There was a reason why Led Zeppelin always baulked at their classification as a heavy metal band. When all of their material was gathered together, anywhere between a quarter and a third of their songs were acoustic folk. From their abrupt about-face on Led Zeppelin III to non-album cuts like ‘Hey, Hey, What Can I Do’, Led Zeppelin wasn’t just a powerful hard rock act. In fact, their palate extended into a number of different genres.
When it came to acoustic material, Led Zeppelin had two prominent members who dropped their primary roles in favour of picking up a non-rock instrument: the mandolin. Both guitarist Jimmy Page and bassist John Paul Jones contributed mandolin across the band’s discography, with Jones becoming especially adept at the eight-stringed instrument. Starting in 1970, the mandolin was a key component to the band’s arrangements, appearing across different albums and songs.
After 1975’s Physical Graffiti, there were no more mandolin credits on any Led Zeppelin albums. If the mandolin was included in a song’s recording, it was either buried in the mix or removed from the final cut. The band themselves made a conscious shift away from the folkier sounds of the early 1970s on their later albums, largely rendering the mandolin unnecessary. For his part, Jones continued to use the mandolin while recording with artists like Foo Fighters and Seasick Steve in more recent years.
The exact number of Led Zeppelin songs that contain mandolin is hard to say. But the mandolin certainly appears in a prominent capacity across the band’s discography. Here is every Zeppelin song that we could find containing the peculiar instrument.
Led Zeppelin songs that feature a mandolin:
‘Black Country Woman’
‘Black Country Woman’, much like ‘Boogie with Stu’, was a largely improvised piece that never seemed like it was studio album material. The take that appears on Physical Grafitti even has an aeroplane going over the top of the recording, which Robert Plant insists stays in the mix.
Recorded in the back garden of Mick Jagger’s Stargroves country mansion during the sessions for Houses of the Holy, ‘Black Country’ was the penultimate song from Physical Grafitti. It also has the distinction of being the final official Led Zeppelin recording to feature the mandolin, with Jones providing the final lines.
‘Boogie With Stu’
The lineup on ‘Boogie With Stu’ is one of the more unique in the Led Zeppelin canon. According to most accounts, the song featured the titular Ian Stewart, the founder and later road manager of The Rolling Stones, on piano, plus Jimmy Page on mandolin, Jones on bass, and John Bonham playing a highly stripped-back drum part (likely just bass drum and drum sticks, although the song’s dense and reverb-heavy mix makes it hard to tell for sure).
Page’s use of the mandolin seems to be supported by the fact that the instrument gets a prominent solo halfway through the song before Stewart takes over with his boogie-woogie chops. It’s all very off-the-cuff and fun, and it remains the only instance of a mandolin solo in the Led Zeppelin discography.
‘Gallows Pole’
Led Zeppelin’s embrace of folk music found its most obvious and potent vehicle in ‘Gallows Pole’. A true traditional folk song in every sense of the word, ‘Gallows Pole’ was a centuries-old song that had been known variously as ‘The Main Freed from the Gallows’ and ‘Galli’s Pole’ before Zeppelin took new ownership over the song.
As keen folk listeners, the members of Led Zeppelin certainly would have been familiar with different variations of ‘Gallows Pole’ recorded by Lead Belly, Judy Collins, and Bob Dylan over the years. This time, it seems certified that Jones played the mandolin on the track, and the intricate weave created by the instrument seems like Jones’ signature playing style.
‘Going to California’
Then, on the flip side, we get John Paul Jones’ most iconic mandolin performance. Jones made a name for himself as Led Zeppelin’s most prominent multi-instrumentalist, often contributing the iconic keyboard lines that were strewn across the band’s discography. But when the band went acoustic. Jones was often the one who took up the mandolin.
Mixed just as prominently as Page’s guitar lines, Jones’ mandolin in ‘Going to California’ is the engine that propels the song. Plant’s vocals appear to be most prominent in conversation with Jones’ mandolin, with the pair riffing off each other as Page’s guitar lines anchor the track. It all makes for a classic arrangement that Jones would frequently return to after the band’s abrupt end in 1980.
‘Hey, Hey, What Can I Do’
Fans who were surprised by Led Zeppelin’s embrace of acoustic and folk music on their third LP felt a greater attachment to the familiar hard rock of ‘Immigrant Song’. However, fans who bought the single version of the song were greeted with yet another acoustic folk track if they turned over to the B-side.
‘Hey, Hey, What Can I Do’ was one of many songs that didn’t make the final album cut. Instead, the band placed it on the B-side to ‘Immigrant Song’, placing it into semi-obscurity as it never appeared on any official Zeppelin studio albums. Box sets and compilations in later years have revived interest in the song, showing off one of John Paul Jones’ first recorded appearances of the instrument.
