Song Construction
The song is in compound AABA form. Page played the loose blues riff for the intro, on a Telecaster 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:
t 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 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."Led Zeppelin's bass player John Paul Jones has stated that Page's famous riff probably emerged from a stage improvisation during the band's playing of "Dazed and Confused".
Alternatively, Jimmy Page 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, Page explained:
I had 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.For this track, Page employed the backwards echo production technique.
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