The most obvious influence is Howlin' Wolf's 'How Many More Years' (1951), which shares a nearly-identical title and modest lyrical similarities.

Another lyrical influence is Albert King's 'The Hunter':

Zeppelin biographer Stephen Davis claims it also borrows riffs from King's song (Davis, page 59), but I don't hear any. Author Keith Shadwick also claims the "sledgehammer walking riff" was "borrowed from Albert King's 'The Hunter'" (Shadwick, page 59). But since neither Davis nor Shadwick provides any evidence to support or validate the claim, I'm confident dismissing it as nonsense.

Less obvious, but still significant, Plant also borrowed from 'Kisses Sweeter Than Wine' (1957) by Jimmie Frederick Rodgers (not to be confused with country singer Jimmie Charles Rodgers).

Once again, there appears to be some confusion whether or not Rodgers' influence was also musical. Another Zep biographer, Mick Wall, claims, "there was even a lick of two appropriated from Jimmy [sic] Rodgers' 'Kisses Sweeter Than Wine'" (Wall, page 55). But here again, I do not hear any significant musical similarities, and since Wall provides no evidence to support his statement, I cannot agree with the conclusion.

So if neither King or Rodgers served as musical inspiration for 'How Many More Years', then who did?
​
Five years before Zeppelin released 'How Many More Times', The T-Bones released the same song. ​Wall claims Zep's version has "more than a passing nod to a mid-Sixties version of the same tune by Gary Farr and the T-Bones (Wall, page 55), but to my ears "a passing nod" is generous.

Rather, the most significant thing to notice here is that The T-Bones changed the original title of 'How Many More Years' to 'How Many More Times' - an alteration that Zeppelin would retain.

Much more significant are things Zeppelin does differently from The T-Bones. The cover opens with a repeated two-measure riff absent from The T-Bones' recording...

... but present in a 1965 Yardbirds cover of Howlin' Wolf's 'Smokestack Lightning'.

Though The Yardbirds never released a studio recording of 'Smokestack Lightning', at least three live recordings have been released:

• 10 or 20 March 1964, 5:35, heard on Five Live Yardbirds (track 3) and Having a Rave Up (track 7)
• 7 August 1964, 5:53, heard on Glimpses (disc 1, track 12)
• 16 or 18 November 1965, 4:57, heard on Glimpses (disc 2, track 7)

Of those three, only the last employs the riff to be recycled on 'How Many More Years'. 

Eric Clapton joined The Yardbirds in October 1963, and quit in March 1965. Presumably that means the first two recordings - the ones WITHOUT the 'How Many More Years' riff - feature him on guitar.

Jeff Beck joined in March 1965, and quit in the fall of 1966. Presumably that third recording - the one WITH the riff - features him on guitar. So Beck might have written it, or perhaps he, in turn, borrowed it from someone else. Either way, the 'How Many More Years' riff was NOT invented by Jimmy Page.

There is one more musical similarity: The bolero rhythm.

French composer Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) is most famous for his 1928 composition 'Bolero', which features this rhythmic ostinato throughout:

After departing The Yardbirds in 1966, Jeff Beck launched a solo career. His 1968 debut solo album, Truth, includes the track 'Beck's Bolero', which incorporates a similar rhythmic ostinato.

One year later, Jimmy Page (who produced and performed on 'Beck's Bolero') and John Paul Jones (who also performed on 'Beck's Bolero') would incorporate an identical rhythmic ostinato into 'How Many More Years'.

SOURCES
Davis, Stephen. 1995. Hammer of the Gods: Led Zeppelin Unauthorized. Pan Books, an imprint of Macmillan General Books; London, England.

Shadwick, Keith. 2005. Led Zeppelin: The Story of a Band and their Music 1968-1980. Backbeat Books; London, England.

Tolinski, Brad. 2012. Light & Shade: Conversations with Jimmy Page. Crown Publishers; New York, NY.

Wall, Mick. 2008. When Giants Walked the Eart: A Biography of Led Zeppelin​. St. Martin's Griffin; New York, NY.

It's no secret that Led Zeppelin loves playing with rhythm. And one of their favorite stunts is establishing a rhythmic expectation early in a song, then thwarting that expectation later through a compositional technique known as rhythmic displacement. I have several examples in mind, and I'll dedicate one blog for each.

To start, let's look at “Dazed and Confused”, the fourth track of Zeppelin's self-titled debut album from 1968. The first thing heard on the track is John Paul Jones' bass playing two measures, each consisting of four chromatically descending tones, and each with an anacrusis - what I'll call “The Dazed Motive” due to its rather wobbly feel.

That Dazed motive is heard a total of 16 times. The first eight instances (heard consecutively from 0:00-1:13) all start on beat one, as illustrated above. But the last eight instances (heard four times from 1:21-1:57, and another four times from 5:11-5:45) all displace the motive one full beat – they all start on beat two, as illustrated below.

