Led Zeppelin "You Shook Me"

"You shook me....ahh-ah-ahhll, ahh-ah-ahhll, ahh-ah-ahhll, ahh-ah-allll, ni-hight...looooong...." White boy blues at its finest! Led Zeppelin's "You Shook Me" is arguably one of their grittiest, rawest, most stripped-down, pure garage band songs. The crisp, energetic youth of Zeppelin's early days are vivid in this cover of Willie Dixon's blues chomper. With an echoing, gripping slide guitar, Plant's howling blues harp, and the wall of sound that is Jones organ and Bonzo's thumping drums pushing the limits, "You Shook Me" is the root of Led Zeppelin's sound. This is where it all began.

There is real magic in this room.

What makes "You Shook Me" so great is that it sounds like the band just got together in a deserted warehouse, plugged in their instruments, flipped on a tape recorder and just started playing. It's very natural, very pure. The chemistry of the four musicians is apparent throughout the number and is especially highlighted by Page and Plant's call and response. As Plant sings "you shook me all night long," Page is right there doubling the melody on slide guitar. They're right there side by side, neither one trying to top the other. Every so often Page will lead Plant into the next melody while other times it's Plant who calls out and hears back from Page. All the while, Bonham and Jones and fit snugly beside them providing their legendary, powerful rhythm.

When they break into the musical interlude and guitar solo you would never know this is four young white guys from England. "You Shook Me" sounds like it came right out of the Mississippi Delta but it is a song not fueled by the blues but by the band's raw passion and love of music. Not only do they nail every note, they know they're nailing every note which adds an edgy confidence you can only get from a group of professionals like this.

Not one of their most well known songs and hardly ever played on mainstream radio (except perhaps during a station's "Zeppelin only" hour) "You Shook Me" ranks as a Mini-Classic on the Classic-Meter. What's great about "You Shook Me" is not that it became famous or influential but that it didn't. It's rarely pointed to as an example of what the band stood for yet it is one of the finest examples of the band in its purest form. "You Shook Me" is an essential ingredient to the Zeppelin cookbook. The blue-based approach to their early music is apparent in "You Shook Me" and it laid the groundwork for more famous classics like "Nobody's Fault But Mine," "Since I've Been Loving You," and "Moby Dick."

Without "You Shook Me," Led Zeppelin I would not be the same album. It would lack that basic sound of a rock band getting together for the first time, exploring their tastes and realizing they had chemistry unlike any other group of musicians. It is an essential piece of the Zeppelin catalogue and a key moment in their history. This song, at the most basic level, is what Led Zeppelin is all about.