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[–] cynicaloldfart [S] 0 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago  (edited ago)

"Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" is a folk song written by Anne Bredon (then known as Anne Johannsen) around 1959. It was recorded by Joan Baez (credited and became widely popular as "traditional") and released on her 1962 album Joan Baez in Concert, Part 1. Joan had a rather shrill vocal. Baez came across the song when she played a show at Oberlin College and a student named Janet Smith played it for her. Smith heard the song from Bredon when they were both attending University of California, Berkeley.

When Baez' album was issued, "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" was listed as "traditional," as she didn't know who wrote it. This was corrected in later pressings, but Jimmy Page had a copy without the credit, so he assumed it was a traditional song and it was credited on the album as "Traditional, arranged by Jimmy Page." Since 1990 the Led Zeppelin version has been credited to Anne Bredon/Jimmy Page & Robert Plant. Bredon received a substantial back-payment of royalties.

Remarkably, about two decades went by before the credit was corrected. Bredon and Smith didn't listen to Led Zeppelin, so it wasn't until Smith heard her son listening to the song that she noticed it and contacted Bredon. Jimmy Page explained how he adapted the song for Led Zeppelin: "I worked out this arrangement using a more finger-style method and then having a flamenco burst in it. Again, it's light and shade and this drama of accents; using the intensity of what would be a louder section for effect." In his 2012 Rolling Stone interview, Jimmy Page cited this song as one that showed the empathy he and Robert Plant had when working together. "I knew exactly how that was going to shape up," he said. "I set the mood with the acoustic guitar and that flamenco-like section. But Robert embraced it. He came up with an incredible, plaintive vocal."

Page played the song to Plant at their first meeting together, at Page's riverside home at Pangbourne in late July 1968. In his book Stairway to Heaven, Zeppelin tour manager Richard Cole states that the arrangement evolved when Plant played Page the guitar part that eventually appeared on the album but, in an interview he gave with Guitar World magazine in 1998, Page denied this, noting that he had worked out the arrangement long before he met Plant, had told him he would like it on the album, and that Plant at that time did not play the guitar. Page has stated that the arrangement originated from his days as an early 1960s session musician; "I used to do the song in the days of sitting in the darkness playing my six-string behind Marianne Faithfull."

Page may have recorded another version of the song with Steve Winwood in 1968, which was never released.

Asked what kind of acoustic guitar he used on this song, Jimmy Page explained to Guitar Player magazine in 1977: "That was a Gibson J-200, which wasn't mine; I borrowed it. It was a beautiful guitar, really great. I've never found a guitar of that quality anywhere since. I could play so easily on it, get a really thick sound; it had heavy-gauge strings on it, but it just didn't seem to feel like it." This is from the early days of Led Zeppelin, before Jimmy Page expanded his meager guitar collection after a bit of inspiration from Eric Clapton. Page explained: "In the beginning of Zeppelin, I had this very small guitar arsenal: a Harmony acoustic, a Telecaster. Then, one day, I went to Eric Clapton's house, and every room had all these guitars in them. His whole house was like a guitar shrine. I was like 'Crikey!' Eric explained to me: 'They are all tax deductible!' So that's when I started buying more guitars."