When the Levee Breaks

The original was recorded by Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie in New York on 18 June 1929 for Columbia, and its lyrics concern the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. Plant suggested the song to the band. After an earlier attempt at Island, they recorded the final version in 1971 at Headley Grange. A December 1970 recording from the house was later issued as If It Keeps On Raining on the 2015 Coda reissue.

Bonham's kit was set up in the Headley Grange lobby with two Beyerdynamic M 160 microphones hung above a staircase. The signal went through Helios F760 compressors and a Binson Echorec delay, and reverse echo was added during mixing at Sunset Sound in Hollywood. Andy Johns described the hallway setup in a later interview.

Page recalled trying it at early sessions and finding it sounded flat, and the lobby gave the ideal ambience. The drum introduction was extensively sampled in hip-hop during the 1980s, and Page and Plant played the song on their 1995 tour. Pitchfork's Mark Richardson wrote in 2015 that it is hard to hear it now without thinking of hip-hop.

Live and sampled

The band played it only a few times, early in the 1975 US tour. The drum break has been widely sampled, including by Beyonce on Don't Hurt Yourself, and Esquire cited Eminem, Dr. Dre, Mike Oldfield and Sophie B. Hawkins among others.