Led Zeppelin – Black Dog (Live at Madison Square Garden 1973) (Official Video)

Led Zeppelin perform their song ‘Black Dog’ live at Madison Square Garden in New York City in July 1973 from The Song Remains the Same.

“Black Dog” – Single by Led Zeppelin from the album Led Zeppelin IV
B-side “Misty Mountain Hop”
Released 2 December 1971 (US)
Label Atlantic
Songwrites John Paul Jones, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant
Producer Jimmy Page
Charted No.15 in US, No.2 in Australia, No.22 in Germany

The title does not appear in the lyrics, and has nothing to do with the song itself. The band worked up the song at Headley Grange, a mansion in Hampshire, England that is out in the country, surrounded by woods. A nameless black Labrador retriever would wander the grounds, and the band would feed it. When they needed a name for this track, which didn’t have an obvious title, they thought of the canine and went with “Black Dog.”

Zeppelin bass player John Paul Jones got the idea for this song after hearing Muddy Waters’ 1968 album Electric Mud. He wanted to try “electric blues with a rolling bass part,” and “a riff that would be like a linear journey.”

Jones rarely had completed songs together, but the bits and pieces he brought to Led Zeppelin’s writing sessions proved worthy. When they started putting the album together, Jones introduced this riff, the song started to form. The first version Jones played was comically complex. “It was originally all in 3/16 time, but no one could keep up with that,” he said.

When the mobile recording studio (owned by The Rolling Stones) showed up at the mansion, this song was ready to go and recorded there.
This is the first track on Led Zeppelin 4, which became the band’s best-selling album. A wide range of musical styles show up on the set, with “Black Dog” exemplifying the blues-rock that was the bedrock of the band’s sound.

Black Dog” became a staple of Led Zeppelin’s live concert performances. It was first played live at Belfast’s Ulster Hall on 5 March 1971, a concert which also featured the first ever live performance of “Stairway to Heaven”. It was retained for each subsequent concert tour until 1973. In 1975 it was used as an encore medley with “Whole Lotta Love”, but was hardly used on the band’s 1977 US concert tour. It was recalled to the set for the Knebworth Festival 1979 and the 1980 Tour of Europe. For these final 1980 performances, Page introduced the song from stage.[18] “Black Dog” was performed for the final time at the Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert in 2007, during Led Zeppelin’s headline set.