When The Levee Breaks - Led Zeppelin Version

Led Zeppelin Version

"When the Levee Breaks"
Song by Led Zeppelin from the album Led Zeppelin IV
Released	November 8, 1971
Recorded	December 1970 – March 1971
Genre	Blues rock, hard rock
Length	7:08
Label	Atlantic
Writer	Page/Plant/Jones/Bonham/Memphis Minnie
Producer	Jimmy Page
Led Zeppelin IV track listing
Going to California (7) "When the Levee Breaks" (8)

Led Zeppelin recorded its version of the song in December 1970 at Headley Grange, where the band used the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio. The song had earlier been tried unsuccessfully by the band at Island Studios at the beginning of the recording sessions for their fourth album.

According to Led Zeppelin guitarist and producer Jimmy Page, the song's structure "was a riff that I'd been working on, but Bonzo's drum sound really makes a difference on that point." The famous drum performance was recorded by engineer Andy Johns by placing Bonham and a new Ludwig drumkit at the bottom of a stairwell at Headley Grange, and recording it using two Beyerdynamic M160 microphones at the top, giving the distinctive resonant but slightly muffled sound. Page later explained:

We were playing in one room in a house with a recording truck, and a drum kit was duly set up in the main hallway, which is a three storey hall with a staircase going up on the inside of it. And when John Bonham went out to play the kit in the hall, I went "Oh, wait a minute, we gotta do this!" Curiously enough, that's just a stereo mike that's up the stairs on the second floor of this building, and that was his natural balance.

Back in the Rolling Stones' mobile studio, Johns compressed the drum sound through two channels and added echo through guitarist Page's Binson echo unit. The performance was made on a brand new drum kit that had only just been delivered from the factory.

Page recorded Plant's harmonica part using the backward echo technique, putting the echo ahead of the sound when mixing, creating a distinct effect.

"When the Levee Breaks" was recorded at a different tempo, then slowed down, explaining the "sludgy" sound, particularly on the harmonica and guitar solos. Because this song was heavily produced in the studio, it was difficult to recreate live; the band only played it a few times in the early stages of their 1975 U.S. Tour, before dropping it for good. However, the song was revived for their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 1995.

"When the Levee Breaks" was the only song on the album that was not re-mixed after a supposedly disastrous mixing job in the U.S. (the rest of the tracks were mixed again in England). The mixing done on this song was kept in its original form.

In the May 2008 issue of Uncut Magazine, Page elaborated upon the effects at the end of the song:

Interviewer: How was the swirly effect at the end of "When the Levee Breaks" achieved? I always imagine you sitting there with a joystick... Page: It's sort of like that, isn't it? It's interesting: On "Levee Breaks" you've got backwards harmonica, backwards echo, phasing, and there's also flanging; and at the end, you get this super-dense sound, in layers, that's all built around the drum track. And you've got Robert, constant in the middle, and everything starts to spiral around him. It's all done with panning.

In another interview, Page commented:

"When the Levee Breaks" is probably the most subtle thing on as far as production goes, because each twelve bars has something new about it, though at first it might not be apparent. There's a lot of different effects on there that, at the time, had never been used before. Phased vocals, a backwards echoed harmonica solo.