#13 The Crunge

“The Crunge” off of Houses Of The Holy is one of many songs by Led Zeppelin that show off the band’s versatility. For a hard rock band that had become the biggest act on the planet, the members decided to start releasing material that showed they were capable of much more than one genre.

Everything from reggae (“D’yer Mak’er”, 1973), progressive, beach rock (“Down By The Seaside”, 1975), and country, rockabilly (“Hot Dog”, 1979), Led Zeppelin took stabs at many musical styles throughout their career. It was never more obvious that they were deciding to go against popular expectations than when they released “The Crunge”, a James Brown style funk song that originated once again out of an improvised jam session.

John Bonham wrote the drum beat first, with the intention of making it step on and off beat repetitively throughout the song so that it couldn’t be danced to. The idea was to purposely pay homage to James Brown, but perpetrate a “white boy” aspect to the rhythm. Both John Bonham and Jimmy Page were very big fans of Brown and wanted to pay their respects to the artist while still making it clear they felt he was the king of funk.

John Paul Jones made up the bass line on the spot and if you listen closely at the 11 second mark, you’ll hear Jimmy’s guitar faintly touched in the background. Legend has it that Jimmy tested a chord lightly on his guitar to see if it worked well with JPJ’s bass line before coming in hard with a funk style guitar riff that almost sounds like the future sounds produced by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

The lyrics were sung and recorded in one, improvised take. Robert Plant had written lyrics in advance, but no melody to accompany it. As the song moves forward, you can tell Plant is searching for a place to take the song, at one point actually cracking his voice.

The cracks and missteps are left in the recording and although the jam session winds up actually becoming a classic Led Zeppelin tune, the band members have admitted that they are no match for Brown in the funk regard. Evidence of this comes at the end of the song, where Plant exclaims over and over again “Have you seen the bridge? Has anyone seen the bridge?” James Brown routinely would guide his band members in and out of verses, choruses, and bridges during songs by singing words such as this. The members of Brown’s band always knew where he was going with the song. For those familiar with the movie Almost Famous, you can find one of the music groupies wearing a t-shirt with these lyrics. This is the writer's way of adding subtle connections to Led Zeppelin.

When “The Crunge” comes to an abrupt end, a bridge was never played. This was an intentional tongue-in-cheek way of Led Zeppelin saying to the world that this was their best take on James Brown funk, but they inherently are a bunch of British guys that play rock music. Still, “The Crunge” has become a popular song in the Zeppelin catalog, standing out on its own and showing the members were not intimidated by the social norms associated with being labeled within a genre. The entire album, Houses Of The Holy, can be viewed through the lens of genre experimentation. “The Crunge” just so happens to be my favorite of the outliers and that’s why it finds itself at number 13.