[OGT] Before They Were Huge
If you’re a fan of classic rock, I have a video for you. In this beautiful black and white footage recorded in Denmark in 1969, Led Zeppelin performs a haunting arrangement of Babe I’m Gonna Leave You from their first album.
Until writing this article, I didn’t realize this wasn’t an original song. Rather, it’s a cover of a folk song written in the late 1950s by Anne Bredon and subsequently redone by Joan Baez in 1962. Others have covered the song as well, and each version I’ve found is strikingly different.
This performance was captured not long after the band was formed in 1968. You can tell by the rawness of the band’s sound and the intimate setting in which they perform that they were still getting the Zeppelin off the ground (sorry).
How cool it must have been to see a great band like this performing live in their formative days, before they could only be experienced in massive arena venues.