“The Ocean” by Led Zeppelin

"The Ocean" is Led Zeppelin's song about their audience, tucked onto 1973's Houses of the Holy: the sea in the title, according to band biographer Dave Lewis, is the mass of heads Robert Plant saw spread out before him in the auditoriums. It opens with John Bonham's spoken count-in grumbling that they've already burned through four takes, and then Jimmy Page drops a riff that keeps tripping over itself, flipping between a bar of 4/4 and a bar of 7/8 so the groove lurches like a ship in heavy swell.

Page produced it, with Eddie Kramer mixing, and it was cut in a house; Kramer has allowed that stray sounds may have slipped onto the tape. John Paul Jones and Bonham join Plant on backing vocals, and all four members share the writing credit.

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