A song that redefined the hardness and substance of rock itself in the 70s, which displaced Immigrant Song as the opening song of their concerts and which the entire world of music tried to cover in the years to come.
But what is the story of the birth of this great song written by John Bonham, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones?
Rock And Roll was born during the making of the song Four Sticks in the villa in Headley Grange, Hampshire, which the band had rented to record the album.
The song's drum pattern was very difficult to record and John Bonham completely lost patience. In a rage, he started playing something completely different to take his mind off it: he took inspiration from Little Richard's 1957 song Keep a Knockin'.
So it was that Bonham completely put aside the work on Four Sticks and began writing a song entitled It's Been a Long Time with the rest of the band. Jimmy Page played the guitar riff and the song was completed in about 30 minutes.
The lyrics to Rock And Roll were written by Robert Plant in response to critics who claimed that their previous album, Led Zeppelin III, was not a rock record.
Led Zeppelin had adopted a much more folk sound on their third album (which contained Immigrant Song), especially on the second side of the record, and Plant wanted to demonstrate how strongly the band was still capable of letting loose and having fun.
“We thought rock and roll just needed to be taken back,” Plant said during an interview with Creem in 1988. “I was finally in a really successful band and we felt it was time to kick everyone in the ass.
It wasn't a moral or intellectual thing, we didn't have time for that stuff. We just wanted it all to come out. It was a very animalistic thing, a powerful thing, what we were doing was like it was from the underworld." .
