Anarchy99
Footballguy
#7 - Black Dog from Led Zeppelin IV (1971)
Appeared On: 42 ballots (out of 62 . . . 67.7%)
Total Points: 678 points (out of 1,550 possible points . . . 43.7%)
#1 Rankers: @Witz@Sinn Fein
Top 5 Rankers: @wildwombat@UncleZen@BroncoFreak_2K3@ConstruxBoy@Binky The Doormat@drunken slob@AAABatteries@Long Ball Larry@Cowboysfan8
Highest Ranking: 1
Live Performances:
LZ: 230 (Belfast - 1971-03-05 (First Performance), London - 1971-04-01, Long Beach -1972-06-27, New York - 1973-07-27, London - 1975-05-25, Oakland - 1977-07-23, Knebworth - 1979-08-04, Mannheim - 1980-07-03, London - 2007-12-10)
Page & Plant: 124 (Los Angeles - 1995-01-30, Phoenix - 1998-09-24)
Plant: 356 (Cornbury Festival -2006-09-07, Glastonbury - 2014-06-28, Austin - 2016-03-21, New York - 2019-03-07 (W/Sheryl Crow)
Plant & Krauss: 46 (Unknown)
Page: 3
JPJ: 30 (Unknown) <-- Rocking instrumental version
Coverdale / Page: 7 (Osaka - 1993-12-21) <-- Coverdale knocks it out of the park
Covers: Deodato, Heart, Steve ‘n’ Seagulls, Trey Anastasio Band, OK GO, CCS, Mads Topping, Halestorm, Dread Zeppelin, Train, Freedom Train, Paul Shaffer, Deborah Harry, John Farnham, Zebra, Steelheart, Coalesce, Fergie, Masterplan, Hayseed Dixie, Miley Cyrus, Gretchen WIlson, Tony Levin, Hammer of the Gods, Ted Kooshian, Keith Emerson, Spin 1ne 2wo, Galactic, Robert Fripp, Nicole Scherzinger, Billy Sherwood, Loudness, Serga Kasinec, Navarone, Larry Coryell, Out of Phase, Mark Thornton
Ultimate Classic Rock Ranking (out of 92 songs): 8
Vulture Ranking (out of 74 songs): 20
Rolling Stone Ranking (out of 40 songs): 3
Louder Ranking (out of 50 songs): 8
Uproxx Ranking (out of 50 songs): 5
WMGK Ranking (out of 92 songs): 5
SPIN Ranking (out of 87 songs): 11
Ranker Ranking (out of 87 songs): 17
Anachronarchy Ranking (out of 80 songs): 12
For a band known for its lack of singles, we go back-to-back-to-back on songs that were released as singles. Black Dog hit #15 on the Billboard singles chart and was a Top 25 hit in 8 other countries (but not in the UK where the song was not released as a single). The fourth album place three songs in the Top 7.
Black Dog saw two 1st place votes, three 3rd place votes, 11 Top 5 votes, 26(!) Top 10 votes, and appeared on 42 ballots. Five of the outside rankers had it in their Top 10 (which seems too few).
For those wondering where the title came from, it does not appear in the lyrics, and has nothing to do with the song itself. The band worked up the song at Headley Grange, out in the country, surrounded by woods. A nameless black Labrador retriever would wander the grounds, and the band would feed it. But at night, the dog would disappear in the evening and return exhausted in the early morning.
“Let me tell you ’bout this poor old dog because he was a retriever in his early days, and the only thing he could ever find in his late days was his old lady who lived two houses away from where we were recording. And he used to go see the old lady quite regularly, but after he’d “boogied” and everything else he couldn’t get back. And we used to carry him back,” Robert Plant once said. When they needed a name for the track, which didn't have an obvious title, they thought of the canine and went with Black Dog.
