1973 Led Zeppelin Folk Ballad Song Inspired by a Comment Made by a Beatle

Led Zeppelin are perhaps better known for their loud rock songs, but “The Rain Song” was one of their more sensitive ballads.

One of their more emotive songs, which appears on House of the Holy, was actually inspired by a member of The Beatles.

According to Jimmy Page, George Harrison, a fan of the band, once told the band’s drummer that Led Zeppelin had a ballad issue.

“George was talking to [John Bonham] one evening and said, ‘The problem with you guys is that you never do ballads,’” Page once said. Page took Harrison’s comment as a challenge and crafted the almost seven-minute acoustic ballad, “The Rain Song.”

“He didn’t say it to me [directly]. I just heard it on the grapevine that he had said ‘Oh, Led Zeppelin don’t do any ballads,’” Page said in a 2023 issue of Guitar World.

“I’m paraphrasing, but it was something similar to that. He probably said it lightheartedly. He probably hadn’t really listened to very much Led Zeppelin,” he said.

Page even added a nod to Harrison’s great love song “Something” in the Led Zeppelin folk ballad.

“I thought it would be interesting to put the first two notes from “Something” into the beginning of “The Rain Song” … [As a whole,] “The Rain Song” was really nothing like “Something”, so nobody was even going to think of it,” he explained to Guitar World.

Page called “The Rain Song” a personal favorite in the band’s back catalogue, praising the late Bonham’s drummer work. “As a guitar piece, it was really good, but again, it came to life with Bonzo playing really sensitively on the brushes.”

 The second track on their fifth album was generally well received by critics and fans. In 2003, Rolling Stone said: Page and Plant could have taken umbrage” at the comment, but instead “rose to the challenge.”

Gavin Edwards called “The Rain Song” a seven minutes of exquisite heartache, complete with Mellotron strings from John Paul Jones.”

Kristofer Lenz of Consequence of Sound described in 2014 “The Rain Song” as “one of the most sentimental tracks in Led Zeppelin’s catalogue” and called it “patient and beautifully arranged.”

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