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While poets, according to Harold Bloom, suffered from the anxiety attending the influence of earlier poets, Led Zeppelin suffered nothing similar, borrowing rather freely (and sometimes without attribution) from the American blues canon. The originals are often forgotten. Here's one, with the Zeppelin version below the fold:
And here's Zeppelin's 1971 version:
Feel free to add links in the comments to other originals that Zeppelin borrowed/stole/improvised upon.
I weary of the easy complaint that Led Zeppelin ripped off their progenitors. Perhaps they did, and so what? Nobody will ever mistake a Zeppelin performance for an "original" or vice versa. Same for the Stones. And for Telemann, Bach, Handel, and Vivaldi, who gloriously "borrowed" from others to no ill commercial or legal effect.
Bloom wasn't interested in copying. It just so happens that this afternoon I dipped into his Poetry & Repression, on the back cover of which this excerpt of an excerpt appears: "There is an unhappy irony, clearly, in the situation of the belated strong poet, since as much as in any poet ever, the spirit in him insists upon priority and autonomy, yet the text he produces is condemned to offer itself for interpretation as being already an interpretation of other interpretations, rather than as what it asserts itself to be, an interpretation of life."
Led Zeppelin were hardly insistent upon "priority and autonomy," they were not interested in interpretations of life. They obviously and openly wanted to rock and roll, and they did a damn fine job of it.
There's a lengthy wikipedia article listing all of Led Zepplin's borrowings/thefts/bases of improvisation. It's reasonably clear that there a quite a few cases where credit 'should' have been given to earlier musicians for lyrics, tunes, and riffs, and it's a fine thing that some of the borrowees got their due in court. But it also seems to me important to keep in mind that such borrowings (with or without attribution) and thefts are utterly typical of 'living' traditions in the arts. And I dare say that almost everyone who grew up with rock music in the mid-1960s-1980 first heard the living tradition of the blues in Cream, Led Zepplin, John Mayall, Canned Heat, etc., and that more than a few were therewith motivated to discover the earlier recordings for themselves. As Alasdair MacIntyre urged a few years ago, a decent education in the humanities for a contemporary person should include both Greek tragedy and the blues, and the rock musicians were inter alia the introductory teachers of that important latter part of Western culture. I never much liked Memphis Minnie's original of 'When the Levee Breaks', and Led Zepplin elevated it to something like a great Aeschylean lament, second only to Charlie Patton's 'High Water Everywhere' (Part One) as the artistic statement on the great Mississippi flood. In any case, for those only familiar with Led Zeppelin's version John the Revelator reveals Blind Willie Johnson's original:
FWIW, they did give attribution on this one, I believe. This reddit thread is illuminating. https://www.reddit.com/r/ledzeppelin/comments/1f7d8t7/which_led_zeppelin_songs_stoleborrowed_heavily/
Some 10 years ago I shared some links to similar "originals and their classic rock covers" including some Led Zeppelin but alas, it seems some are no longer on YouTube: https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2015/12/more-blues-originals-and-covers.html#more
Led Zeppelin had several of these, though less and less as they matured as musicians. I think the most egregious case is the "inspiration" of Willie Dixon's "You Need Love" in Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love", for which they were sued and settled out of court.
The Lemon Song by Led Zeppelin: https://youtu.be/_r85Cf6mS18?feature=shared
Killing Floor by Howling Wolf: https://youtu.be/EGIE28q3fEA?feature=shared
I second John Rapko’s observation that Led Zeppelin prompted many listeners, including me, to discover the original blues artists. I disagree with the notion that Led Zeppelin just wanted to rock and roll. Jimmy Page, in particular, had an artistic ear, and the band as a whole created a distinct new sound that merged the blues with the style of J.R.R. Tolkien and then expressed that combination in the genre of hard rock. Page also had ideas—influenced by Aleister Crowley—about the spiritual effect that his music would have on the listener.
The main innovation in LZ's "When the Levee breaks", and what makes it such a great Rock/Blues song, is Page's riff in the main verse section, as well as the various themes in the contrasting middle chorus section, which are NOT in the Memphis Minnie recording! That is, the main riff and middle sections are LZ's original contribution. Furthermore, this song's melody has a long precedent in earlier blues songs, and so to claim that Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe McCoy are the original composers is itself controversial. Finally, Memphis Minnie is listed on the credits for LZ's version.
I very much agree with all of Ed Slowik's points. It's absurd to think that the blues emerged full-blown–its poetics, artistic forms, tunes, lyrics, etc.–with initial recordings in the late 1920s-early 1930s. Two things that do seem to emerge by the late 1920s come from Charlie Patton: the extensive percussive use of the guitar (see Bukka White, who learned it from Patton, doing it in 1967 in 'Aberdeen Mississippi Blues' (
and the intensive integration of speech, song, and guitar (supremely in 'Spoonful Blues' (
Evidence for Patton's originality for the former is the initial hostility of Son House and others to Patton's 'clowning', and for the latter the fact that nothing like that integration is recorded for other blues artists until the 1940s (See the truly magnificent book on Patton by Wardlow, Calt, and Komara for the documentation).
I'm not that concerned with borrowing per se. That is part of the Blues tradition, with verses being regularly reused across performances and performers. But with the advent of records greater compactness coupled with thematic unity became more common with recorded blues as time went on. Nor do I have issues with recording cover versions of good blues songs. But there was money involved and not crediting living sources cost people who wrote the songs money. Willie Dixon was alive and well and held copyright to "You Need Love" when LZ recorded their version. And while the song is not word for word the Muddy Waters recording is very close to "Whole Lotta Love". To be sure Jimmy Page is a great guitar player and LZ knew how to capture his tone to good effect. But that is not generally copyrightable.
The Stones weren't perfect about crediting traditional sources but at least they had some reason to (wrongly) think those songs were unowned when they recorded Robert Johnson songs on two albums. And they were pretty good early on in getting credit (and gigs) for the living musicians whose songs they covered.
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