“We were very fortunate in the Zeppelin camp,” Robert Plant said in 2019. “There was a lot of amazing variety of stylistic influence in everybody’s playing.”
When Led Zeppelin had their breakthrough, it seemed there would be no one on the globe who would dispute such a claim, especially not as an entity boasting names like Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and John Bonham. If anything, they’d become as esteemed as players much like The Rolling Stones or The Beatles, crafting a legacy that would no doubt drive rock into a brand new, exciting chapter.
But like most pioneers of history’s most pivotal rock movements, Plant also regards their reign as something that flickered by in the blink of an eye, a fleeting explosion of a rock-induced haze without any real details to remember it by. He might have praised the contributions of each musician, but he also once said, “It was dumbfuck, a lot of it,” adding, “We made great music. We had a great time. And then it stopped. That’s all I know about it.”
Unlike most would in his position, Plant saw Zeppelin as a means to an end, a springboard for trying things out before getting into the reality of being a musician in his own right. History would naturally beg to differ, but it’s hard to ignore all the reasons he developed this attitude to begin with. On top of this, the band came at the perfect time for both culture and Plant, who always saw music as an outlet for finding new standards of excellence.
Perhaps that’s the main reason he sees Zeppelin almost as one of those amateur school projects where everyone’s just figuring out before they go off to their big, real-world jobs. Or why he appreciated it sometimes, while regarding it as a somewhat ostentatious affair in the next breath, because he was always waiting for the next best thing, even when he was a part of it. Even when he was at the ultimate peak of it.
Because even as a solo artist, Zeppelin is a major facet of Plant’s artistry. And nothing proves this fact more than the one song he’s performed the most times live, across all tours and performances: ‘Going to California’. According to stats from Setlist, Plant has performed this song 469 times, 56 more times than the next most-performed, his own song ‘In the Mood’. This is particularly interesting considering the many Zeppelin songs Plant has praised over the years, with very little to say about his feelings towards ‘Going to California’, other than that it means a lot for a band that went on to conquer the world.
That said, it’s understandable why it’s become such a popular Plant solo set staple, and that’s not just because it’s widely regarded as one of the band’s best across their entire discography. Going back to Plant’s earlier statement about each musician having their own “variety of stylistic influence”, it’s one of those songs that boasts each component, with Page’s acoustic guitar and Jones’ mandolin accompanying Plant’s signature vocal.
It also leaned into the band’s affinity for folk-leaning rock tropes, reportedly inspired by the hero of the folk singer-songwriter boom herself, Joni Mitchell, who, according to Plant, once she’s got to you, “you’ve really got to write about it now and again.” But more than that, ‘Going to California’ is a song that represents a formative moment for the band, with Plant once telling Spin that it was a reflection on “the first years of the group,” written “when I was only about 20 and was struggling to find myself in the midst of all the craziness of California and the band and the groupies.”