Deconstructing Led Zeppelin’s Classic Song ‘Ramble On’ Track by Track: Guitars, Bass, Drums & Vocals

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.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Led Zep­pelin Plays One of Its Ear­li­est Con­certs (Dan­ish TV, 1969)

Jim­my Page, 13, Plays Gui­tar on BBC Tal­ent Show (1957)

‘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


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Comments (16)
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  • Lee Gee says:

    Sol­id gold! Thanks a mil­lion! All so sim­ple apart, so good togeth­er.

  • Pavel Axentiev says:

    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?

  • Mike Springer says:

    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.

  • Paul Arvid Jorgensen says:

    Great to lis­ten to! But what are the ori­gins of these files, and how was they released for this kind of pub­lish­ing / dis­triu­tion?

  • SB Drum Loops says:

    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?

  • Composerdave says:

    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!!

  • Kevin Miller says:

    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…

  • Kevin Miller says:

    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…

  • Kevin Miller says:

    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.

  • Larz Blackman says:

    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.

  • AJ says:

    Would be infi­nite­ly bet­ter as an instru­men­tal band.

  • Michael says:

    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!!!

  • Matt says:

    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

  • Justin says:

    12 mil­lion + would dis­agree. But I sup­pose you don’t have to keep the tap­ping when you pro­duce Led Zep­pelin in the future.

  • Patrick says:

    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

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