pay tribute to the music that inspired them. Fun fact: Years later, Jerry Lee Lewis actually covered the song -- with Jimmy Page on guitar -- on his 2006 album, Last Man Standing. 

SPIN (32 of 87 songs): Among the group’s most popular rave-ups, earned through the sheer frenzy of Bonham’s cymbal-crashing, Page’s fret-racing, Jones’ keys-on-fire piano, and Plant’s dog-whistle shrieking. There’s not really a whole lot of song there, truly — it’s a repetitive and largely meaningless chorus, and the melody is pretty standard issue — but the band is just in such top form that Rock and Roll was able to become a classic worthy of exemplifying its title anyway.

 
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Anarchy99 said:
I was a non ranker. I find the song too long and the pace too slow. IMO, Plant's crooning, emoting, and adulating is distracting and over the top. Even Page's guitar seems forced to me, like he's trying to add too many notes and flourishes. In this case, I probably would have liked the song more if it were more reserved and restrained. I don't skip it when it comes on, but that's usually my cue to get up and do whatever I might need to before coming back.
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DocHolliday said:
I was a non-ranker also.   Similar to your views, I feel the song drags and takes too long to move along in places.   Plants vocals are a little much at times.   It’s still a great song that I don’t skip but it’s not in the top 25 for me.   

I can see how some people love it though.   It’s got some great parts.  There are no wrong answers here.
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Agree with both these statements, not a fan of the song.

 
Anarchy99 said:
#14 - Rock And Roll from Led Zeppelin IV (1971)

Appeared On: 34 ballots (out of 62 . . . 54.8%)
Total Points: 475 points (out of 1,550 possible points . . .  30.6%)

Top 5 Rankers: @Ilov80s@Witz@Sinn Fein@Andrew74@fatguyinalittlecoat
Highest Ranking: 2

Live Performances:
LZ: 218 (Belfast - 1971-03-05 (First Performance), Osaka - 1971-0-29, Long Beach - 1972-06-27, New York - 1973-07-28, London - 1975-05-25, Seattle - 1977-07-17, Knebworth - 1979-08-04, Berlin - 1980-07-07 (Last Time W/Bonzo),
Philadelphia - 1985-07-13, London - 2007-12-10)
Page & Plant: 115 (Knebworth - 1990-06-30, Unknown, New York - 1995-10-27)
Plant: 211 (Nashville - 2011-02-09, Stockholm - 2015-07-14, Toronto - 2018-06-15)
Coverdale / Page: 8 (Osaka - 1993-12-20)

Covers: Heart, Train, Stevie Nicks, Foo Fighters, Def Leppard, Van Hagar, John McEnroe & Roger Daltrey, Great White, John Waite, Alvin & The Chipmunks, Double Trouble, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bare Naked Ladies, Zebra, Tenacious D, Living Colour, Vandenberg, Max Weinberg, Alison Moyet, Sheryl Crow, Alter Bridge, David Cook, Skid Row & Motley Crüe, Gretchen Wilson, Everclear, Journey, Miranda Lambert, Extreme, Dee Snyder & Spin Doctors, Cyndi Lauper, (Sammy Hagar, David Coverdale, Michael Anthony, Joe Satriani), Bad Religion, Generation X (Billy Idol), Wynona Judd, "Weird Al" Yankovic, Icicle Works, Lita Ford, Steve Lukather (Toto), Juliana Hatfield

Ultimate Classic Rock Ranking (out of 92 songs): 6
Vulture Ranking (out of 74 songs): 16
Rolling Stone Ranking (out of 40 songs): 9
Louder Ranking (out of 50 songs): 12
Uproxx Ranking (out of 50 songs): 23
WMGK Ranking (out of 92 songs): 1
SPIN Ranking (out of 87 songs): 32
Ranker Ranking (out of 87 songs): 10
Anachronarchy Ranking (out of 80 songs): 13

