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Origin of WLL riff?


PhxHorn

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In the early 90s, I bought a CD called 'Led Zeppelin Plays Pure Blues' from Whoopy Cat, after seeing a review of it. It's from the Texas Pop Festival 8/31/69. Sound quality is pretty good except the vocals are a bit distorted and off center in the mix. In the 21-minute version of How Many More Times, during the 'Steal away' section 11 minutes in, Page plays the first five notes of the WLL riff in place of the usual one- or two-note lick. I notice that this is several weeks before the release of the second album, and I'm wondering if this is how the WLL guitar riff originated. It seems like a logical way for it to have evolved onstage, and it's easy to imagine how Page might have realized he could work it into a new song. Anyone have any specific info on how and when that lick originated? I've been wondering about it since buying this CD years ago.

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Anyone have any specific info on how and when that lick originated? I've been wondering about it since buying this CD years ago.

hey there phxhorn,

i have no idea as to when jimmy came up with the riff to WLL, but i imagine it would have been more

than just "a few weeks" before the release of LZ2, as an album takes a little more than a couple of weeks to realise.

here´s an idea of what might have turned jimmy (and robert) on to the tune:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmZyNKBJ4pI

greetings,

moonson

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In the early 90s, I bought a CD called 'Led Zeppelin Plays Pure Blues' from Whoopy Cat, after seeing a review of it. It's from the Texas Pop Festival 8/31/69. Sound quality is pretty good except the vocals are a bit distorted and off center in the mix. In the 21-minute version of How Many More Times, during the 'Steal away' section 11 minutes in, Page plays the first five notes of the WLL riff in place of the usual one- or two-note lick. I notice that this is several weeks before the release of the second album, and I'm wondering if this is how the WLL guitar riff originated. It seems like a logical way for it to have evolved onstage, and it's easy to imagine how Page might have realized he could work it into a new song. Anyone have any specific info on how and when that lick originated? I've been wondering about it since buying this CD years ago.

I also heard him playing the riff during "How Many More Times" at Royal Albert Hall on the led zep dvd

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I'm aware of the Willie Dixon tune, of course, but the WLL guitar riff isn't part of the that one. So Page must have come up with it on his own, and I'm speculating that HMMT might be where it originated. I wonder if there are versions of HMMT from earlier in '69 in which the riff appeared. I'm not sure exactly what month WLL was recorded (I do know that the sessions were scattered around, and so it might be hard to figure out), but if there are versions of HMMT with the riff that pre-date the recording sessions, that might help nail it down. Of course, it's also possible the riff was written separately and Page was just throwing it into HMMT because it fit.

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In the early 90s, I bought a CD called 'Led Zeppelin Plays Pure Blues' from Whoopy Cat, after seeing a review of it. It's from the Texas Pop Festival 8/31/69. Sound quality is pretty good except the vocals are a bit distorted and off center in the mix. In the 21-minute version of How Many More Times, during the 'Steal away' section 11 minutes in, Page plays the first five notes of the WLL riff in place of the usual one- or two-note lick. I notice that this is several weeks before the release of the second album, and I'm wondering if this is how the WLL guitar riff originated. It seems like a logical way for it to have evolved onstage, and it's easy to imagine how Page might have realized he could work it into a new song. Anyone have any specific info on how and when that lick originated? I've been wondering about it since buying this CD years ago.

Jimmy has vehemently denied that the song originated onstage:

Interviewer:
Is it true "Whole Lotta Love" was written onstage during a gig in America, when you were all jamming on a Garnett Mimms song?

Page:
No. No. Absolutely incorrect. No, it was put together when we were rehearsing some music for the second album. I had a riff, everyone was at my house, and we kicked it from there. Never was it written during a gig--where did you hear that?

Interviewer:
I read it in a book.

Page (sarcastically):
Oh, good. I hope it was that Rough Guide. That's the latest one, the most inaccurate. They're all inaccurate, you know.

In a separate interview, Jimmy explained:

I had [the riff] worked out already before entering the studio. I had rehearsed it. And then all of that other stuff, sonic wave sound and all that, I built it up in the studio, and put effects on it and things, treatments.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Page's riff was Page's riff. It was there before anything else. I just thought, 'well, what am I going to sing?' That was it, a nick. Now happily paid for. At the time, there was a lot of conversation about what to do. It was decided that it was so far away in time (it was in fact 7 years) and influence that...well, you only get caught when you're successful. That's the game.

