When the Levee Breaks

Before the released version, Led Zeppelin attempted the song twice. They recorded an early version of the song in December 1970 at Headley Grange, using the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio. It was later released as "If It Keeps On Raining" on the 2015 reissue of Coda. Prior to relocating to Headley Grange, they tried unsuccessfully to record it at Island Studios at the beginning of the recording sessions for their fourth album.[12]

Page and John Paul Jones based their guitar and bass lines on the original song.[13] However, they did not follow its twelve-bar blues I–IV–V–I structure, but instead used a one-chord or modal approach to give it a droning sound.[1] Plant used many of the lyrics, but took a different melodic approach.[14] He also added a harmonica part; during mixing, a reverse echo effect was created, whereby the echo is heard ahead of the source.[12]

John Bonham's drumming, played on a Ludwig kit, was recorded in the lobby of Headley Grange using two Beyerdynamic M 160 microphones which were hung up a flight of stairs; output from these were passed to a pair of Helios F760 compressor/limiters set aggressively to obtain a breathing effect. A Binson Echorec, a delay effects unit, was also used.[9][15][16]

Portions of the song were recorded at a different tempo, then slowed down, explaining the "sludgy" sound, particularly on the harmonica and guitar solos.[17] It was the only song on the album that was mixed at Sunset Sound in Hollywood, California (the rest being remixed in London).[18] Page identifies the panning on the song's ending as one of his favourite mixes "when everything starts moving around except for the voice, which remains stationary".[19] The song was difficult to recreate live and the band played it only a few times, in the early stages of their 1975 U.S. Tour.[12]

Music critic Robert Christgau cited Led Zeppelin's version of "When the Levee Breaks" as their fourth album's greatest achievement. He argued that, because it plays like an authentic blues song and "has the grandeur of a symphonic crescendo", their version both transcends and dignifies "the quasi-parodic overstatement and oddly cerebral mood of" their past blues songs.[20] Mick Wall called it a "hypnotic, blues rock mantra".[21] AllMusic critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine, in a retrospective review, commented that the song was the only piece on their fourth album on par with "Stairway to Heaven" and called it "an apocalyptic slice of urban blues ... as forceful and frightening as Zeppelin ever got, and its seismic rhythms and layered dynamics illustrate why none of their imitators could ever equal them."[22] In The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), Greg Kot wrote that the song showed the band's "hard-rock blues" at their most "momentous".[23] However, group biographer Keith Shadwick notes the song "suffers from too few ideas added to the ingredients as the minutes tick by, compared with 'Black Dog'" and other songs on the first side of the album.[13]

A second version of the song was released in 2014 on the second disc of the remastered two-disc deluxe edition of Led Zeppelin IV. This version, known as "When The Levee Breaks (Alternate UK Mix in Progress)", was recorded on May 19, 1971, at the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio at Headley Grange. This mix runs 7:09, while the original runs 7:08.

Robert Plant performed the song with Alison Krauss on their 2022 tour. One concert reviewer described Plant's vocal as "astonishing, channeling every flood he had seen in his 74 years into the emotional resonance of his voice".[24]

Bonham's drum beat is one of the most widely sampled in popular music.[11][25] According to Esquire magazine's Miles Raymer:

The two-bar break that opens "When the Levee Breaks" is one of the most monumental pieces of rock drumming ever recorded, and one of the most widely sampled pieces of music ever, having appeared in songs by everyone from Eminem and Dr. Dre to New Age artist Mike Oldfield and Sophie B. Hawkins.[26]