I wasn’t originally expecting this one to be controversial, but it’s been causing friction for weeks by this point. I’m Switzerland, but others are going to defend their side of the argument. It’s one of three remaining songs without a first-place vote. It only saw five Top 5 votes (fewest of the remaining songs) and saw 28 zeroes (most of any remaining song). But it did earn sixteen Top 10 votes. Some of the outside rankers LOVED IT. Four of them ranked it in the Top 10. WMGK had it as their #1. It’s our first song to crack the 30% possible point barometer. Given the insane amount of covers out there (I only listed a drop in the bucket), it's safe to say plenty of people love the song (no matter what any of us think).

The band was in the studio working on Four Sticks and had hit a creative wall. From out of nowhere, a frustrated Bonzo suddenly kicked into the opening drum section from Little Richard’s Keep A Knockin’. RNR was originally called It’s Been A Long Time.

Page described, “If something felt right, we didn’t question it. If something really magical is coming through, then you follow it. It was all part of the process. We had to explore, we had to delve. We tried to take advantage of everything that was being offered to us. We were recording something else when John Bonham started playing the drum intro to Keep a Knockin', and I immediately started playing the riff for Rock And Roll. Instead of laughing it off and going back to the previous song, we kept going. I played the opening riff automatically, and we got through the whole first verse. We said, ‘this is great, forget Four Sticks,’ let’s work on this and things were coming out like that. It was a spontaneous combustion. The song was written in minutes and recorded within an hour.”

“The record that made me want to play guitar was Baby, Let’s Play House by Elvis Presley. With RNR, it was enough to know that there was enough of a number to keep working on it. Robert even came in singing on it straight away.” Page developed a riff that blended hard rock and rockabilly. After that brief improvisation session with Bonham, the group took just 15 minutes to work out the structure of the entire song. Rolling Stones pianist Ian Stewart was there visiting, and he boogied and recorded the piano section. From Bonham’s initial pivot to the song, mapping out the music, writing the lyrics, and laying down three takes to record the song took less than an hour.

Plant wrote the lyrics in response to critics who claimed LZ III, wasn't really rock and roll. “We just thought rock and roll needed to be taken on again. I was finally in a really successful band, and we felt it was time for actually kicking ###. 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.” The song was released as a single and snuck into the Billboard Top 50, peaking at #47.

Alternate Version, Isolated Drum Track, 2007 Rehearsal

Rock And Roll had a long shelf life in live performances (9th most played song), starting in 1971 and running through the band’s remaining run through 1980. It also was played at Live Aid, Jason’s wedding reception, Carmen’s birthday, and the 2007 reunion show. Unless things change, it will go down as the last song the band ever performed, as it closed out the 2007 gig.

Ultimate Classic Rock (6 of 92 songs): There are so many arena-ready anthems on Led Zeppelin's fourth album, there's no surprise why it's their most popular (and best) LP. The record pretty much doesn't let up from the start, and this early song (Side One, Track Two) is a glorious straightforward rock 'n' roll song celebrating – what else? – rock 'n' roll.

Vulture (16 of 74 songs): Zoso’s first side continues with these unbridled three and a half minutes of cataclysmic rock ‘n’ roll. One of the most dramatic guitar attacks ever captured on record; Page’s tone has a depth and a fullness no other band could match. Note how, in contrast to the severe crispness of most of his guitar riffs, here he lets the chords reverberate. The result: an utterly anachronistic nostalgic hymn to the 1950s.

Rolling Stone (9 of 40 songs): Zeppelin were struggling to rehearse Four Sticks when Bonham spontaneously played the now-famous snare and open-high-hat drum intro to Rock and Roll" which imitates the first few bars of Little Richard's 1957 hit Keep A Knockin'. The song – initially called It's Been a Long Time – expresses a palpable longing for youth and the innocence of Fifties rock: Plant refers to the Stroll, an old dance, and to The Book of Love, by the Montones, from 1958. But the music recasts rock & roll as something fierce and modern.