At the time, John Paul Jones said he got the idea for the song after hearing Muddy Waters' 1968 album Electric Mud. He wanted to try "electric blues with a rolling bass part," and "a riff that would be like a linear journey.” When they started putting the album together, Jones introduced this riff, the song started to form. The first version Jones played had a complicated time signature and had to be refined so it would be easier to play. Decades later, Jones admitted he had the wrong artist and album . . . it was actually Howlin’ Wolf that he based the riffs on for his 1969 album The Howlin’ Wolf Album. The start-and-stop a cappella verses were inspired by Fleetwood Mac's 1969 song Oh Well. Page also has mentioned he gave a nod to Cinnamon Girl by Neil Young. The guitar solos on the outro were recorded directly into the desk without using an amplifier.
Robert Plant is singing about a woman who appeals to his prurient interests, but she is clearly no good for him. He tells himself he'd rather have a “steady rollin' woman come his way.” Rumors had started circulating that Page and friends had become big fans of the occult and the dark arts. Some people speculated that "Eyes that shine burning red, dreams of you all through my head," had something to do with Satan. But Plant explained, “Not all my stuff is meant to be scrutinized. Things like Black Dog are blatant, let's-do-it-in-the-bath type things, but they make their point just the same.” Allegedly, the song contains the highest note singer Robert Plant has ever sung. Plant's vocals were recorded in two takes.
Studio Rehearsal, Another Rehearsal, Basic Track with Guitar Overdubs, No Drums Version
Britain’s Q Magazine ranked it as their #1 song in their 20 Greatest Guitar Tracks. A publication called The Guitar ranked it 7th on their Top Riffs of the Millennium List. (Spoiler alert, they have one LZ track we haven’t gotten to ranked even higher.)
Black Dog was the 8th most performed song by Led Zeppelin (230 times) from 1971 up to the 2007 reunion show. But combining all the Zeppelin related performances, it’s been played almost 800 times.
Ultimate Classic Rock (8 of 92 songs): The band's fourth album plays like a Zep primer, with one great song after another. Black Dog opens the LP and serves as one hell of an introduction to everything that's on the way. It was even released as a single, making it to No. 15. Jones wrote that monster riff specifically to trip up fans.
Vulture (20 of 74 songs): Back in the LP day, side-openers counted for something. For their fourth album, upping the ante on all their competition, the band delivered two bashy hard-rock classics in a row — this song, and then Rock and Roll. This bruising lead off, preceded by some faint, ominous studio noise, brought back the echoing Plant voice of Good Times Bad Times over a crushing and unrelenting guitar line from Page — though it was actually written by Jones — delivered at seemingly five different time signatures. The lyrics remain tattered old blues tropes, but no one could mistake the musical maelstrom beneath them for their older brother’s blues.
Rolling Stone (3 of 40 songs): Arguably the most badass Led Zeppelin riff: It was cooked up by Jones, who had a Muddy Waters song stuck in his head. Page turned it into a chain-saw ballet on his Les Paul over Bonzo's stealth groove, with snarling multi-tracked rhythm guitar tearing up the midsection. But Plant's vocal come-on – "Hey, hey, mama, said the way you move/Gonna make you sweat, gonna make you groove" – brings the real alchemy. It may not be Shakespeare, but as Plant later said, songs like Black Dog "make their point."
Louder (8 of 50 songs): One of the heaviest of all the great Zeppelin riffs, Black Dog’s title has often been the subject of speculation. It has been suggested the ‘black dog’ was the depression that hung over John Bonham in particular, after a hard night’s partying. Others have claimed that it was simply named after a dog that was seen lurching around Headley Grange. The somewhat doomy mood of this all-powerful rock tune was enhanced by the location it was played in. The basic track was recorded in the crypt, and the blues style call-and-response between Plant and Page works wonders. 'Hey, hey Mama/Said the way you move/Gonna make you sweat/Gonna make you groove!' The whole band answers this particularly sweaty, sexy bellow with a unison statement that certainly recalls Fleetwood Mac’s song, Oh Well.
