“In My Time of Dying” by Led Zeppelin

"In My Time of Dying" is Led Zeppelin's take on an old gospel song first recorded by Blind Willie Johnson, a deathbed plea that plenty of artists, Bob Dylan among them, have made their own. On Physical Graffiti, in 1975, Zeppelin turned it into a sprawling heavy-blues epic, and all four members, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham, took the writing credit.

Page produced it, with Peter Grant as executive producer, Ron Nevison and Keith Harwood engineering and Harwood mixing. It sounds like a band pushing an ancient spiritual as far as it will go: Page's guitar moans and stings, Bonham hits like a pile driver, and Plant hollers his way through the long, lurching stretches until the whole thing collapses in exhaustion.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.