One of the most orig­i­nal and dis­tinc­tive songs Led Zep­pelin ever record­ed was the exot­ic, eight-and-a-half minute “Kash­mir,” from the 1975 album Phys­i­cal Graf­fi­ti. In this clip from Davis Guggen­heim’s film It Might Get Loud (2009), Jim­my Page explains the ori­gins of the song to fel­low gui­tarists Jack White and The Edge. Then Page demon­strates it by pick­ing up an old mod­i­fied Dan­elec­tro 59DC Dou­ble Cut­away Stan­dard gui­tar that he played the song with on some of Led Zep­pelin’s tours. (Watch Kash­mir live here.)

In 1973, Page had been exper­i­ment­ing with an alter­na­tive D modal, or DADGAD, tun­ing often used on stringed instru­ments in the Mid­dle East, when he hit upon the hyp­not­ic, ris­ing and falling riff. The song came togeth­er over a peri­od of a cou­ple of years. John Bon­ham added his dis­tinc­tive, over­pow­er­ing drums dur­ing a two-man record­ing ses­sion with Page at Headley Grange. Singer Robert Plant wrote the lyrics while he and Page were dri­ving through the Sahara Desert in South­ern Moroc­co. (Nei­ther Page nor Plant had ever vis­it­ed Kash­mir, in the Himalayas.) Bassist and key­board play­er John Paul Jones added the string and horn arrange­ments the fol­low­ing year. In a 1995 radio inter­view with Aus­tralian jour­nal­ist Richard Kingsmill, Plant recalled his expe­ri­ence with “Kash­mir”:

It was an amaz­ing piece of music to write to, and an incred­i­ble chal­lenge for me. Because of the time sig­na­ture, the whole deal of the song is…not grandiose, but pow­er­ful. It required some kind of epi­thet, or abstract lyri­cal set­ting about the whole idea of life being an adven­ture and being a series of illu­mi­nat­ed moments. But every­thing is not what you see. It was quite a task, because I could­n’t sing it. It was like the song was big­ger than me.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Thir­teen-Year-Old Jim­my Page Makes his BBC Tele­vi­sion Debut in 1957

Hear Led Zeppelin’s Mind-Blow­ing First Record­ed Con­cert Ever (1968)