"Candy Store Rock" is a song by English rock band Led Zeppelin, released in 1976 on their album Presence. It was also released as a single in the United States, but it did not chart.
The track is done in the style of a 1950s rock and roll number. Some of lead singer Robert Plant's lyrics were inspired by parts of various Elvis Presley songs. John Bonham's drumming is controlled rather than bombastic, driven by interplay between the ride cymbal's bell and snare. Meanwhile Jimmy Page's guitar solo is short and measured, coming in halfway through the song.
The band recorded the song at Musicland Studios in Germany, and it only took them about an hour to write it. Plant sang from a wheelchair because he was recovering at the time from a car accident he had sustained in Greece.
This is the only song on the album that features an acoustic guitar, but it is almost buried in the mix.
"Candy Store Rock" was never performed live by the band at Led Zeppelin concerts, except for a brief riff by Page at Riverfront Coliseum in Cincinnati, Ohio, on 20 April 1977. However, a one-minute improvisation was played live in concert by Page & Plant as a "Black Dog" introduction on 26 July 1995 at Wembley Arena.
Robert Plant considers "Candy Store Rock" to be one of his favourite songs from Presence.
Read more about Candy Store Rock: Formats and Tracklistings, Personnel, Sources
Famous quotes containing the words candy, store and/or rock:
“Why, what a candy deal of courtesy
This fawning greyhound then did proffer me!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“I see now that we store him up
year after year, old suicides
and I know at the news of your death,
a terrible taste for it, like salt.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)