- Robert Plant

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jimmy played the loose blues riff for the intro, on a Sunburst 1958 Les Paul Standard through a 100W Marshall "Plexi" head amp with distortion from the EL34 output valves, which ascends into the first chorus. Then, beginning at 1:24 (and lasting until 3:02) the song dissolves to a free jazz-like break involving a theremin solo and a drum solo and the moans of Robert Plant. Plant did the vocals in one take. As audio engineer Eddie Kramer has explained: "The famous Whole Lotta Love mix, where everything is going bananas, is a combination of Jimmy and myself just flying around on a small console twiddling every knob known to man." Kramer is also quoted as saying:

At one point there was bleed-through of a previously recorded vocal in the recording of "Whole Lotta Love." It was the middle part where Robert [Plant] screams "Wo-man. You need it." Since we couldn't re-record at that point, I just threw some echo on it to see how it would sound and Jimmy said "Great! Just leave it."

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Here's an alternate theory, from Cameron Crowe's liner notes to the 1990 Box Set:

Today, none of the band members is sure when the monster "Whole Lotta Love" riff first appeared. John Paul Jones ventures that it probably came from a stage improv during "Dazed and Confused." Says Plant: "Wherever it came from, it was all about that riff. Any tribute which flows in, must go to Jimmy and his riffs. They were mostly in E and you could really play around with them [...]

Unlike, say, "Black Dog," WLL is not a complicated run to work out on the guitar, and it seems to me to be something any player might stumble upon during an onstage jam session, where the fast rhythm and the "chunky" chord structure are dictated by the excitement of live performance. Certainly LZ were doing plenty of extended instrumental workouts at their shows of '69 where they were going off on some heavy boogie ad libs. In my book Magus, Musician, Man I've suggested that this is how WLL came about (see page 78 in the paperback edition). That's not to say Page's account of careful rehearsal and composition isn't closer to the truth, but given the hurried, on-the-fly production of LZII the fit-of-inspiration, dash-into-the-nearest-studio-to-get-it-down version sounds at least plausible.

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I'm aware of the Willie Dixon tune, of course, but the WLL guitar riff isn't part of the that one.

So Page must have come up with it on his own,

Please listen to the first few, instrumental bars of Willie Dixon again.

For my ears the You Need Love riff is very close to what Jimmy did afterwards.

it seems more like a punky simplification of that older riff´s first part (without the "answer" phrase by organ & guitar). That leaves me with the question : why does Robert state Jimmy came up with the riff first and only afterwards he (Robert) chose to nick some lyrics ? Maybe i am wrong thinkin Jimmy got the riff inspiration directly from Dixon/Waters and the riff was totally his own idea, so it only was the resemblance in Roberts head that made him go for the lyrics later. Or perhaps Jimmy told Robert he had based his riff on the Willie Dixon recording and it started out more like a cover?

As of today, i could imagine not even Mr.Page himself knows the true answer anymore.

and it doesnt really matter as rocknroll is based on blues anyway where everbody was nicking and trading licks and lyric lines, just as in real life people imitate their heroes or friends sometimes and occasionally do progress thru that.

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Here's an alternate theory, from Cameron Crowe's liner notes to the 1990 Box Set:

Today, none of the band members is sure when the monster "Whole Lotta Love" riff first appeared. John Paul Jones ventures that it probably came from a stage improv during "Dazed and Confused." Says Plant: "Wherever it came from, it was all about that riff. Any tribute which flows in, must go to Jimmy and his riffs. They were mostly in E and you could really play around with them [...]

Unlike, say, "Black Dog," WLL is not a complicated run to work out on the guitar, and it seems to me to be something any player might stumble upon during an onstage jam session, where the fast rhythm and the "chunky" chord structure are dictated by the excitement of live performance. Certainly LZ were doing plenty of extended instrumental workouts at their shows of '69 where they were going off on some heavy boogie ad libs. In my book Magus, Musician, Man I've suggested that this is how WLL came about (see page 78 in the paperback edition). That's not to say Page's account of careful rehearsal and composition isn't closer to the truth, but given the hurried, on-the-fly production of LZII the fit-of-inspiration, dash-into-the-nearest-studio-to-get-it-down version sounds at least plausible.