Louder (12 of 50 songs): An instantly identifiable Zeppelin anthem, this track came out of a jam with Rolling Stones’ mentor Ian Stewart guesting on piano. Bonzo played the intro of Little Richard’s Keep A Knockin, and Page quickly added a suitable 1950s type riff. Fifteen minutes later, the nucleus of Rock And Roll was down on tape and a classic was born.

Uproxx (23 of 50 songs . . . based on live version): The Song Remains The Same is rightfully considered one of the most ridiculous and tedious rock films of the 1970s. I’ve watched it at least 20 times but I don’t think I’ve ever actually finished it once without falling asleep. (Consider that I normally start watching The Song Remains The Same very late at night, and never in the most sober frame of mind.) People love to make fun of the Peter Grant sequences, where he struts around pompously in his vintage gangster clothes like a white English Suge Knight. But for me the least coherent scene is when John Paul Jones is seen reading Jack And The Beanstalk to his kids while dressed like Dirk Diggler. (Were they trying to make John Paul look like a huge dork?) All of that aside, The Song Remains The Same is a five-star rock movie for me solely because of the performance of “Rock And Roll,” which is an incredible portrait of arena rock at its absolute peak. The shot behind the band as Bonzo kicks into the opening drum fill while still in the dark, and then the explosion of light as the rest of Zeppelin falls in feels like having a rocket ship strapped between your legs.

WMGK (1 of 92 songs): There have been a lot of rock and roll songs about rock and roll, and this one is surely one of the very best. Borrowing elements from the early days of rock and roll - a Chuck Berry-esque riff, rolling Jerry Lee Lewis piano and a drum intro reminiscent of Little Richard’s Keep A-Knockin' - Zep’s Rock And Roll is a love letter to the founders of the genre. Led Zeppelin’s members have always been passionate music fans so it’s fitting that on this, their greatest song, they pay tribute to the music that inspired them. Fun fact: Years later, Jerry Lee Lewis actually covered the song -- with Jimmy Page on guitar -- on his 2006 album, Last Man Standing. 

SPIN (32 of 87 songs): Among the group’s most popular rave-ups, earned through the sheer frenzy of Bonham’s cymbal-crashing, Page’s fret-racing, Jones’ keys-on-fire piano, and Plant’s dog-whistle shrieking. There’s not really a whole lot of song there, truly — it’s a repetitive and largely meaningless chorus, and the melody is pretty standard issue — but the band is just in such top form that Rock and Roll was able to become a classic worthy of exemplifying its title anyway.
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One of the songs that define LZ for me. Too low, I had it at 7. All you haters are wrong.

 
As far as Rock And Roll goes, I don't dislike it, but for me it's not one of their top tier songs. I enjoy it, there's been plenty of times I've sought it out, but I'd pick others to go on my personal LZ greatest hits album. I once said it sounded like they wrote it in 10 minutes. I apologize and didn't give it enough credit. It was written in 15 minutes.

I mentioned 30 pages ago that I like a lot of Plant's takes on songs, and his spin on RNR would be one of them. He's performed if several ways over the years (with not many good or clean versions on YouTube). IMO, his less frenetic, more reserved, more adult style suits old timer me better.

 
The fact that a song came together quickly can be a sign of greatness, not necessarily that it’s a throwaway song.  Didn’t Bob Dylan write Blowing in the Wind on a napkin or something?  When something works it works.

