Jimmy Page’s acoustic guitar:
The beauty of isolated tracks is that they allow us to hear an old piece of music in a completely new way. They give us a fresh perspective on something we thought we already knew. Today we bring you a series of isolated tracks showing how Led Zeppelin pieced together one of its classic early songs: “Ramble On.”
The song was written by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant and recorded in New York in the spring of 1969. Led Zeppelin was on its second tour of North America. Along the way, the band popped into various studios to lay down tracks for Led Zeppelin II. The remainder of the album was recorded in the same fashion, between shows in Europe. “We were touring a lot,” bassist John Paul Jones wrote in the liner notes to the Led Zeppelin boxed set. “Jimmy’s riffs were coming fast and furious. A lot of them came from onstage especially during the long improvised section of ‘Dazed and Confused.’ We’d remember the good stuff and dart into a studio along the way.”
John Paul Jones’s bass guitar:
“Ramble On” is an early example of the Zeppelin hallmark of using a wide dynamic range within a single song. As the band goes back and forth between soft and loud, acoustic and electric, bassist John Paul Jones lays down a crisp outline of the song’s structure.
John Bonham’s drums:
The pitter-patter drumbeat by John Bonham during the quiet parts of “Ramble On” has sparked considerable debate among drummers. Some have theorized that Bonham was hitting the sole of his shoe with drum sticks. Others say it was a plastic garbage can lid. According to Chris Welch and Geoff Nicholls in John Bonham: A Thunder of Drums, Bonzo used his bare hands to tap out those 16th notes on an empty guitar case.
Robert Plant’s main vocals:
The lyrics of “Ramble On” reflect Robert Plant’s fascination with characters and events in The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien: “ ‘Twas in the darkest depths of Mordor/I met a girl so fair./But Gollum and the evil one crept up/And slipped away with her.” Led Zeppelin would include more references to Tolkien later, in songs like “Misty Mountain Hop” and “Stairway to Heaven.”
Jimmy Page’s electric rhythm guitar:
Jimmy Page’s explosive electric guitar playing kicks in at about the 1:14 mark. The exact guitar used by Page on the recording is a matter of controversy. He reportedly switched to his trademark Gibson Les Paul while recording Led Zeppelin II, but this track may have been played on the thinner-sounding Fender Telecaster he had been using since his days with the Yardbirds.
Jimmy Page’s electric lead guitar:
Like all the band’s albums, Led Zeppelin II was produced by Page. Although he eventually became known for building up complex layers of guitar tracks, Page kept the lead guitar overdubs for “Ramble On” fairly simple.
Robert Plant’s backup vocals:
Plant’s supplementary vocals begin at about the 1:14 mark. Plant would later say that the recording of the second album was when he began to feel sure of himself within the band. “Led Zeppelin II was very virile,” Plant told Nigel Williamson, author of The Rough Guide to Led Zeppelin. “That was the album that was going to dictate whether or not we had the staying power and the capacity to stimulate.”
Led Zeppelin II was released in October of 1969 and rose to number one in Great Britain and America. In the four decades since, the album has sold over 12 million copies. Though it was never released as a single, “Ramble On” was ranked #444 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
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‘Stairway to Heaven’: Watch a Moving Tribute to Led Zeppelin at The Kennedy Center
John Bonham’s Isolated Drum Track For Led Zeppelin’s ‘Fool in the Rain’
Jimmy Page Tells the Story of Kashmir
Solid gold! Thanks a million! All so simple apart, so good together.
Had John Bonham been tapping out “those 16th notes” with his “bare hands”, he wouldn’t have been able to pick up the drumsticks so fast, would he?
multi-track recording
Pavel, the parts of the drum track weren’t necessarily recorded in one take, were they? (Any more than the lead guitar overdubs were.) I cited the source; if you have better information please share it.
Great to listen to! But what are the origins of these files, and how was they released for this kind of publishing / distriution?
This is just awesome. Listening to the raw Bonham drum tracks is a joy. To this day his drum sound is still one of the best. Where on earth did you get these masters?
If you listen very closely you will hear that the pitter pat sound continues underneath the anacrusis in the kit. That is, the pitter pats play out the full bar while the kit plays the pick ups into the next section. I’d wager that either this was bounced at the time to one track or was done so before these track were released.
What I love the most is how imperfect the time is, even with Bonham, yet the the song as a whole is classic. No ProTools grids here!!
I believe that Jimmy’s Electric Rhythm Guitar track was recorded using Jimmy’s Les Paul, bridge-pickup selected, going into a small, cranked-up tube combo-amp. Listen to the very end of the track (possibly parts that were not left on the final mix), you can hear the tell-tale flicking of the pickup-selector-switch, it’s a distinctively different sound from that of a Telecaster’s…
I believe that Jimmy’s Electric Rhythm Guitar track was recorded using Jimmy’s Les Paul, bridge-pickup selected, going into a small, cranked-up tube combo-amp. Listen to the very end of the track (possibly parts that were not left on the final mix), you can hear the tell-tale flicking of the pickup-selector-switch, it’s a distinctively different sound from that of a Telecaster’s…
Also, there were obviously other tracks that WERE layered up for the Lead Guitar tracks in this song; many are two-part harmony lines, overdubbed together. Much of what is heard above is the “soprano” lines, the highest voices of the harmonized lines.
This was fascinating to listen to, but those 16th notes Bonham is tapping just ruins it. Sounds terrible and distracts from the rest of the song.
Would be infinitely better as an instrumental band.
Damn great and interesting stuff! Keep up the good
work my friends. Let’s not forget the Battle of Evermore
as another Tolkien reference even Misty Mountain Hop.
Man, that was some excellent!!!
Was just listening to this song on the radio and just had to find out about the tapping on them empty case… awesome info, thank you
12 million + would disagree. But I suppose you don’t have to keep the tapping when you produce Led Zeppelin in the future.
Rumour is that Zep was using various foreign studios while on the road across the USA in 69.
Supposedly page left behind a safety or back up copy multi track master behind.
Someone found this back up copy and sold it to the Japanese bootleg company Empress Valley ‚it spread thru out the world from there