Led Zeppelin’s latest single
THE Led Zeppelinas Ultimate Classic Rock rightly points out, have never been a singles band and released very few in their career. “Fool in the Rain”released in December 1979, included on the album “In Through the Out Door”was their tenth and final single ever.
“I always thought of the Stones as a pop group that made singles,” the singer explained
Robert Plant
in 2005. “The idea of what we did to compete with Bobby Goldsboro like they did wasn’t the right one. What we said was that there was no point in releasing a single when the album was the statement of the band.”
In
“In Through the Out Door” Robert Plant
and the bass player
John Paul Jones
had had a more important role in the writing of the lyrics than on previous albums
Led Zeppelin
Jones above all was particularly stimulated to proceed with his sound experiments by the use of a new type of musical instrument. The guitarist
Jimmy Page
he explained it like this, speaking of
John Paul Jones
in the book
‘Light and Shade: Conversations with Jimmy Page’
. “I would have preferred not to have a contribution. But he bought a new synthesizer (a Yamaha GX-1, ed.) and that inspired him to invent a lot of things for “In Through the Out Door”. He also started working closely with Robert, which has never happened before.”
It was an important sporting event that inspired one of the most important songs on the album,
“Fool in the Rain”
which had a central samba interlude complete with timpani and whistles. In a 1979 interview Plant said the following: “‘Fool in the Rain’ is very unusual for us, really, because, well, I don’t think we would have played it if the situations had been different. But with the World Cup in Argentina in ’78 and with a lot of this South American stuff going around, whenever you watched some football on television, there was always a South American beat it’s an attempt to be Carlos Santana or something. It’s a bit diverse and straightforward.”
The song reached number 21 in the charts in February 1980. However, the English band continued to not care about this sort of thing, as Page said: “We just wanted to write really good music that stood on its own. Chart music tends to be a a bit disposable.”
“In Through the Out Door”
it was the last album by
Led Zeppelin
which disbanded due to the death of the drummer
John Bonham
in 1980. Page and Bonham were not entirely satisfied with the results achieved by Plant and Jones’ guidance. Again Page: “Bonzo and I had already started discussing plans for a harder rock album after that. We both thought “In Through the Out Door” was a little soft. It was fine in its place, but I wouldn’t have wanted to follow that direction in the future.”