 
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Anarchy99 said:
#14 - Rock And Roll from Led Zeppelin IV (1971)

Appeared On: 34 ballots (out of 62 . . . 54.8%)
Total Points: 475 points (out of 1,550 possible points . . .  30.6%)

Top 5 Rankers: @Ilov80s@Witz@Sinn Fein@Andrew74@fatguyinalittlecoat
Highest Ranking: 2

Live Performances:
LZ: 218 (Belfast - 1971-03-05 (First Performance), Osaka - 1971-0-29, Long Beach - 1972-06-27, New York - 1973-07-28, London - 1975-05-25, Seattle - 1977-07-17, Knebworth - 1979-08-04, Berlin - 1980-07-07 (Last Time W/Bonzo),
Philadelphia - 1985-07-13, London - 2007-12-10)
Page & Plant: 115 (Knebworth - 1990-06-30, Unknown, New York - 1995-10-27)
Plant: 211 (Nashville - 2011-02-09, Stockholm - 2015-07-14, Toronto - 2018-06-15)
Coverdale / Page: 8 (Osaka - 1993-12-20)

Covers: Heart, Train, Stevie Nicks, Foo Fighters, Def Leppard, Van Hagar, John McEnroe & Roger Daltrey, Great White, John Waite, Alvin & The Chipmunks, Double Trouble, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bare Naked Ladies, Zebra, Tenacious D, Living Colour, Vandenberg, Max Weinberg, Alison Moyet, Sheryl Crow, Alter Bridge, David Cook, Skid Row & Motley Crüe, Gretchen Wilson, Everclear, Journey, Miranda Lambert, Extreme, Dee Snyder & Spin Doctors, Cyndi Lauper, (Sammy Hagar, David Coverdale, Michael Anthony, Joe Satriani), Bad Religion, Generation X (Billy Idol), Wynona Judd, "Weird Al" Yankovic, Icicle Works, Lita Ford, Steve Lukather (Toto), Juliana Hatfield

Ultimate Classic Rock Ranking (out of 92 songs): 6
Vulture Ranking (out of 74 songs): 16
Rolling Stone Ranking (out of 40 songs): 9
Louder Ranking (out of 50 songs): 12
Uproxx Ranking (out of 50 songs): 23
WMGK Ranking (out of 92 songs): 1
SPIN Ranking (out of 87 songs): 32
Ranker Ranking (out of 87 songs): 10
Anachronarchy Ranking (out of 80 songs): 13

I wasn’t originally expecting this one to be controversial, but it’s been causing friction for weeks by this point. I’m Switzerland, but others are going to defend their side of the argument. It’s one of three remaining songs without a first-place vote. It only saw five Top 5 votes (fewest of the remaining songs) and saw 28 zeroes (most of any remaining song). But it did earn sixteen Top 10 votes. Some of the outside rankers LOVED IT. Four of them ranked it in the Top 10. WMGK had it as their #1. It’s our first song to crack the 30% possible point barometer. Given the insane amount of covers out there (I only listed a drop in the bucket), it's safe to say plenty of people love the song (no matter what any of us think).

The band was in the studio working on Four Sticks and had hit a creative wall. From out of nowhere, a frustrated Bonzo suddenly kicked into the opening drum section from Little Richard’s Keep A Knockin’. RNR was originally called It’s Been A Long Time.

Page described, “If something felt right, we didn’t question it. If something really magical is coming through, then you follow it. It was all part of the process. We had to explore, we had to delve. We tried to take advantage of everything that was being offered to us. We were recording something else when John Bonham started playing the drum intro to Keep a Knockin', and I immediately started playing the riff for Rock And Roll. Instead of laughing it off and going back to the previous song, we kept going. I played the opening riff automatically, and we got through the whole first verse. We said, ‘this is great, forget Four Sticks,’ let’s work on this and things were coming out like that. It was a spontaneous combustion. The song was written in minutes and recorded within an hour.”

“The record that made me want to play guitar was Baby, Let’s Play House by Elvis Presley. With RNR, it was enough to know that there was enough of a number to keep working on it. Robert even came in singing on it straight away.” Page developed a riff that blended hard rock and rockabilly. After that brief improvisation session with Bonham, the group took just 15 minutes to work out the structure of the entire song. Rolling Stones pianist Ian Stewart was there visiting, and he boogied and recorded the piano section. From Bonham’s initial pivot to the song, mapping out the music, writing the lyrics, and laying down three takes to record the song took less than an hour.