But it's not just Jones' bass that is displaced – it's Robert Plant's vocals, as well.

​At first, Plant places the syllable “fused” from “confused” on the downbeat (0:18), delineating the official start of the first verse.

And he does the same phrasing (but with different lyrics) with the second verse (0:55).

But with verses three and four, his entry is delayed one beat. Since verse 4 begins with the same lyrics as verse 1, it makes for an ideal apples-to-apples comparison.

Additionally, Jimmy Page's guitar is also displaced one beat. I won't provide examples for that, however, since it's identical to Jones' bass.

In fact, the only instrument not displaced is John Bonham's drums. And it's the percussion that confirms that a displacement has indeed happened. Because obviously if the drums were displaced one beat, just like every other instrument, then this would be a case of changing meters – not displacement.

Since changing meters is another favorite rhythmic technique of Zeppelin, it's slightly surprising that we don't find more meter changes in “Dazed and Confused”. Their rhythmic instability could be put to good use in a song with this title. And yet, there are just two instances of measure(s) in a meter other than 12/8.

The more obvious instance comes during the up-tempo middle section, from 3:30-5:02, where a metric modulation of eighth=quarter yields a fast 4/4 meter.

The less obvious but more significant instances comes at the end of the second verse (1:09), which is abbreviated by one beat from a 12/8 bar (as it was in verse 1) to a 9/8.

I started the analytical (as opposed to the introductory) part of the blog yesterday with a structural analysis of “Whole Lotta Love”. In it, I implied that early Zeppelin songs illustrate how they grew out of their predecessors like The Beatles.

That is true to a certain extent, but that's not entirely true. I oversimplified a bit. Of course there are exceptions. And as evidence to the contrary, I present a structural analysis of “Good Times Bad Times”, the opening number of Zeppelin's 1968 self-titled debut album, which has a unique (to my knowledge, anyway) formal design. Get a load of this oddity!:

Okay, so, the first thing to notice is that there are two distinct verses, here labeled Verse A and Verse B. While The Beatles occasionally employed multiple different verses within the same song (check out “Glass Onion” or “Lovely Rita”), it's rare. I don't know other bands' oeuvres well enough to cite a non-Beatles example off the top of my head, but I'm sure there are examples to be found. Some scholars have debated with me over the justification for using multiple verses instead of other labels. “Rita”, for example, is often analyzed as using verses and bridges instead of multiple verses. I certainly see the point, but I maintain these are all verses for reason I won't get into here. In any case, “Good Times” definitely uses multiple verses because each section in question is paired with a chorus – exactly what would be expected of verses.

The second thing that stands out is that the chorus also has two different iterations. The distinction here is harmonic: The first and third choruses are in A major, while the second is in B major. This middle chorus grows organically out of what was heard in the first chorus as it adds an E chord (IV) on the third beats of the second and fourth measures, circled red in the example below. This addition results in a double plagal cadence (A-E-B, bVII-IV-I, underlined below) from the second to third measures.

This ties in to the harmony of the initial verse (shown in the example below), which also employs double plagals but in E major (D-A-E) and twice as long (four measures where the same pattern in the chorus lasts only two).

Also, the middle chorus elucidates the tonality of the outer choruses. The first and third choruses are harmonically ambiguous on their own – are they really in A major? We don't necessarily have enough information to make that claim - there are no cadences to confirm such a conclusion. But the addition of those double plagals in the middle chorus implies that the harmony of the first and third can be interpreted as “incomplete double plagal cadences” which are missing the IV chord. With that in mind, we can indeed infer that the outer choruses are in A major.

One last thing about the choruses: The middle iteration is abbreviated. While the first and third choruses both feature a two-bar bass transition, the second chorus omits it. This further differentiates the choruses, which strengthens the eventual conclusion (see below) that "Good Times" is a compound ternary structure.

Finally, the solo replaces a verse. It employs identical harmonies, but rhythmically halved. This, too, grows organically out of what preceded it. The solo also uses double plagal cadences, just like the first verse and second chorus. It uses the tonality of the verse's double plagals (D-A-E) but with the chorus's rhythms (two measures instead of four). So the solo is related to both the first verse (through tonality) and to the second chorus (through rhythm).

The overall structure of “Good Times Bad Times”, then, is a hybrid AB|CB'|A'B – it's part compound simple (an AB x3 in which the middle AB is actually a CB') and part compound ternary (ABA'). If I had to pick one of those designations, I think the latter more accurately and precisely articulates the form.

Even though this song is from Zep's first album, it shows a spectacularly advanced hybrid formal structure and organic development that breaks with their predecessors' work (to the extent of my knowledge). It certainly would not be the last time they would use such a sophisticated musical design.