Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love voted best guitar riff

Blackleaf

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Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love has been voted the greatest guitar riff of all time by listeners of BBC Radio 2.

The 1969 rock classic came out top from a list of 100 riffs drawn up by a panel of Radio 2 and 6 Music DJs, critics and record producers.

Sweet Child O' Mine by Guns 'N' Roses was second in the poll, with Back In Black (AC/DC) and Smoke On The Water (Deep Purple) the next most popular.

Led Zep guitarist Jimmy Page said he was "knocked out" by winning the vote.

Eight of the ten greatest riffs of all time are by British bands.


Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love voted best guitar riff

25 August 2014
BBC News


Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page described the riff as "menacing and caressing"

Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love has been voted the greatest guitar riff of all time by listeners of BBC Radio 2.

The rock classic came out top from a list of 100 riffs drawn up by a panel of Radio 2 and 6 Music DJs, critics and record producers.

Sweet Child O' Mine by Guns 'N' Roses was second in the poll, with Back In Black (AC/DC) and Smoke On The Water (Deep Purple) the next most popular.

Led Zep guitarist Jimmy Page said he was "knocked out" by winning the vote.

"I wanted a riff that really moved, that people would really get, and would bring a smile to their faces, but when I played it with the band, it really went into overdrive," he said.

"There was this intent to have this riff and the movement of it, so it was menacing as well as quite sort of caressing."

Other riffs in the list included Layla by Derek And The Dominos (of which Eric Clapton was a member), which was voted fifth best, Pretty Vacant by the Sex Pistols and Metallica's Enter Sandman.


The combined talents of Page, Robert Plant and John Bonham sent the riff into "overdrive", Page said

Listen to Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin: Led Zeppelin - Whole Lotta Love - YouTube

"Whole Lotta Love is one of the most important guitar riffs of the 20th century," said record producer and panellist Steve Levine. "The moment you hear literally two notes of it, you know exactly what it is."

The Top 30 announcement came on Zoe Ball's bank holiday show.

Arctic Monkeys, The Beatles, Daft Punk and Pink Floyd were among the acts jostling for favour. The vote closed on 25 July.

The BBC station has been celebrating the guitar in a special season featuring documentaries and live performances.

The countdown of the top 100 riffs began on Will Gompertz's midnight show and continued across the day on BBC shows hosted by Alex Lester, Ken Bruce, Jeremy Vine and Jo Whiley.

Top 10 guitar riffs

Whole Lotta Love - Led Zeppelin
Sweet Child O'Mine - Guns 'N' Roses
Back in Black - AC/DC
Smoke On The Water - Deep Purple
Layla - Derek and The Dominos
How Soon Is Now? - The Smiths
Down Down - Status Quo
Money For Nothing - Dire Straits
You Really Got Me - The Kinks
Money - Pink Floyd

Source: BBC Radio 2

BBC News - Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love voted best guitar riff
 

gopher

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Good post. So many of today's R+R artists are credited for much of the great work started by the great Blues artists of the past, much of which has been forgotten. Today's artists (especially those who are British) have no trouble with properly crediting them. But the critics need to do a better job of proper attribution.
 

petros

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Led Zep is the worst for ripping off the blues giants of days gone by. Rolling Stones a close second, Sabbath in third. All Brits.
 

gopher

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Imitation is certainly the sincerest form of flattery. And Mick Jagger has always been very vocal about his admiration for the great influential work of Muddy Waters and other great Blues artists. What puzzles me is why American music critics fail to note that.
 

petros

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Absolutely correct, but really?? At this point??

Who cares???

Musicians like myself.

Imitation is certainly the sincerest form of flattery. And Mick Jagger has always been very vocal about his admiration for the great influential work of Muddy Waters and other great Blues artists. What puzzles me is why American music critics fail to note that.

They don't listen to blues or just don't listen. Take your pick.
 

Blackleaf

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Led Zep is the worst for ripping off the blues giants of days gone by. Rolling Stones a close second, Sabbath in third. All Brits.

What a load of crap.

Muddy Waters and other blues artists were a major inspiration for the British blues explosion of the 1960s. British bands like Led Zep had a heavy blues influence, but blues was only one influence on these bands. There were other influences.

Led Zep's blues influence, from artists like Muddy Waters, Skip James and Howlin' Wolf, was especially apparent on their early albums, but the British folk rock revival, rock n roll, jazz, country, funk, soul and reggae also influenced the band.

