From the Album: Houses of the Holy (1973)
"The Ocean" 4:30
Writers: Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham
Producer: Jimmy Page / Executive Producer: Peter Grant
Recorded: 1972 at Stargroves, England, with the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio
- Engineer: Eddie Kramer
- Mixed: In 1972 at Electric Lady, New York, with Eddie Kramer
Released: On the album Houses of the Holy, March 28, 1973
The song title of "The Ocean" refers to an image lead singer Robert Plant envisioned as he stared out across crowd-filled stadiums. By this time, the band's fan base had ballooned to extraordinary proportions and there was indeed a sea of heads waving back and forth to the song's descending/ascending riff in concert.
The thickly accented voice that introduces the song with "We've done four already but now we're steady, and then they went: one, two, three, four" belongs to drummer John Bonham.
- One minute and 38 seconds into the song, a telephone rings. It rings again right afterward. No official explanation has been given for this noise. Sheet music for this song references the phone ringing.
In the song's final verse, Plant refers to a "girl who's won my heart/She is only three years old but that's a real fine place to start." Get your mind out of the gutter -- Plant is singing about his then-young daughter, Carmen. In live versions, Plant updated the age according to Carmen's.
The Beastie Boys sampled the identifiable riff from "The Ocean" on the song "She's Crafty" from their first album, 1986's Licensed to Ill. Similarly, Plant acknowledged his former glories when he too sampled bits of "The Ocean" (among other Led Zeppelin tracks) in "Tall Cool One" from his 1988 album, Now And Zen.