Whole Lotta Love

Whole Lotta Love is the title of the first and most successful single by British rock band Led Zeppelin from 1969, extracted from the album Led Zeppelin II

Genesis

Whole Lotta Love was created during a hotel stay and was recognized by You Need Loving inspired by the Small Faces. This had the Ronnie Lane / Steve Marriott composition recorded in February 1966 at London's IBC Studios and published on the published May, 1966 debut album Small Faces. On the Led Zeppelin version only Led Zeppelin members, however, are registered copyright as composers. Your contributions to the design of the song existed in the stress of the same presented in the intro riffs and other ideas in sound design. It consists of five notes and is played by Jimmy Page on a distorted Telecaster guitar with a Vox Super Beatle. In addition, the experimental- psychedelic middle instrumental section in which a like a siren played theremin solo is housed, and the outro to fall, which is unique in rock music of the first application of a reverse reverb. The reef is often repeated progression of the song, and gives a consistently a tempo of 80 bpm is maintained. Formally, it is a piece in ABA form with a bridge in the middle part. It is based on only two chords, namely E major and A major.

The recordings for Whole Lotta Love were held at Olympic Studios and seven other recording studios in May 1969. Music producer - in addition to members of the group - was Peter Grant, sound engineer Eddie Kramer ( at Olympic Studios ). The song was planned as part of the recorded July-August 1969 LP Led Zeppelin II. Robert Plant -like vocals shout was completed in one take. The unaccompanied guitar solo parts were added by overdubbing other takes that were recorded in other studios. Jimmy Page took hours to construct the instrumentation to the finished singing around. The experimental middle section is a psychedelic sound collage of screaming, squealing and screaming, underlaid with cymbals and fills on the snare drum and the Tomtom, interconnected with through -eighth pulses of the hi-hat. In order to increase the psychedelic impression, sound engineer Kramer played around with all available buttons of the console. The master tapes were endabgemischt in the A & R Studios in New York between 20 and 23 May 1969. Here, the pan controls were used on the console through which the instruments and the vocals from a stereo channel were transported to the other and therefore the listener wander and vice versa from left to right.

From the time sequence starts from about 1:22 - first with the connecting hi-hat passages - the experimental midsection to about 3:06 minutes. As of 4:02 minutes, the outro begins with a first time used - and extensive - Reverse reverb, because Plants voice is heard even before their actual deployment. It follows a long fading to the end at 5:33 minutes. The song is typical of the studio production of Led Zeppelin and was not reproducible at live performances in this form.

Publication and success

First, the album Led Zeppelin II was released on October 22, 1969 Whole Lotta Love as opening titles, the on the Billboard 200 for seven weeks listed in rank one in the U.S. and twelve million copies sold. In the UK the album came up on rank one, but only for a week. Atlantic Records had decided against the will of the group in the U.S. - decouple from the album, the single Whole Lotta Love - but not in Britain. She arrived on 7 November 1969 as a Whole Lotta Love / Living Loving Maid (She's Just a Woman) ( Atlantic Records 2690 ) on the market and brought it into the U.S. top ten to fourth. It became a worldwide number -one hit in Germany ( 5 weeks), Austria, Belgium and Australia. In April 1970, she had achieved the status of millions Sellers.

Plagiarism dispute

By blues legend Willie Dixon a copyright dispute was triggered in January 1985. His daughter Shirley was 13 years old when she auditioned in 1976 for the first time her father Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin. They had the LP Led Zeppelin II borrowed because they remembered the piece on this LP at a composition of her father.

Willie Dixon was a composer of numerous classic Blue, including You Need Love. Dixon had You Need Love written for Muddy Waters, who had the Blues on October 12, 1962 ( Chess Records 1839) was added. The song remained hidden for lack of charts listing a wider public. In January 1985, the U.S. magazine Variety reported that Dixon lawsuit against Robert Plant have filed because Whola Lotta Love was a plagiarism of You Need Love. However, the plagiarism process does not make it past a preliminary hearing, but the plaintiff for Dixon Musikverlag Arc Music reached an agreement with Atlantic Records to an out of court settlement. Plants defenders found it strange that you wait 17 years to sue.

During this phase, it was announced that the Small Faces had already resorted to Willie Dixon's composition. The distinctive riff and the text have been taken over by the Small Faces in the recorded in the IBC Studios in February 1966 Song You Need Loving. Even ignoring the copyright Dixons and gave the band members Ronnie Lane / Steve Marriott as a composer. In Whole Lotta Love almost identical passages of text are included, and both songs take on elements of the blues tradition. The distinctive riff already pervades the original recording and is also heard on the Small Faces. Led Zeppelin had it only more to the fore. At the end of the song quoted Robert Plant still Howlin ' Wolf Back Door Man (June 1960) with the passage "Shake for me girl / I wanna be your back door man ", also written by Dixon. The song breaks are similar, the Small Faces of takes 14 seconds, the Plant 26 seconds. The comparison ended after lengthy negotiations in 1987, with Willie Dixon won; because Led Zeppelin had to mention as a fellow composer and pay an undisclosed compensation him from now on.

Jimmy Page was in an interview the accusations of plagiarism too indirect. "If you ausklammerst the text, the instrumentation is new and different. "