Plant wrote the lyrics in response to critics who claimed LZ III, wasn't really rock and roll. “We just thought rock and roll needed to be taken on again. I was finally in a really successful band, and we felt it was time for actually kicking ###. 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.” The song was released as a single and snuck into the Billboard Top 50, peaking at #47.

Alternate Version, Isolated Drum Track, 2007 Rehearsal

Rock And Roll had a long shelf life in live performances (9th most played song), starting in 1971 and running through the band’s remaining run through 1980. It also was played at Live Aid, Jason’s wedding reception, Carmen’s birthday, and the 2007 reunion show. Unless things change, it will go down as the last song the band ever performed, as it closed out the 2007 gig.

Ultimate Classic Rock (6 of 92 songs): There are so many arena-ready anthems on Led Zeppelin's fourth album, there's no surprise why it's their most popular (and best) LP. The record pretty much doesn't let up from the start, and this early song (Side One, Track Two) is a glorious straightforward rock 'n' roll song celebrating – what else? – rock 'n' roll.

Vulture (16 of 74 songs): Zoso’s first side continues with these unbridled three and a half minutes of cataclysmic rock ‘n’ roll. One of the most dramatic guitar attacks ever captured on record; Page’s tone has a depth and a fullness no other band could match. Note how, in contrast to the severe crispness of most of his guitar riffs, here he lets the chords reverberate. The result: an utterly anachronistic nostalgic hymn to the 1950s.

Rolling Stone (9 of 40 songs): Zeppelin were struggling to rehearse Four Sticks when Bonham spontaneously played the now-famous snare and open-high-hat drum intro to Rock and Roll" which imitates the first few bars of Little Richard's 1957 hit Keep A Knockin'. The song – initially called It's Been a Long Time – expresses a palpable longing for youth and the innocence of Fifties rock: Plant refers to the Stroll, an old dance, and to The Book of Love, by the Montones, from 1958. But the music recasts rock & roll as something fierce and modern.

Louder (12 of 50 songs): An instantly identifiable Zeppelin anthem, this track came out of a jam with Rolling Stones’ mentor Ian Stewart guesting on piano. Bonzo played the intro of Little Richard’s Keep A Knockin, and Page quickly added a suitable 1950s type riff. Fifteen minutes later, the nucleus of Rock And Roll was down on tape and a classic was born.

Uproxx (23 of 50 songs . . . based on live version): The Song Remains The Same is rightfully considered one of the most ridiculous and tedious rock films of the 1970s. I’ve watched it at least 20 times but I don’t think I’ve ever actually finished it once without falling asleep. (Consider that I normally start watching The Song Remains The Same very late at night, and never in the most sober frame of mind.) People love to make fun of the Peter Grant sequences, where he struts around pompously in his vintage gangster clothes like a white English Suge Knight. But for me the least coherent scene is when John Paul Jones is seen reading Jack And The Beanstalk to his kids while dressed like Dirk Diggler. (Were they trying to make John Paul look like a huge dork?) All of that aside, The Song Remains The Same is a five-star rock movie for me solely because of the performance of “Rock And Roll,” which is an incredible portrait of arena rock at its absolute peak. The shot behind the band as Bonzo kicks into the opening drum fill while still in the dark, and then the explosion of light as the rest of Zeppelin falls in feels like having a rocket ship strapped between your legs.

WMGK (1 of 92 songs): There have been a lot of rock and roll songs about rock and roll, and this one is surely one of the very best. Borrowing elements from the early days of rock and roll - a Chuck Berry-esque riff, rolling Jerry Lee Lewis piano and a drum intro reminiscent of Little Richard’s Keep A-Knockin' - Zep’s Rock And Roll is a love letter to the founders of the genre. Led Zeppelin’s members have always been passionate music fans so it’s fitting that on this, their greatest song, they pay tribute to the music that inspired them. Fun fact: Years later, Jerry Lee Lewis actually covered the song -- with Jimmy Page on guitar -- on his 2006 album, Last Man Standing. 

