No matter how hard we may try to play it as accurately as possible, sometimes a classic guitar riff never ends up sounding quite like the official version, and Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog” riff is certainly no exception to this frustrating phenomenon. The song’s signature guitar line is loose, raucous, memorable, and a bear to play.
Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones broke down the riff count-by-count in a 1996 column for Guitar World, revealing what most people get wrong about the iconic lick. (He also revealed how the original version was even trickier.)
What You’re Getting Wrong About “Black Dog”
Led Zeppelin’s 1971 track “Black Dog” is one of their most recognizable and career-defining cuts. Indeed, part of what makes it so appealing is how difficult it is to follow along. That disconnect between the listener’s ear and what’s going on under Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones’ fingers keeps them coming back for a second, third, and fourth listen. This ear-catching trend has been going on for literal decades. For many guitarists, learning how to play along to “Black Dog” can be a well-earned feather in their cap.
But as bassist Jones explained in a 1996 Guitar World column, what most people fail to realize about the track is that the musicians aren’t playing out of time. The riff they’re playing pushes the beat back, bit by bit, as the song progresses. “I came up with the bridge riff, which is in E,” Jones said. “This riff is rather tricky-sounding, as it’s built from a repeated phrase that is four-and-a-half beats long. Each time the phrase is repeated, it’s displaced by half a beat.”
“The E note, which falls neatly on beat one the first time the phrase is played, falls on the second eighth-note of beat one the second time around, on beat two the third time, and on the second eighth-note of beat two the fourth time. This technique of repeating an odd-length phrase in an even time signature such as 4/4 is known as hemiola. When this riff was played against [drummer John Bonham’s] half-time backbeat and doubled an octave higher on guitar, the result was a very powerful and catchy-sounding “stomp groove.” It seems that quite a few bands have picked up on this concept.”
Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones Said The Original Riff Was Even Trickier
If you thought that Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones’ explanation of the band’s iconic “Black Dog” riff was complicated, then his original version of the lick would have blown your mind. “Originally, I wrote the bridge riff with different accents that disguised the beat even more,” Jones wrote in Guitar World. “Playing it this way proved to be too tricky [to] perform together without losing track of the beat. So, we ended up changing the accent pattern to make the downbeats a little more obvious.”
Guitarist Jimmy Page likely played a significant role in this transformation. Speaking to SiriusXM in 2014, Page recalled, “John Paul Jones had a riff. And that’s the sort of riff, you know, of that song. We had that, but that’s what it was. It was just a riff. He was playing it over and over, and it was tricky to play. But during the point of getting to play with that part, it was like, ‘Let’s try this with a call and response with Robert singing and the riff.’ My part of it was actually taking it from a riff and making it into a piece of music.”
As easy as counting 1, 2, 3, 4 (and).
Photo by Michael Putland/Getty Images