A funky groove from Bonham lifts Black Dog out of its blues roots. Page’s riff is basic, but self assured, as he jams over an odd time signature (4/4 is offset by 5/8). John Paul Jones devised the theme and the arrangement on which Jimmy overdubbed no less than four guitar tracks, using a Gibson Les Paul played through a DI box. John Paul Jones remembers Bonham had problems with Black Dog. “I told him to keep playing four to the bar, but there is a 5/8 rhythm over the top. If you go through enough 5/8s it arrives back on the beat. Originally, it was more complicated, but we had to change the accents for him to play it properly."
Uproxx (5 of 50 songs): The first song on Untitled, which was my first Zeppelin album, which means Black Dog was among the first Zeppelin songs I ever heard. This is like going to a bar for the first time, and instead of handing you a beer they give you a Scarface-sized pile of pure, uncut Colombian and tell you to ingest it all in exactly 1.2 seconds. As is usually the case with Zeppelin, the talk is big but the band delivers — you sweat, you groove, you can’t keep away, and in the end you can only say “oh yeah!”
WMGK (5 of 92 songs): Zeppelin had a knack for picking out the perfect opening album track and with Black Dog, it was a bold signal of what was to come on ‘Led Zeppelin IV.’ It's hard rock perfection, from Plant’s opening acapella intro to Page’s rolling solo bringing the track to a fading close. It’s also one of Zeppelin’s most successful singles peaking at number 15 on the Billboard Hot 100. (The only other Zeppelin single to perform better was Whole Lotta Love, which peaked on the Hot 100 at number four.) For any other band, a track like this would be the highlight of an album, but Zeppelin weren’t any other band, and Led Zeppelin IV is certainly not any other album.
SPIN (11 of 87 songs): Like Love, a song so canonical that it basically invented an entire set of rock cliches on its own. The call-and-response between Plant and the rest of the band at the song’s beginning is a song construction almost too perfect to be imitated — and the groove is so sneakily arrhythmic that it’s borderline impossible for a lesser band to cover — and basically everything you need to know about Plant’s animalistic, early-’70s persona can be expressed in those opening 15 words. Dog gets the slight edge over Love here by virtue of that off-kilter, winding nature, which makes the song that much fresher, 40 years of classic-rock overplay later.
Appeared On: 42 ballots (out of 62 . . . 67.7%)
Total Points: 678 points (out of 1,550 possible points . . . 43.7%)
#1 Rankers: @Witz@Sinn Fein
Top 5 Rankers: @wildwombat@UncleZen@BroncoFreak_2K3@ConstruxBoy@Binky The Doormat@drunken slob@AAABatteries@Long Ball Larry@Cowboysfan8
Highest Ranking: 1
Live Performances:
LZ: 230 (Belfast - 1971-03-05 (First Performance), London - 1971-04-01, Long Beach -1972-06-27, New York - 1973-07-27, London - 1975-05-25, Oakland - 1977-07-23, Knebworth - 1979-08-04, Mannheim - 1980-07-03, London - 2007-12-10)
Page & Plant: 124 (Los Angeles - 1995-01-30, Phoenix - 1998-09-24)
Plant: 356 (Cornbury Festival -2006-09-07, Glastonbury - 2014-06-28, Austin - 2016-03-21, New York - 2019-03-07 (W/Sheryl Crow)
Plant & Krauss: 46 (Unknown)
Page: 3
JPJ: 30 (Unknown) <-- Rocking instrumental version
Coverdale / Page: 7 (Osaka - 1993-12-21) <-- Coverdale knocks it out of the park
Covers: Deodato, Heart, Steve ‘n’ Seagulls, Trey Anastasio Band, OK GO, CCS, Mads Topping, Halestorm, Dread Zeppelin, Train, Freedom Train, Paul Shaffer, Deborah Harry, John Farnham, Zebra, Steelheart, Coalesce, Fergie, Masterplan, Hayseed Dixie, Miley Cyrus, Gretchen WIlson, Tony Levin, Hammer of the Gods, Ted Kooshian, Keith Emerson, Spin 1ne 2wo, Galactic, Robert Fripp, Nicole Scherzinger, Billy Sherwood, Loudness, Serga Kasinec, Navarone, Larry Coryell, Out of Phase, Mark Thornton
Ultimate Classic Rock Ranking (out of 92 songs): 8
Vulture Ranking (out of 74 songs): 20
Rolling Stone Ranking (out of 40 songs): 3
Louder Ranking (out of 50 songs): 8
Uproxx Ranking (out of 50 songs): 5
WMGK Ranking (out of 92 songs): 5
SPIN Ranking (out of 87 songs): 11
Ranker Ranking (out of 87 songs): 17
Anachronarchy Ranking (out of 80 songs): 12
For a band known for its lack of singles, we go back-to-back-to-back on songs that were released as singles. Black Dog hit #15 on the Billboard singles chart and was a Top 25 hit in 8 other countries (but not in the UK where the song was not released as a single). The fourth album place three songs in the Top 7.
