Jimmy Page and Robert Plant Wrote This Classic Rock Gem While on Tour in 1969

When you hear a classic song on the radio, one exquisitely crafted and recorded, you might instinctively believe that the musicians responsible for it took a great deal of time on it. Occasionally, artists who are in the middle of a hot streak can turn out gems on the fly.

Nobody kept a busier schedule than Led Zeppelin in their first year or so of existence. Amid all that activity, they managed to write and record standouts like “Ramble On” in 1969.

The Zeppelin Itinerary

Many top bands grow up playing together for years before finally hitting it big. Led Zeppelin took a different course. Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones knew each other beforehand. So did Robert Plant and John Paul Jones. But the first time all four got together was when they started rehearsing their new band in the summer of 1968.

After a brief tour to get their feet wet, they hit the studios in September, laying down the tracks for their first album. That arrived in January of 1969. The Led Zeppelin LP rewrote the playbook for hard rock and made the new band a sensation with fans who reacted to the pure force of their attack.

Jimmy Page, who put the band together, wasn’t about to let his band rest on their laurels. They underwent a grueling schedule in 1969, bouncing back and forth between the US and the UK to solidify their gains with live performances. All the while, Page and company were creating their second album.

Writing Ramble

You can kind of understand how a song like “Ramble On” would trip from the songwriting pens of Jimmy Page and Robert Plant at that time. The song details the narrator’s peripatetic lifestyle, hitting his different ports of call and then moving on before any roots can be laid down.

That’s exactly what Led Zeppelin was doing at the time with their incessant touring. They wrote the song on the road. And while preparing for shows in New York, the group popped into Juggy Sound Studio to lay down the track.

Even in their haste, the band made a stellar recording. In the quieter acoustic parts of “Ramble On”, John Paul Jones’ tripping bass notes stand out. John Bonham’s hand percussion also offers some variety. That all sets it up for the big move to the thunderous rock sound of the refrains.

Hobbit Alert!

One interesting tidbit about “Ramble On” was the final verse. Robert Plant, an enthusiast of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, added some references to the saga. He speaks of the evil Gollum and the “darkest depths of Mordor.”

It’s a fascinating twist because the references come out of nowhere. For much of the song, we’re envisioning some guy maybe hitchhiking his way from destination to destination. The final verse makes it seem like he’s on an epic quest.

Would Plant have removed that lyric if he had more time to second-guess it? Who knows? What we do know is that “Ramble On”, composed and recorded by a band on the run, established a permanent place in the classic rock pantheon.

(Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)