Top News

Robert Plant has revealed whether or not a "mistake" in a classic Led Zeppelin song was actually that or if it was intentional. In an interview, the legendary rock singer addressed the composition of the band's song Black Dog, which is one of their most well-known tracks and was a huge hit worlwide when it was released in 1971. Plant described how he wrote the song and how it ended up the way it did.

told a story of how his daughter's boyfriend, also a , was trying to explain to him how mistakes were made with the tempo of the song. The song is known to be slightly off-tempo but this wasn't a mistake. In fact, it is somewhat part of signature sound and legacy. Plant says that it shows off what the band is "capable of".

He told an interviewer: "My daughter's boyfriend, who played in a psychobilly group, started telling me that one part of Black Dog was wrong because there's a line in 5/4 in the middle of the other ones in 4/4.

"Well, this drove me crazy, so I took out the record, put it on my plate and said: Listen, midget, this is not a mistake, this shows you what we were capable of!"

The song was created by the band's bass player John Paul Jones who wrote it on the back of a train ticket. In an interview with Bass Player, he revealed: "I wrote 'Black Dog' on a train.

"My Dad taught me how to write musical notation without using manuscript paper - just with numbers and note values - and I wrote that riff on the back of a train ticket coming back from a rehearsal at Jimmy Page's house."

Meanwhile, he told Classic Rock: "It was originally all in 3/16 time but no one could keep up."

According to Billboard, Black Dog is Led Zeppelin's fourth-biggest selling single, falling behind Stairway to Heaven in first place and Kashmir and Immigrant Song in second and third place.