Misty Mountain Hop

• 1. Introduction

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  "Misty Mountain Hop" arrived in 1971 as the B-side to Led Zeppelin's "Black Dog" - the kind of placement that might have buried a lesser track. Instead, it became one of the forty greatest songs the band ever recorded, according to Rolling Stone's 2019 ranking, landing at number ten on that list. It opens with an electric piano riff courtesy of John Paul Jones and carries lyrics that reach back to a specific afternoon in Hyde Park, London, on the 7th of July, 1968. What were Robert Plant's words actually about? And why does the title point not toward London, but toward the pages of a fantasy novel written decades before Led Zeppelin existed?

• 2. The Hyde Park Rally

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  On the 7th of July, 1968, a "Legalise Pot Rally" took place in Hyde Park, London. Police moved through the crowd making arrests for marijuana possession. Robert Plant drew on that afternoon directly when he wrote the lyrics, using the confrontation between law enforcement and the crowd as a lens for something larger. The song reflects Plant's longing for a better society - a world where individual hangups give way to personal freedom, and where mutual support and rapport replace whatever the authorities at Hyde Park were defending. The rally was not a distant historical event when Plant wrote the song; it was recent memory, still raw enough to fuel a band performance at the 3rd of May 1971 Copenhagen concert, which marked the song's first live outing.

• 3. Tolkien's Peaks

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  J. R. R. Tolkien gave the song its title, or at least its most widely accepted explanation. The Misty Mountains appear in The Hobbit, and the name maps neatly onto the song's imagery of a retreat from a flawed world toward somewhere freer and wilder. Led Zeppelin were not shy about drawing on Tolkien - the band's catalogue holds more than one reference to his mythology. Here the name does double duty: it sounds like a real geographic place, which gives the lyric its grounded, almost geographical feeling, while also pointing toward a fictional realm of escape. The tension between that mythological horizon and the very real events of a summer afternoon in Hyde Park is what gives the song its particular texture.

• 4. Headley Grange Sessions

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  Headley Grange, a mansion in Hampshire, England, was where the band sometimes lived and worked, and it is where "Misty Mountain Hop" was recorded. The house had a history with the band that extended across several sessions. Robert Plant handled vocals, Jimmy Page played electric guitars, John Paul Jones contributed both bass and electric piano, and John Bonham sat at the drums. Those credits come from the research of Jean-Michel Guesdon and Philippe Margotin. The electric piano in particular shapes the song's opening feel, something more elastic and slightly off-kilter than a straight guitar-driven intro would have produced.

• 5. Releases and Legacy

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  Atlantic Records released "Black Dog" as a single on the 2nd of December, 1971, in the United States, continental Europe, and Australia. The United Kingdom did not receive that single release, which meant British listeners encountered "Misty Mountain Hop" through the album alone - Led Zeppelin's untitled fourth record. A different version of the song later surfaced on the second disc of the remastered two-disc deluxe edition of Led Zeppelin IV, giving completists a point of comparison. Live, the song traveled through the 1972 and 1973 concert tours. Robert Plant carried it into his solo career after the band's 1980 breakup, performing it at most of his own concerts. He brought it back for the surviving members at the tribute concert for Ahmet Ertegun on the 10th of December, 2007.