LED ZEPPELIN - BLACK MOUNTAIN SIDE

'This leans towards the land of milk & honey, the East, 
and features on guitar Jimmy Page'

Robert Plant, Knebworth Festival, August 4th 1979

The first instrumental, one of only four across Led Zeppelin's arsenal. Brought by Jimmy from his Yardbirds days, a mood changer and designed to showcase Jimmy's acoustic prowess and ambitions. On 'Little Games', 'White Summer' was a more British, western conservative recording, despite being in nodal DADGAD tuning.

'Black Mountain Side' emerged as a short intermission, exotic rolling fingerpicking with the help of  Kenyan borm Indian Tabla player Viram Yasani. 

Basic instructure, following just a couple of themes, it strummed in beautifully over the fading 'Your Time Is Gonna Come', accentuating the light start to the second side of 'Led Zeppelin'. If nothing else, the sudden stop and lift off into 'Communication Breakdown' is a classic moment. Light and shade.

But one major point of controversy is who wrote it. Listed as a Jimmy Page composition, it leans very heavily on Bert Jansch's 'Black Water Side', from his 1966 elpee 'Jack Orion'. Here it was listed as 'traditional'. Anne Bredon/Briggs also performed it, as both 'Black Water Side' and 'Black Mountain Side'. In truth it's a traditional English Folk instrumental, handed down from one generation to the next. Jimmy laid claim to it, which stands to this day, probably due to the addition of table drums and slight arrangement changes.

Live, it took on another life entirely. Always performed inside 'White Summer' as a virtuoso showcase, it immediately stretched upwards of ten minutes and more onstage, usually with some explosive and inspired Bonzo percussion work.

Again a lack of 1968 recordings make it hard to say if it was included during the first Scandinavian shows, but the earliest live version captured - from Spokane on December 30th - is of 'White Summer' alone, complete with licks and references from another Bert Jansch track 'Casbah', an original Jansch composition from his eponymous 1965 debut.

The earliest recorded Led Zeppelin performance is from January 10th 1969, the second of four shows at Fillmore West. Here it's taking shape as the White Summer/Black Mountain Side medley that would extend, flourish and finally decay over the next 11 years.

We have 41 recorded live versions, stretching until the end of the 5th US Tour, the last being the final show at Phoenix, AZ on April 18th. Always performed on Jimmy's Danelectro, we also have the only acoustic performance some 8 days later when he appeared shyly  BBC TV's Julie Felix Show.

Retired from the set after that, save a couple of improvisations of the riff during 'Dazed And Confused' (Tulsa August 21st 1970 stands out), it was reprised in 1977 as an exotic introduction to the new set highpoint 'Kashmir'. Played every complete show on the tour, except in Tempe on July 20th where a spaced out Jimmy Page began 'Kashmir' suddenly and alone until the rest of the band joined in, it varied from a crowd baiting source of high drama to an overlong indulgence. 

'Swan Song' figures were introduced some nights, eventually becoming part of 'Midnight Moonlight' by the Firm, which itself blossomed from the embryonic 'Bird On A Wing' framework Jimmy had constructed for the ARMS US Tour with Paul Rodgers.

From then on it stayed, up until the final Led Zeppelin performance in Berlin. Despite being introduced by Jimmy as 'from the annals of Rock History', it's a sadly desperate and unsatisfactory version, lacking in cohesion and drama.

On film, we have two of the finest examples thankfully captured. The brilliant Royal Albert Hall version from 'DVD' is about as good as it gets, a ferocious Page/Bonham battle inside a truly virtuoso Jimmy Page performance. And, despite some damage, the legendary Julie Felix show acoustic take.

In 1977 there's a great cine clip from the final Chicago Stadium April 10th show where we see the end of the piece and the dramatic beginning of 'Kashmir'. No other clips show it apart from the pro shot Seattle 17th July footage. In 1979 we have the two Knebworth performances, but none of the 1980 cine films show any clips of any note.

Of course, being a short instrumental there are no single releases, but there are at least 2 different Polish Postcard Flexi singles.

Post Zeppelin, Jimmy inserted it into 'Midnight Moonlight' with The Firm (as he had done on the ARMS tour when it was 'Bird On A Wing), and again on the Outrider shows. 

It regained it's place as a lone piece for the Coverdale Page Japanese gigs, but was omitted from then on.