Also noteworthy is Page’s short and sweet slide solo, played with a thick, overdriven tone that effectively sustains his vibrato-ed notes and enhances their singing quality. The chorus, played in the happy-sounding key of G, provides a welcome contrast to the somber feel of the verse and solo sections, which are in A minor. Jimmy achieved a rich texture by performing the song’s main guitar part on a 12-string acoustic and handsomely decorated the chorus with authentic country-style pedal-steel licks, for which he used lots of oblique bends and a wah pedal to accentuate their weeping sound. (It’s recommended that you listen to this on Spotify as their embed only has 200 songs.Like “Thank You,” this folky ballad, written exclusively by Page, offers good bang for your musical buck, in terms of packing a lot of expression into a handful of melodically embellished open “cowboy” chords. I’m not going to lie: it took me a long time to get over the prejudices instilled in me from my teenage years, and it wasn’t until the 1990 box set that I discovered “Tangerine,” where sitting in a different context, it suddenly jumped out at me like it never had on Led Zeppelin III.īut that was over a quarter-century ago, and now both “Tangerine” and Led Zeppelin III are stone cold favorites.Ī filterable, searchable & sortable database with links to every “Certain Song” post I’ve ever written. ![]() Usually that’s a recipe for disaster, but what saved it was a low-key and heartfelt performance from Robert Plant on the verses and his double-tracked harmonies on the utterly lovely chorus. ![]() And indeed, even now, it (along with its polar opposite, Presence) remains the worst-selling album of their initial run.īut, of course, that just means that it was ripe for rediscovery, as outside of “Immigrant Song,” none of the songs from Led Zeppelin III have truly penetrated the popular consciousness, and given that teenage boys of the 1970s were pretty much wrong about everything else, it only makes sense that Led Zeppelin III is now feted as being one of their greatest albums.Īnd a lot of that rests upon the once much-maligned second side, the centerpiece of which is the lovely, mysterious “Tangerine,” a song that Jimmy Page had kept in his back pocket since his Yardbird days (which, let’s be reminded, was only a couple of years prior), and while mostly acoustic, also features a fuzzy guitar solo halfway through.Īlso: pedal steel guitar, which gave it an almost country sound, despite that whenever John Bonham came on the chorus, he was playing a straight John Bonham rock beat, so the end result felt almost discombobulated - a song that was trying to be in two places at once. Like The Beatles did with pop on Rubber Soul and The Clash did with punk on Sandinista!, so did Led Zeppelin expand upon what could be expected from a heavy metal band on Led Zeppelin III.īut while Rubber Soul just seemed like a natural extension of what The Beatles were already doing and Sandinista! seemed like The Clash purposefully challenging both themselves and their audience, Led Zeppelin initially faced a considerable amount of backlash from their audience for the mostly acoustic Led Zeppelin III.Īs a teenager in the 1970s, I continually heard how Led Zeppelin III was too mellow (despite having “Immigrant Song,” “Celebration Day” and “Out on The Tiles”) and therefore sucked.
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