Who wants to be better at guitar?

Here is one way. Even if you aren’t a major fan of Led Zeppelin’s work, these guitar riffs are super fun to learn and will get your fingers really moving.

In this lesson I cover Heartbreaker and Black Dog.

Fun facts about Heartbreaker:

1. A young Eddie Van Halen was inspired to create his “tapping” technique after he heard Jimmy Page play the solo to this song at a concert he attended in 1972
2. Page’s solo to this song, the one that is just him, is actually recorded to a pitch slightly higher than the rest of the song.
3. The song that radio stations always followed this song was Living Loving Maid. Zeppelin never played it live.
4. On the other hand, Heartbreaker was frequently an opening song at their concerts.

Fun facts about Black Dog (from Songfacts):

1. The start-and-stop a cappella verses were inspired by Fleetwood Mac’s 1969 song “Oh Well.” Before Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham joined Fleetwood Mac in 1974, they were more of a Blues band led by guitarist Peter Green. Jimmy Page and The Black Crowes performed “Oh Well” on their 1999 tour and included it on the album Live At The Greek.
2. he title does not appear in the lyrics, and has nothing to do with the song itself. The band worked up the song at Headley Grange, a mansion in Hampshire, England that is out in the country, surrounded by woods. A nameless black Labrador retriever would wander the grounds, and the band would feed it. When they needed a name for this track, which didn’t have an obvious title, they thought of the canine and went with “Black Dog.”
3. Zeppelin bass player John Paul Jones got the idea for this song after hearing Muddy Waters’ 1968 album Electric Mud. He wanted to try “electric blues with a rolling bass part,” and “a riff that would be like a linear journey.”
4. Jones rarely had completed songs together, but the bits and pieces he brought to Led Zeppelin’s writing sessions proved worthy. When they started putting the album together, Jones introduced this riff, the song started to form. The first version Jones played was comically complex. “It was originally all in 3/16 time, but no one could keep up with that,” he said.

Now it’s time to jam! Check out the lesson here:

Here’s the TABs

Black Dog.pdf

Heartbreaker (Intro).pdf