#11 Travelling Riverside Blues

In 1990, 20 years after Led Zeppelin’s beloved drummer, John Bonham, passed away marking the end to the Led Zeppelin tenure, demand was still very high for content. “Travelling Riverside Blues” was released as a single from the 1990 Led Zeppelin Box Set, uncovered from a 1969 session recorded with the BBC and immediately raced to #7 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Charts. It was their first single released since “Fool In The Rain” in 1979.

Paying homage to late blues legend, Robert Johnson, Jimmy Page plays this on a 12-string guitar, tuned to “open G” with a slide, much like Johnson did in his original version. However, much like most of Led Zeppelin’s “covers”, the original song had one guitar, one vocal track, and nothing else. What the four members of Zeppelin put together is a tour de force of musical prowess that is much more of a tribute to the artist than a cover.

Robert Plant utilizes lyrics from several of Johnson’s songs through the course of this recording, but his use of one specific Johnson lyric will typically make listener’s eyebrows raise:

“Squeeze my lemon 'til the juice runs down my leg

Squeeze it so hard, I'll fall right out of bed

Squeeze my lemon

'til the juice runs down my leg

I wonder if you know what I'm talking about

Oh, but the way that you squeeze it girl

I swear I'm going to fall right out of bed!”

It might not be as vulgar as what we are used to hearing on the radio today from stars like Eminem, but you better believe that lyrics like this were why parents would hide their daughters when Led Zeppelin came to town.

What blows my mind about this song is how it truly didn’t hit the shelves until 1990 - despite it’s wailing vocals, it’s swinging groove, and it’s signature guitar mastery, somehow it didn’t make the cut for any of their studio albums. Be that as it may, the release of “Travelling Riverside Blues” was evidence that the boys from England still had a few tricks up their sleeves, even after we thought we had seen it all.