‘The Rain Song’ – Led Zeppelin
Some of the greatest songwriters always like a bit more of a challenge whenever they are in the studio. No one likes the idea of making the same song over again, and by the mid-1970s, Jimmy Page wasn’t going to spend his time playing the same blues covers that he had played when Led Zeppelin formed. What he did needed to be more musical, and a little bit of trash talk from George Harrison was precisely what he needed to finish up
‘The Rain Song’.
While Zeppelin already had their fair share of slower moments in their catalogue, this song originated from a dare when Harrison said that the band didn’t have any true ballads in their catalogue. But if Page was going to write something slow, he was going to make it as strange as possible, playing the whole thing in an alternate tuning and eventually sprinkling in the kind of riffs that sound like they would be a decent soundtrack to the ominous section of a horror movie.
And as if to rub salt into the wound, the main motif of the song does seem to borrow a fair bit of its musicality from Harrison, quoting the classic track ‘Something’ over Robert Plant’s melody. This kind of song was all meant as good, clean fun between two rock legends, but rarely has anyone made something this beautiful all to prove somebody wrong.
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