“It was reworked with Paul Rodgers, who supplied some inspired lyrics, and it became Midnight Moonlight,” said Page, referring to the song which closed The Firm’s self-titled album in 85. With Paul Rodgers on vocals, Page performed a lengthy song called Bird On A Wing, which featured some chord structures that clearly dated back to Swan Song.īy the time Page and Rodgers formed their blues-rock supergroup The Firm, it had been revisited once again. Page’s first major live appearance following the dissolution of Zeppelin was as part of an all-star nine-date US tour in 1983 in aid of the ARMS charity to help multiple sclerosis-stricken ex-Small Faces bassist Ronnie Lane. Had Zeppelin not disbanded following the death of John Bonham on September 25,1980, there’s every chance that Page would have gone back to work on the song in the studio.īut even that wasn’t the end of his great lost opus. It would reappear again during the band’s Knebworth shows in 1979, and even as late as their final European tour, in 1980. Page continued to incorporate elements of Swan Song into his live improvisational piece White Summer/Black Mountain Side during Zeppelin’s 1977 tour.
#Led zeplin swan song trial#
I know I can work the whole thing out from the trial runs I’ve laid down. There would be four separate melody lines dealing with the seasons. The original idea was to have four sections coming back to the same theme each time.
“I wanted to orchestrate the guitar and put it through various treatments. “I’ve spoken before about a long piece I’d written,” he said in 1976. Never one to let go of a good idea, Page talked about returning to the incomplete song to finish it off. From there it got carried over to being the name for our label.” And everybody stopped and said what a good name that would be for the album. “I’d been recording this long instrumental and somebody shouted: ‘What’s the title?’” revealed Page. Instead, at a press reception in New York on May 7, 1974, it was announced that the new label would be called Swan Song, after their unfinished song. Zeppelin were planning to launch their own label and rumours abounded that it would be called Shag or Slut Records – a lewd reference to their notorious on-the-road antics. Consequently, it was Ten Years Gone that ended up on Physical Graffiti.īut the Swan Song story didn’t end there. Faced with an abundance of quality material, they could afford to leave Swan Song for another time. At the same time, they had also been working on Ten Years Gone, another lengthy track that incorporated similar guitar orchestration. So why did they leave the piece unfinished? The simple truth is that Zeppelin’s creativity was at an all-time high during the Physical Graffiti sessions. Tantalisingly, he would later reveal that this epic-in-waiting would not necessarily have remained a purely instrumental track – there were plans to add other sections and even lyrics. The second segment commences with Page again leading off, his descending riff hinting at the song’s majestic potential. The first part opens with Page’s drifting acoustic guitar, before the John Paul Jones/John Bonham rhythm section kicks in with the sure-footed syncopation that characterised their greatest work. The track was broken up into sections, two of which were recorded in late February 1974 (and which can be heard on various Zeppelin bootlegs and on YouTube).
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