Whole Lotta Borrowing

Speaking of The Small Faces, here’s their take on Muddy Waters’ “You Need Love.”  You’ll note that Robert Plant, who used to run errands for The Small Faces, later put this to use in “Whole Lotta Love.”  Some music nerds give themselves wedgies over all this, but you’ve gotta concede that Jimmy Page improved it by adding one of the all-time greatest rock riffs.  Fun Fact: when JP was forming what would become Led Zeppelin, Steve Marriott was high on his list of singers until The Small Faces’ manager threatened to break his hands.

By the way, below is the single version of “Whole Lotta Love” which cut out the free-form middle section of bongos, theremin, and Robert Plant gearing up for a sneeze that never comes.  Atlantic did originally put out the whole song as a single, but radio stations would create their own versions without the middle part.  Atlantic responded by re-releasing its own edited single over the objections of the band.  So if you didn’t own the lp and listened to AM radio, this is what you usually heard:

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