Most people outside the UK also won't know that Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" was used as the theme tune for "Top of the Pops" - the BBC British music chart TV show which ran from 1964 to 2006 - between 1970 and 1977 and again, with an updated drum and bass version, between 1998 and 2003. That's what the song is largely famous for nowadays.

Top of the Pops - Theme - YouTube


Bron-yr-Aur was another influence on Led Zep.



Bron-Yr-Aur (Welsh for "golden hill", "breast of the gold" or "hill of the gold"), in Machynlleth, west Wales, also influenced Led Zep.

The cottage was used during the 1950s by the family of future-Led Zeppelin vocalist Robert Plant as a holiday home. In 1970, Plant and guitarist Jimmy Page spent time there after a long and gruelling concert tour of North America. Though the cottage had no running water or electricity, they used it as a retreat to write and record some of their third album, Led Zeppelin III. People at the cottage during this time were Plant's wife Maureen and 18-month-old daughter Carmen, Page's girlfriend Charlotte Martin, and Led Zeppelin roadies Clive Coulson and Sandy MacGregor.

Page has explained that:
Robert (Plant) and I went to Bron-Yr-Aur in 1970. We'd been working solidly right up to that point. Even recordings were done on the road. We had this time off and Robert suggested the cottage. I certainly hadn't been to that area of Wales. So we took our guitars down there and played a few bits and pieces. This wonderful countryside, panoramic views and having the guitars ... it was just an automatic thing to be playing. And we started writing.
According to the guitarist, the time spent at Bron-Yr-Aur in 1970


...was the first time I really came to know Robert [Plant]. Actually living together at Bron-Yr-Aur, as opposed to occupying nearby hotel rooms. The songs took us into areas that changed the band, and it established a standard of travelling for inspiration... which is the best thing a musician can do.

Led Zeppelin songs which can be traced to Plant and Page's time at Bron-Yr-Aur in 1970 include "Over the Hills and Far Away" and "The Crunge" (both from Houses of the Holy); "The Rover", "Bron-Yr-Aur" and "Down by the Seaside" (from Physical Graffiti), "Poor Tom" (from Coda) and three they actually used on Led Zeppelin III: "Friends", "Bron-Yr-Aur Stomp" and "That's the Way".
 
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Zipperfish

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Good post. So many of today's R+R artists are credited for much of the great work started by the great Blues artists of the past, much of which has been forgotten. Today's artists (especially those who are British) have no trouble with properly crediting them. But the critics need to do a better job of proper attribution.

I agree. If you ever read an interview with Jimmy Page, or Eric Clapton, or John Lennon, or Keith Richards, they are more than happy to pay homage to their musical forebears. It's not a rip-off. It's what happenes when you learn to play an instrument crouched over your old 78 rpm record player, lifting the needle up and dropping it back until you get the riff right. Those riffs work their way into your musical style.

There's only 12 notes, and everything is derivtaive from those.

(Actually that's not quite true. ONe of the defining characteristics of the blues is the ambiguity between the major and minor modes, and there is a blues "note" in, say, the key of C that would be halfway between and E and an E-flat. But I digress).
 

Blackleaf

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It's flat out rip off son.

I see no problem in musical artists covering songs and improving them.

Led Zeppelin, like many other British bands of the time, were heavily influenced by blues and British folk rock and many other music styles.

But to say that "Whole Lotta Love" ripped off the Muddy Waters song "You Need Love" would be accurate only if "Whole Lotta Love" sounded even remotely like "You Need Love". The two songs sound totally different. "Whole Lotta Love" just used some of the lyrics that appeared in "You Need Love", a song which was actually written by Willie Dixon, not Muddy Waters.

And, anyway, it wasn't Muddy Waters that influenced Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love". "Whole Lotta Love" was influenced by "You Need Loving", a song released in 1966 by British mod rockers Small Faces, and it was "You Need Loving" that was influenced by the Willie Dixon-written "You Need Love."
 

Blackleaf

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You can't improve on a master like Muddy Waters.

Such things are subjective.

In my opinion rock music is the best type of music in the world, and any blues song that is turned into a heavy metal song has been vastly improved.

Blues, along with country, is about the crappiest, most unimaginative music that has ever been invented by humanity, dating back to when music first came into existence in the Paleolithic Era. All blues songs are structured the same way. It's the same bloody pentatonic over and over again. And the singer always throws in those off-the-cuff rants like "Oh, baby, you know it, you know it's true, oh baby come on and tell me!"

If every blues and country song was converted in a rock song then the world would be a better place. Just get Slipknot and Cradle of Filth onto the job.