It could well be that both are true, Page could have stumbled across the riff during a jam, remembered it then constructed a track around it in the studio as is sposed to have happened with Kasmir.

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Although I guess it's unlikely, but there is an uncanny resemblance....

...and Robert Plant and The Band of Joy did record 'Hey Joe' as a demo (Regent Sound Studios, London) less than a year before Led Zeppelin formed. I for one can easily imagine them running through material they were all familiar with and this song is suggested. Jimmy takes it from there and it morphs into Whole Lotta Love...

...conjecture but still...

Thinking.gif

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The Whole Lotta Love riff is so basic really - you are bound to find things that resemble it in different places. What is a bit special about it as such is that Jimmy doubled it in a way, using octaves for both the E and the D, which may be a nuance, but it actually matters a great deal. Apart from that, most of the WLL "heaviness" comes from the rhythm section.

Yes, I can remember hearing them hit on it live in some early jam or other, but can't remember which one. :slapface: But really, what the idea consists in, is developing the riff as the basis for a song. Jimmy did just that, and will have had to work on it at home, even if the essential riff originated in a live jam.

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The "Whole Lotta Love" riff definitely originated from that part in "Hey Joe". People can contest it as coincidence, but that's a stretch. Whether or not Page consciously lifted it or not, who knows. But, remember how many other things he took and never credited. So...

By the time the WLL riff was inserted in HMMT live in July and Aug 69, the song had already been recorded for months. The song was recorded in early May when the band were in Los Angeles for a few days of studio time, according to the various reports. So, the debut at Winterland on April 26th, was actually just a few days before they actually recorded it.

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The "Whole Lotta Love" riff definitely originated from that part in "Hey Joe". People can contest it as coincidence, but that's a stretch. Whether or not Page consciously lifted it or not, who knows. But, remember how many other things he took and never credited. So...

By the time the WLL riff was inserted in HMMT live in July and Aug 69, the song had already been recorded for months. The song was recorded in early May when the band were in Los Angeles for a few days of studio time, according to the various reports. So, the debut at Winterland on April 26th, was actually just a few days before they actually recorded it.

Thanks, useful post. But I disagree that it must have come from Hey Joe. Merely going from B to D - a two-note succession - does not the WLL riff make, and wasn't exactly original within the context of either song. I also dislike when people presuppose that JP nicked a lot of things, and then use that to support individual cases. It's really been blown out of proportion. If you want a blatant case of stealing a riff, remember Deep Purple's Black Night and Rick Nelson's Summertime.

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By the time the WLL riff was inserted in HMMT live in July and Aug 69,the song had already been recorded for months. The song was recorded inearly May when the band were in Los Angeles for a few days of studiotime, according to the various reports. So, the debut at Winterland onApril 26th, was actually just a few days before they actually recordedit.

OK, that makes sense. Thanks for the info!

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Thanks, useful post. But I disagree that it must have come from Hey Joe. Merely going from B to D - a two-note succession - does not the WLL riff make, and wasn't exactly original within the context of either song. I also dislike when people presuppose that JP nicked a lot of things, and then use that to support individual cases. It's really been blown out of proportion.

No shit! Virtually all copyright infringement lawsuits against Zeppelin was due to 'LYRICS' not music.

Funny how Page always takes the brunt of this when its really Plant that has been the culprit.

Plus, the way Page 'actually' plays the WLL riff is different than the Hey Joe bit refered to.

The D note is always slightly bent up with the open D string ringing underneath simultaneously

This give's it a fatter and droning type of sound, classic Jimmy Page.

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By the time the WLL riff was inserted in HMMT live in July and Aug 69,the song had already been recorded for months. The song was recorded inearly May when the band were in Los Angeles for a few days of studiotime, according to the various reports. So, the debut at Winterland onApril 26th, was actually just a few days before they actually recordedit.

OK, that makes sense. Thanks for the info!

My notes show studio recording sessions on April 29, 30 & May 1st 1969 at Mirror Sound and/or Gold Star in Los Angeles and they had a total of six tracks recorded when they left.

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