“Tall Cool One” by Robert Plant

"Tall Cool One" was the second single from Now and Zen, Robert Plant's fourth solo album, in 1988, and it finds him raiding his old band's vaults. He wrote it with keyboardist Phil Johnstone, got his former Led Zeppelin bandmate Jimmy Page to play guitar on it, and then went one better, stitching in sampled riffs from "Black Dog", "Dazed and Confused", "Whole Lotta Love", "The Ocean" and "Custard Pie", plus lyrical nods to "Black Dog" and "When the Levee Breaks".

Plant produced it with Johnstone and Tim Palmer. Cash Box heard a hard-charging rocker with a strange tilt to it, and rock radio agreed: it went to number one on Billboard's Album Rock Tracks chart, his fourth number one there, and reached number 25 on the Hot 100.

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