Over the Hills and Far Away (Led Zeppelin song)
| "Over the Hills and Far Away" | |||||||||
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Netherlands single picture sleeve
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| Single by Led Zeppelin | |||||||||
| from the album Houses of the Holy | |||||||||
| B-side | "Dancing Days" | ||||||||
| Released | 24 May 1973 (US) | ||||||||
| Format | 7-inch 45 rpm | ||||||||
| Recorded | Stargroves, East Woodhay, England, 1972 | ||||||||
| Genre | |||||||||
| Length | 4:42 | ||||||||
| Label | Atlantic | ||||||||
| Writer(s) | |||||||||
| Producer(s) | Jimmy Page | ||||||||
| ISWC | T-070.160.924-6 | ||||||||
| Led Zeppelin singles chronology | |||||||||
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"Over the Hills and Far Away" is the third track from English rock band Led Zeppelin's 1973 album Houses of the Holy. It was released as a single, with "Dancing Days" as the B-side, in the US.
Jimmy Page and Robert Plant originally constructed the song in 1970 at Bron-Yr-Aur, a small cottage in Wales where they stayed after completing a gruelling North American concert tour. The song was first called "Many, Many Times", as shown on a picture of the original master on the Led Zeppelin website.
Page plays a six-string acoustic guitar introduction and repeats the theme with a 12-string acoustic guitar in unison. In an interview published in Guitar World magazine's November 1993 issue, Page commented on the construction of the song:
GW: There’s an acoustic guitar running throughout the song. Did you play a main acoustic and then overdub an electric?
Page: No, we played it through entirely as you know it, but I was playing electric.
GW: So you simply edited out of the beginning?
Page: Yeah, that’s right. “Presumably”. It sounds that way. It sounds like the acoustic is going straight through.
Plant's vocals enter on the next repetition. He tenderly offers himself to the "lady" who's "got the love [he] need[s]." The acoustic guitars build in a crescendo toward the abrupt infusion of Page's electric guitars along with drummer John Bonham's and bass guitarist John Paul Jones' rhythm accompaniment.
Through the pre-verse interludes and instrumental bridge, "Over the Hills and Far Away" stands out as an example of Jones and Bonham's tight interplay. Following the final verse, the rhythm section fades out, gradually replaced by the echo returns from Page's electric guitar and a few chords played by Jones on Clavinet. In the final 8 bars, Page executes a linearly descending/ascending sequence and then concludes with the idiomatic V-I cadence on synth imitating a pedal steel guitar.
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Wikipedia