1972 Songs: Black Dog
By Four Walls
@FourWalls (62125)
United States
July 2, 2022 10:11am CST
No, JJ/Some Guy Typing, Smoking Marijuana, and Cooking Meatloaf in His Kitchen/Phred Wreck didn’t twist my arm. I simply listened to the song I had scheduled here and this one, and decided I like this one better. Sorry, Ringo. Here’s today’s song that’s 50 years old this year.
Black Dog - Led Zeppelin
Yeah, Ringo will tell me to “back off, boogaloo” (what I had planned to use), but listening to the two, I think this is more enduring. Plus, there’s that Beat Farmers version that I can’t help but hear every time someone mentions this song.
This was Led Zep’s opening salvo on their best-known album, the officially untitled album that everyone knows as either Led Zeppelin IV or ZoSo (after the first symbol on the label). It’s an album I’ve never owned but I think I know every song on the album. (One of them I could go Methuselah’s lifetime without ever hearing again, but….
)
Turn on a classic rock station today and you’ll hear this or something else from this album. Guaranteed.
Black Dog
Written by John Paul Jones, Robert Plant, and Jimmy Page
Recorded by Led Zeppelin
From Led Zeppelin IV, 1971
(Today’s 1982 song: “Change of Heart”)
What people mean by down and out:
)
Turn on a classic rock station today and you’ll hear this or something else from this album. Guaranteed.
Black Dog
Written by John Paul Jones, Robert Plant, and Jimmy Page
Recorded by Led Zeppelin
From Led Zeppelin IV, 1971
(Today’s 1982 song: “Change of Heart”)
What people mean by down and out:
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11 people like this
9 responses
@moffittjc (118442)
• Gainesville, Florida
2 Jul 22
I love this song, and this album! My daughter used to carry around a stuffed animal when she was little, it was a black dog, and she named it....
...Black Dog!
So I used to play this song for her all the time when she was little. So she is of course a Led Zeppelin fan now.
In addition to the album being called Led Zeppelin IV and ZoSo, I've also heard people refer to it as Runes, because of the symbols on the cover.
3 people like this
@FourWalls (62125)
• United States
2 Jul 22
“Hey, that one” works, too. As long as they got the royalties.
2 people like this
@FourWalls (62125)
• United States
2 Jul 22
@moffittjc — I don’t think we’ll see them on the corner with a cardboard sign….
3 people like this
@moffittjc (118442)
• Gainesville, Florida
2 Jul 22
@FourWalls I wonder how much they are still making on royalties from that album alone? I hear songs off that album all the time on the radio.
2 people like this
@TheHorse (205716)
• Walnut Creek, California
2 Jul 22
Picture a 15-year-old white boy on the South Side of Chicago. Looking for love. Looking for guidance. Looking for meaning. Really just looking for a girl with similar needs who would talk to him. Hold his hand. And maybe tentatively kiss him. Right on the lips. And then this song comes on the radio. Said young boy listens carefully to the lyrics. This is what he hears, whether right or wrong" "Hey mama like the way you move. Gonna make you sweat gonna make you groove." He sighs (sorry, @Vandana7, he does not wet his pants). He plays sports and listens to John Prine's Far From Me on his turntable for the 3,495th time. He wishes he was somewhere else. This song was my "nemesis" as a pubescent. It represented everything I hated about screamer rock 'n roll. To this day, I put metal and screamer rock 'n roll just below rap on my "decline and fall of Western civilization" list. And yet, listening to it, I realize it was really well done. What's a fella to think?
3 people like this
@vandana7 (98826)
• India
2 Jul 22
You just gave me a valid reason to adore you. LOL I am a die hard romantic number fan. I feel somehow musicians are able to make them more melodious than other songs. One of my favorites...
But I agree with you the song fourwalls uploaded ..I could not dare to listen with higher volume. LOL
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2 people like this
@FourWalls (62125)
• United States
2 Jul 22
I saw something that said they were influenced by Fleetwood Mac’s “Oh Well.” I had never thought of that until I read that, then the similarities jumped right out at me.
1 person likes this
@ptrikha_2 (45467)
• India
4 Jul 22
Quite a peppy song and could enthuse one for a tough Monday !
So is it a Pop Music song or Rock?
2 people like this
@vandana7 (98826)
• India
2 Jul 22
Honestly, we did not get to hear many English songs back then. So I do not know many of your numbers. We were so lost in our songs back then. LOL. Now we are able to appreciate western numbers because we have access to them over YouTube, and realize the difference. This song, however, I'd rather not comment on it.
2 people like this
@FourWalls (62125)
• United States
2 Jul 22
Fair enough. I know you’re only here because Pony baited you, so spike his carrot with video in retaliation.
2 people like this
@RasmaSandra (73407)
• Daytona Beach, Florida
2 Jul 22
Nope just wasn't into Led Zeppelin was more into pop than rock
2 people like this
@FourWalls (62125)
• United States
2 Jul 22
I’m not a big Lee Zep fan, but there are a few songs of theirs I enjoy. The loudest would be “The Immigrant Song.”
2 people like this
@LindaOHio (156159)
• United States
3 Jul 22
Nope. I don't know Black Dog, Big Red Dog or Yellow Dog.
2 people like this
@FourWalls (62125)
• United States
4 Jul 22
You don’t know Clifford the Big Red Dog? I’ll bet you’d remember him if you stepped in a pile of his big red poop! 
2 people like this
@LindaOHio (156159)
• United States
4 Jul 22
@FourWalls Yes, I know who Clifford is.
1 person likes this
@FourWalls (62125)
• United States
2 Jul 22
You may know it. Zep’s songs and titles have a way of never matching.
2 people like this
@dgobucks226 (34356)
•
9 Jul 22
Led Zep at the height of their popularity (Led Zep#4) was their best-selling LP and a great song to open the album. A Black Dog inspired the title but is nowhere in the song 
1 person likes this
@FourWalls (62125)
• United States
10 Jul 22
Lots of Zep songs were like that (the title nowhere to be found in the song). I remember reading, I think it was Plant, said the songs had “working titles,” and they never changed the working title once they got the song written!
1 person likes this
