Black Dog (song) - Background

Background

Led Zeppelin bass player John Paul Jones, who is credited with writing the main riff, wanted to write a song that people could not "groove" or dance to with its winding riff and complex rhythm changes.

In an interview, Jones explained the difficulties experienced by the band in writing the song:

I wanted to try an electric blues with a rolling bass part. But it couldn't be too simple. I wanted it to turn back on itself. I showed it to the guys, and we fell into it. We struggled with the turn-around, until Bonham figured out that you just four-time as if there's no turn-around. That was the secret.

The song's title is a reference to a nameless black Labrador retriever that wandered around the Headley Grange studios during recording. The dog has nothing to do with the song lyrics (although the line "Eyes that shine burning red" is similar to the Black dog legend), which are about desperate desire for a woman's love and the happiness resulting thereby. Regarding the lyrics to the song, Plant later said, "Not all my stuff is meant to be scrutinized. Things like 'Black Dog' are blatant, let's-do-it-in-the-bath type things, but they make their point just the same." Plant's vocals were recorded in two takes.

Built around a call-and-response dynamic between vocalist and the band, the start and stop a cappella verses were inspired by Fleetwood Mac's 1969 song "Oh Well." (Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page and The Black Crowes would later perform "Oh Well" on their 1999 tour and included it on the album Live at the Greek.)

Despite the seeming simplicity of the drum pattern, the song features a complex, shifting time signature that the band has sometimes claimed was intended to thwart cover bands from playing the song. Jones originally wanted the song recorded in 6/8 time but realised it was too complex to reproduce live. In live performances, Bonham eliminated the 5/4 variation so that Plant could perform his a cappella vocal interludes and then have the instruments return together synchronised. If the volume is turned up loud enough, Bonham can be heard tapping his sticks together before each riff. Page referenced this in an interview he gave to Guitar World magazine in 1993:

He did that to keep time and to signal the band. We tried to eliminate most of them, but muting was much more difficult in those days than it is now.

Page also discussed how he achieved his guitar sound on the track:

We put my Les Paul through a direct box, and from there into a mic channel. We used the mic amp of the mixing board to get distortion. Then we ran it through two Urei 1176 Universal compressors in series. Then each line was triple-tracked. Curiously, I was listening to that track when we were reviewing the tapes and the guitars almost sound like an analog synthesizer.

Page's solo was constructed out of four overdubbed Gibson Les Paul fills.

The sounds at the beginning of the song are those of Page warming up his electric guitar. He called it "waking up the army of guitars" — which are multitrack recorded in unison with electric bass guitar to provide the song's signature.

During the outro-solo Robert Plant can be heard moaning and wailing in the background. Around the 4-minute mark, he repeats, "Busted, yeah", which, due to the vocal being buried in the mix, sounds vaguely like "Push me babe, push me babe." It was also during this part of the song that Robert Plant hits his highest note on any Led Zeppelin studio recording. He reaches it between the second and third repetition of the fade-out riff during the guitar solo (at the 3:49 mark in the song). Often known for hitting the high G during the band's early years, Plant seems to reach A5 here...though it is disputed if, on a live bootleg recording from 1968/9, during an improvisation if the C6 Robert Plant appears to sing is or is not in falsetto, on the subject of Plant's powerful vocal range between (~)1968 and (~)1973 if he did posess a 4 octave vocal range.