{"id":624426,"date":"2026-06-06T12:57:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T12:57:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/624426\/"},"modified":"2026-06-06T12:57:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T12:57:13","slug":"the-1969-led-zeppelin-song-that-jimmy-page-lied-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/624426\/","title":{"rendered":"The 1969 Led Zeppelin song that Jimmy Page lied about"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Jimmy<\/p>\n

Credit: Far Out \/ Open Culture<\/p>\n

By the end of the 1960s, the record industry had yet to catch up with rock and roll properly. As bands like the Grateful Dead and The Allman Brothers Band began to make the three-minute single pass\u00e9, record companies still baulked at extended compositions, fearing that the bloated run times would scare away potential listeners.\u00a0Led Zeppelin<\/a>\u00a0was on the cutting edge of rock music.<\/p>\n

Led Zeppelin built their reputation on doing the exact opposite of what the music industry expected. At a time when record labels were still obsessed with concise, radio-friendly singles, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham were creating sprawling, unpredictable pieces that prioritised atmosphere, improvisation and musicianship over commercial convention.<\/p>\n

Having developed their sound into a hard-edged version of classic blues that was cranked up a couple hundred decibels and played at ear-splitting volumes. Part of the band\u2019s pioneering sound was in their live performances, which often stretched to extended lengths with solos, jams, and interpolations of other songs.<\/p>\n

\u2018Whole Lotta Love\u2019<\/a> quickly became an open vehicle to incorporate the sounds of other songs, including famously becoming the perfect time for Robert Plant to bust out his Elvis Presley fandom by singing \u2018Blue Suede Shoes\u2019 and \u2018Jailhouse Rock\u2019 after the spacey theremin section. John Bonham got his own star-making turn during \u2018Moby Dick\u2019 the wild drum solo that could easily expand to half an hour, depending on Bonzo\u2019s mood on any particular night.<\/p>\n

But Led Zeppelin were pushing boundaries from the very beginning, as can be heard on their self-titled debut album. Three of the album\u2019s first four songs extended beyond the six-minute mark, including the psychedelic \u2018Dazed and Confused\u2019 and the folky \u2018Babe I\u2019m Gonna Leave You\u2019. Zeppelin had no interest in singles, wishing for their albums and live performances to speak for themselves. However, Atlantic Records were still preoccupied with the idea of making music singles-friendly.<\/p>\n

\"Led<\/a>Credit: 2025 Paradise Pictures Ltd<\/p>\n

Jimmy Page made note of this and felt that radio was outside of the band\u2019s reach as well. FM and AOR stations had yet to catch on properly, and any band who played beyond the standard single length were unlikely to find any kind of radio exposure. So Jimmy Page <\/a>concocted a simple trick to see if he could fool broadcasters: he lied about how long \u2018How Many More Times\u2019, the final track from Led Zeppelin I, ran on the album.<\/p>\n

Original pressings of Led Zeppelin I list \u2018How Many More Times\u2019 as lasting only around three minutes and 30 seconds. In reality, the song was the album\u2019s longest track, sprawling well past the eight-minute mark. It\u2019s unclear whether the cosmetic change actually made any difference since one look at the album\u2019s vinyl would reveal just how long \u2018How Many More Times\u2019 actually was, but it was an interesting idea to try and get beyond the single-minded nature of the record industry at the time.<\/p>\n

The track was also somewhat duplicitous for another reason. The record has Page, John Paul Jones and John Bonham all credited as songwriters, while Robert Plant was left off the credits. But, in reality, Plant did contribute a line: \u201cI got another child on the way, that makes 11,\u201d in reference to his own forthcoming child. <\/p>\n

About the song, Jimmy Page said in the BBC book The Guitar Greats: \u201cWe had numbers from the Yardbirds that we called free form, like \u2018Smokestack Lightnin\u2019,\u2019 where I\u2019d come up with my own riffs and things, and obviously I wasn\u2019t going to throw all that away, as they hadn\u2019t been recorded, so I remodelled those riffs and used them again, so the bowing on \u2018How Many More Times\u2019 and \u2018Good Times, Bad Times\u2019 was an extension of what I\u2019d been working on with the Yardbirds, although I\u2019d never had that much chance to go to town with it, and to see how far one could stretch the bowing technique on record, and obviously for anyone who saw the band, it became quite a little showpiece in itself.\u201d <\/p>\n

It may have ended up a \u201clittle showpiece\u201d and a song to be largely proud of, but one wonders what Page\u2019s mother may have thought of her son using a little white lie to try and gain some airplay. <\/p>\n

Regardless of whether the tactic succeeded, the episode perfectly captures Led Zeppelin\u2019s attitude during their formative years. They were willing to challenge conventions, bend a few rules and trust their instincts if it meant bringing their music to a wider audience. In the end, the band would help change the industry\u2019s expectations entirely, proving that audiences were more than willing to embrace songs that stretched far beyond the traditional three-minute format.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> The Far Out Led Zeppelin Newsletter<\/p>\n

All the latest stories about Led Zeppelin from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Far Out \/ Open Culture By the end of the 1960s, the record industry had yet to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":314428,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[143168,96,23795,10866,128,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-624426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-143168","tag-entertainment","tag-jimmy-page","tag-led-zeppelin","tag-music","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=624426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/314428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=624426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=624426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=624426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}