{"id":123838,"date":"2025-09-01T01:10:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-01T01:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/123838\/"},"modified":"2025-09-01T01:10:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T01:10:08","slug":"the-led-zeppelin-song-prince-covered-at-least-50-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/123838\/","title":{"rendered":"The Led Zeppelin song Prince covered at least 50 times"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Prince<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Allen Beaulieu)<\/p>\n

Sun 31 August 2025 23:30, UK <\/p>\n

Reader, I have a theory about Prince<\/a> that I would like to share, if you would be so kind as to indulge me for a moment. <\/p>\n

Prince is one of the most underrated musicians on the planet. \u201cWell, how could that be?\u201d I hear you ask. \u201cHow can you call one of the most famous musicians on the planet, who had multiple classic albums, overrated?\u201d Yeah, I suppose that\u2019s a fair point, but ask yourself this: When people talk about the greatest songwriters, guitarists, vocalists and performers of all time, there are a number of classic names that come up pretty quickly, but Prince\u2019s doesn\u2019t. Why? <\/p>\n

My theory is that Prince was such a unique presence within the creative world that people didn\u2019t judge him in the same way that they judged other artists. If you had a guitarist like Slash come along, people compared him to other guitarists in order to judge his merit, such as Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix. When you had a new songwriter make tracks, people would hold their work up in the light of the likes of Bob Dylan and John Lennon. Prince doesn\u2019t fit into the one specific lane of guitarist, songwriter, vocalist, etc, which means when people consider his work, the only artist they can compare Prince to is\u2026 Prince himself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When he passed away, the famous video of him playing the guitar solo on the cover of \u2018While My Guitar Gently Weeps<\/a>\u2019 started doing the rounds, and people\u2019s comments all emulated one another. People watched in shock, unaware just how exceptional a guitarist Prince was, as they asked whether or not he might be one of the greatest to pick up a six string. <\/p>\n

How did people not recognise his ability? The evidence was always there, both in his live show and his studio recordings, so why didn\u2019t people talk about him as a great guitarist? It\u2019s simple, because nobody saw him as just a guitarist. Similarly, nobody saw him as just a songwriter or just a vocalist either, but when you separate these aspects of Prince, rather than thinking of him as the full package, you realise how much he excels in all these individual fields. <\/p>\n

Focusing specifically on Prince\u2019s guitar-playing ability, he was a sucker for a great guitar line and a good solo. He loved listening to the shredding abilities of musicians like Jimmy Page, and he also encouraged the guitarists in his band to push themselves creatively, not to feel burdened by creative restrictions but instead to try and pierce through them. <\/p>\n

\u201cJimmy Page is cool. But he couldn\u2019t keep a sequence without John Bonham behind him. He went from one to four without stopping at two and three,\u201d said Prince before looking at his own guitarist at the time, Donna Grantis, \u201cI want her to be her own favorite guitar player. I want everyone at Paisley Park to be their own favorite guitarist, saxophonist, whatever. I don\u2019t want people to play like nobody else,\u201d Prince said at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prince\u2019s admiration for Page (and all of Led Zeppelin for that matter) can be seen in the fact that he frequently covered their classic song \u2018Whole Lotta Love<\/a>\u2019. Using that exciting guitar playing ability of his, Prince took what was one of Led Zeppelin\u2019s most famous songs and put his own twist on it. It\u2019s unclear just how many times he played the song live, but it was certainly over 50, as fans rocking up to his shows were frequently treated to the psychedelic classic. <\/p>\n

It seems that Zeppelin\u2019s influence bled into some of Prince\u2019s music as well. He didn\u2019t just cover them, but he also let their impact on him as an artist represent itself within some of the songs he wrote. In 1985, when Prince was interviewed, he was asked whether he was upset that people were calling some of his music psychedelic. To the contrary, Prince was happy with the descriptor and used Led Zeppelin as an example as to why.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t mind that, because that was the only period in recent history that delivered songs and colors,\u201d he said, \u201cLed Zeppelin, for example, would make you feel differently on each song.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n

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Straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Allen Beaulieu) Sun 31 August 2025 23:30, UK Reader, I have a theory about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":123839,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,19813,57349,19810,216,27721],"class_list":{"0":"post-123838","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-jimmy-page","10":"tag-john-bonham","11":"tag-led-zeppelin","12":"tag-music","13":"tag-prince"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}