“The Crunge” by Led Zeppelin

"The Crunge" is Led Zeppelin taking a gleeful swing at James Brown funk on Houses of the Holy, their 1973 album, the way "D'yer Mak'er" takes a swing at reggae; in the US it even rode on the flip side of that single. It fell out of a studio jam. John Bonham started the beat, John Paul Jones came in on bass, Jimmy Page laid a funk riff and a chord sequence he'd been fooling with since 1970 on top, and Robert Plant started singing.

Page played a Fender Stratocaster, and you can hear him dipping the whammy bar as each phrase closes. The song lurches along mostly in 9/8, which gives it that limping, off-balance strut, and since it has no bridge, Plant spends the closing bars hunting for one. Page produced it and Eddie Kramer mixed it.

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