Led Zeppelin Whole Lotta Love

The song that inspired me to play guitar (whether or not I am any good is another article). When I found Led Zeppelin I and II in my father's LP collection circa 1990, around age 15 or 16, I listened to Led Zeppelin I first and thought it was good but it was not until I listened to Led Zeppelin II that I became completely obsessed. The hook was the guitar solo in "Whole Lotta Love," one of the best guitar solos in rock and the soul of a classic song that was one of the band's biggest hits and also one of their heaviest and hardest numbers.

The basic riff is one of those legendary guitar melodies you can sing or hum and that any student of rock will recognize - and possibly start singing the lyrics. A literal show stopper, "Whole Lotta Love" closed many a Zeppelin concert and often allowed the band to break into 50's rock classics where Robert Plant would do his best Elvis impression while shaking his butt for the crowd.

The guitar solo is simply incredible - not for its speed or its rhythm but for its tone. It's just so damn sharp. It sounds exactly how a guitar is supposed to sound. This crisp tone that is so vivid is a sound that we never really hear again on any Led Zeppelin recording. It is very unique, the Holy Grail of Zeppelin guitar solos.

This great guitar solo would not work so well without the context of the greater song, especially since it occurs as an orgasmic finale to the famous middle section. My first impression of the middle section, as a naive and impressionable fifteen year old with a Catholic school education, was that it must have been what my religion teachers were talking about when they said Led Zeppelin played devil worship music. It's definitely haunting but only because it's so different and unexpected. Like the soundtrack to a horror movie it builds to a sexual crescendo and explodes when Jimmy Page arrives with his Telecaster and rips through a guitar solo that changed my life and many of yours.

The first song on Led Zeppelin's second album (and my favorite album of all time) "Whole Lotta Love" signaled the arrival of something new and different and told the world of rock and roll that it had changed forever and would never be the same.