SPIN (32 of 87 songs): Among the group’s most popular rave-ups, earned through the sheer frenzy of Bonham’s cymbal-crashing, Page’s fret-racing, Jones’ keys-on-fire piano, and Plant’s dog-whistle shrieking. There’s not really a whole lot of song there, truly — it’s a repetitive and largely meaningless chorus, and the melody is pretty standard issue — but the band is just in such top form that Rock and Roll was able to become a classic worthy of exemplifying its title anyway.
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I have it 9th so not that far off. I like it a lot. I like that it was in response to people thinking LZ III was too soft. I love the 50s rockabilly style and references. I think the opening is just fantastic as the drums and then guitar/bass kick in. I love the outro. 

It is repetitive and simple but it's also short, unlike some of their other "popular" songs. 

I feel like all art can be viewed on a spectrum from simple to complex. And although the complex art is more difficult to achieve, and more likely to be great, there can be great simple art. This song is simple but it is still great. 

 
I didn’t rank it. Do not hate it, but It just doesn’t feel like there’s any structure or “depth” to it for me. It feels rushed, which maybe is the point, and at times I feel there are more pitch variations in old-timey Morse code telegraph signals than in  the main vocal.

I do dig the cymbals in the intro though, but in the end Fool in the Rain is 20x better.

 
Rustoleum said:
I didn’t rank it. Do not hate it, but It just doesn’t feel like there’s any structure or “depth” to it for me. It feels rushed, which maybe is the point, and at times I feel there are more pitch variations in old-timey Morse code telegraph signals than in  the main vocal.

I do dig the cymbals in the intro though, but in the end Fool in the Rain is 20x better.
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Well, I have RnR at 9 and Fool in the Rain at 46, so I think RnR is more than 5x better than Fool in the Rain. I'm wondering what ranks you give Fool in the Rain and RnR to get 20x?

 
right about where i prolly would've ranked it ... seems legit -  :shrug:

i'm not a fan of piannerr laced tunes from outfits as heavy as the Zep, but it really works here, this mutha just chugs along and jams and flows. 

it's ... well ... a rock n' roll burner - lives up to it's billing, nice and sweaty and amped up, just the way i love it. 

 
41 is probably a better ranking than 14. Ok, maybe not THAT low. It's a slick little song but there are so many that offer so much more. No way this should be ranked higher than SIBLY or The Rain Song.

 
My top 25 (consensus)

1.
2. Since I've Been Loving You (15)
3.
4. The Rain Song (17)
5.
6. The Ocean (20)
7.
8. Travelling Riverside Blues (43)
9. Ten Years Gone (22)
10.
11.
12.
13. What is and What Should Never Be (16)
14.
15.
16.
17. 
18.
19. Hey, Hey, What Can I Do (24)
20. 
21. In My Time of Dying (26)
22. Houses of the Holy (37)
23. Communication Breakdown (18)
24. I Can't Quit You Baby (50)
25. Your Time is Gonna Come (39)

The 5 consensus top 25 songs that didn't make my list:

Rock & Roll (14)
No Quarter (19)
The Battle of Evermore (21)
The Song Remains the Same (23)
Misty Mountain Hop (25)

 
beer 30 said:
One of the songs that define LZ for me. Too low, I had it at 7. All you haters are wrong.
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I think I had it at #10 - I was surprised by some of the pushback on this song. Obviously I can understand not being in a Top 25, but some seemed to express a dislike for the song. To each their own.

I agree on it being a defining song to me - the controlled chaos exemplifies the first thing comes to mind when I think of LZ.

 
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