Led Zeppelin "Your Time is Gonna Come"

Is this rock music or Sunday church? Another example of Zeppelin's vast range of musical direction, "Your Time is Gonna Come" is a nice sub-classic. A light song with a soothing acoustic guitar melody, this song was the first clue that Led Zeppelin was more than just a hard rock band.

John Paul Jones's deliberate organ intro sounds like something you'd hear while filing into midnight mass on Christmas Eve but before long it's settled into a comfortable, rolling rhythm just as John Bonham's cymbals crash and bring the rest of the band to life. One of those few Led Zeppelin songs that has a chorus and uses Zeppelin musicians as background singers, it's more of a 60's folk tune than an edgy rock number.

It's one of those songs that's easy to learn, and easy to play. The band hardly seems to exert any real energy in this number, making the song sound effortless and almost carefree, as if they were taking a break in the studio between heavy metal numbers. The song doesn't receive much airplay and was never a big part of their live concert set list. A tune that gently passes the time from one song to the next, "Your Time is Gonna Come" would not be an important piece of work for the band if it wasn't on their debut album. It serves as another piece of variety for Led Zeppelin I, another data point, an additional color on the chart. Part of the mosaic that would eventually form Led Zeppelin's complicated legacy. Not a hard rock song, not entirely an English folk tune, not really gospel music and almost bluesy in atmosphere and tone, "Your Time is Gonna Come" was a predecessor of great things to come. It showed early audiences that this band could go any direction it wanted, without warning or justification, without care, and definitely without wondering if they'd satisfy the suited corporate record executives downtown.

It's a song that Zeppelin did to satisfy themselves and no one else, to explore new territory and break new ground. It's an unusual relative to its siblings on the first side of Zeppelin's debut album but as time passed and the band added to its catalogue, "Your Time is Gonna Come" became less and less unusual. It fits right in. It's almost exactly what you would expect from a band that pushed the limits, explored new territory and never held back.