Black Dog saw two 1st place votes, three 3rd place votes, 11 Top 5 votes, 26(!) Top 10 votes, and appeared on 42 ballots. Five of the outside rankers had it in their Top 10 (which seems too few).
For those wondering where the title came from, it does not appear in the lyrics, and has nothing to do with the song itself. The band worked up the song at Headley Grange, out in the country, surrounded by woods. A nameless black Labrador retriever would wander the grounds, and the band would feed it. But at night, the dog would disappear in the evening and return exhausted in the early morning.
“Let me tell you ’bout this poor old dog because he was a retriever in his early days, and the only thing he could ever find in his late days was his old lady who lived two houses away from where we were recording. And he used to go see the old lady quite regularly, but after he’d “boogied” and everything else he couldn’t get back. And we used to carry him back,” Robert Plant once said. When they needed a name for the track, which didn't have an obvious title, they thought of the canine and went with Black Dog.
At the time, John Paul Jones said he got the idea for the song after hearing Muddy Waters' 1968 album Electric Mud. He wanted to try "electric blues with a rolling bass part," and "a riff that would be like a linear journey.” When they started putting the album together, Jones introduced this riff, the song started to form. The first version Jones played had a complicated time signature and had to be refined so it would be easier to play. Decades later, Jones admitted he had the wrong artist and album . . . it was actually Howlin’ Wolf that he based the riffs on for his 1969 album The Howlin’ Wolf Album. The start-and-stop a cappella verses were inspired by Fleetwood Mac's 1969 song Oh Well. Page also has mentioned he gave a nod to Cinnamon Girl by Neil Young. The guitar solos on the outro were recorded directly into the desk without using an amplifier.
Robert Plant is singing about a woman who appeals to his prurient interests, but she is clearly no good for him. He tells himself he'd rather have a “steady rollin' woman come his way.” Rumors had started circulating that Page and friends had become big fans of the occult and the dark arts. Some people speculated that "Eyes that shine burning red, dreams of you all through my head," had something to do with Satan. But Plant explained, “Not all my stuff is meant to be scrutinized. Things like Black Dog are blatant, let's-do-it-in-the-bath type things, but they make their point just the same.” Allegedly, the song contains the highest note singer Robert Plant has ever sung. Plant's vocals were recorded in two takes.
Studio Rehearsal, Another Rehearsal, Basic Track with Guitar Overdubs, No Drums Version
Britain’s Q Magazine ranked it as their #1 song in their 20 Greatest Guitar Tracks. A publication called The Guitar ranked it 7th on their Top Riffs of the Millennium List. (Spoiler alert, they have one LZ track we haven’t gotten to ranked even higher.)
Black Dog was the 8th most performed song by Led Zeppelin (230 times) from 1971 up to the 2007 reunion show. But combining all the Zeppelin related performances, it’s been played almost 800 times.
Ultimate Classic Rock (8 of 92 songs): The band's fourth album plays like a Zep primer, with one great song after another. Black Dog opens the LP and serves as one hell of an introduction to everything that's on the way. It was even released as a single, making it to No. 15. Jones wrote that monster riff specifically to trip up fans.
