If you find a fan of Led Zeppelin and ask them what their least favourite Led Zeppelin song is, they will likely look at you in dismay, gather their thoughts for a second and then double check you said, “Least favourite?” A bad Led Zeppelin song is a concept that doesn’t exist for many people, given they were such a driving force behind rock music and have stood the test of time ever since. However, the band members would disagree with those fans, as Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham, despite the barrage of hits they were proud of, still had tracks they didn’t like.
Led Zeppelin deserves the credit that they get. Each member was an outstanding musician in their own right, with a true passion for sound and songwriting and an ability to work well enough with others that their individual talent could form part of a cohesive sound. The result is that the band doesn’t have many songs that could be considered throwaways. Their records were artistic statements, not just material thrown together; however, every band will look back on some songs they made with disdain, and Led Zeppelin is no different.
The songs they dislike vary between each member. Some members often didn’t enjoy a song because when they listened back, it wasn’t quite to their taste, but there were other instances where personal circumstances surrounding the song tainted how they could view it as a piece of art.
For instance, Jimmy Page notoriously hated the ‘Living Loving Maid’ track. It’s only a brief number, buried in the heart of their Led Zeppelin II LP, but it leaves a big enough impact for Page to turn his nose up at it. The reason is pretty straightforward: he doesn’t care enough about it. While many fans enjoy the track thanks to the main riff and solo, Page admits he wrote it quickly and threw it in the album as filler. As such, it’s never been a song he could get excited over, perfectly reflected in the fact the band never played it live.
Meanwhile, John Bonham hated the track ‘D’yer Mak’er’ because it involved him learning to play a musical style he had no interest in. While there is no doubt Bonham was an excellent drummer who could make playing different genres of percussion easy, he never had a knack for playing reggae, which meant he wound up detesting the song ‘D’yer Mak’er’ and the whole rhythm section involved in its creation.
John Paul Jones took particular umbrage with the song ‘Royal Orleans’ as he thought the track was homophobic. There is no mistaking that the instrumentation on the song is a highlight, but Jones always had an issue with Plant’s lyrics. The singer portrays a story of a man who mistakenly goes home with a cross-dresser, and the playful way the story is told never quite sat right with Jones.
Finally, Robert Plant fell out of love with one of the band’s biggest songs, ‘Stairway to Heaven.’ There is no denying that Plant has had a difficult life. He and his family were in a near-fatal car crash, but while recovering, he was flown out to California to record the Presence album. Shortly after that, Plant’s son passed away, and then he lost his bandmate and close friend, John Bonham. After all of that, singing a song with optimism at its heart proved difficult to Plant, who looked back on the lyrics and called them naïve. This is still the case as Plant refuses to play the song during his solo performances, and the closest he has come to connecting with the track again was watching a performance of the hit at the Kennedy Center Honors, during which he shed a tear.
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