Vulture (20 of 74 songs): Back in the LP day, side-openers counted for something. For their fourth album, upping the ante on all their competition, the band delivered two bashy hard-rock classics in a row — this song, and then Rock and Roll. This bruising lead off, preceded by some faint, ominous studio noise, brought back the echoing Plant voice of Good Times Bad Times over a crushing and unrelenting guitar line from Page — though it was actually written by Jones — delivered at seemingly five different time signatures. The lyrics remain tattered old blues tropes, but no one could mistake the musical maelstrom beneath them for their older brother’s blues.
Rolling Stone (3 of 40 songs): Arguably the most badass Led Zeppelin riff: It was cooked up by Jones, who had a Muddy Waters song stuck in his head. Page turned it into a chain-saw ballet on his Les Paul over Bonzo's stealth groove, with snarling multi-tracked rhythm guitar tearing up the midsection. But Plant's vocal come-on – "Hey, hey, mama, said the way you move/Gonna make you sweat, gonna make you groove" – brings the real alchemy. It may not be Shakespeare, but as Plant later said, songs like Black Dog "make their point."
Louder (8 of 50 songs): One of the heaviest of all the great Zeppelin riffs, Black Dog’s title has often been the subject of speculation. It has been suggested the ‘black dog’ was the depression that hung over John Bonham in particular, after a hard night’s partying. Others have claimed that it was simply named after a dog that was seen lurching around Headley Grange. The somewhat doomy mood of this all-powerful rock tune was enhanced by the location it was played in. The basic track was recorded in the crypt, and the blues style call-and-response between Plant and Page works wonders. 'Hey, hey Mama/Said the way you move/Gonna make you sweat/Gonna make you groove!' The whole band answers this particularly sweaty, sexy bellow with a unison statement that certainly recalls Fleetwood Mac’s song, Oh Well.
A funky groove from Bonham lifts Black Dog out of its blues roots. Page’s riff is basic, but self assured, as he jams over an odd time signature (4/4 is offset by 5/8). John Paul Jones devised the theme and the arrangement on which Jimmy overdubbed no less than four guitar tracks, using a Gibson Les Paul played through a DI box. John Paul Jones remembers Bonham had problems with Black Dog. “I told him to keep playing four to the bar, but there is a 5/8 rhythm over the top. If you go through enough 5/8s it arrives back on the beat. Originally, it was more complicated, but we had to change the accents for him to play it properly."
Uproxx (5 of 50 songs): The first song on Untitled, which was my first Zeppelin album, which means Black Dog was among the first Zeppelin songs I ever heard. This is like going to a bar for the first time, and instead of handing you a beer they give you a Scarface-sized pile of pure, uncut Colombian and tell you to ingest it all in exactly 1.2 seconds. As is usually the case with Zeppelin, the talk is big but the band delivers — you sweat, you groove, you can’t keep away, and in the end you can only say “oh yeah!”
WMGK (5 of 92 songs): Zeppelin had a knack for picking out the perfect opening album track and with Black Dog, it was a bold signal of what was to come on ‘Led Zeppelin IV.’ It's hard rock perfection, from Plant’s opening acapella intro to Page’s rolling solo bringing the track to a fading close. It’s also one of Zeppelin’s most successful singles peaking at number 15 on the Billboard Hot 100. (The only other Zeppelin single to perform better was Whole Lotta Love, which peaked on the Hot 100 at number four.) For any other band, a track like this would be the highlight of an album, but Zeppelin weren’t any other band, and Led Zeppelin IV is certainly not any other album.
SPIN (11 of 87 songs): Like Love, a song so canonical that it basically invented an entire set of rock cliches on its own. The call-and-response between Plant and the rest of the band at the song’s beginning is a song construction almost too perfect to be imitated — and the groove is so sneakily arrhythmic that it’s borderline impossible for a lesser band to cover — and basically everything you need to know about Plant’s animalistic, early-’70s persona can be expressed in those opening 15 words. Dog gets the slight edge over Love here by virtue of that off-kilter, winding nature, which makes the song that much fresher, 40 years of classic-rock overplay later.
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