Going to California

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"Going to California"
Song by Led Zeppelin
from the album Led Zeppelin IV
Released	November 8, 1971
Recorded	December 1970
Genre	Folk rock
Length	3:31
Label	Atlantic Records
Writer(s)	Page/Plant
Producer(s)	Jimmy Page
Led Zeppelin IV track listing
"Four Sticks" (6)	"Going to California" (7)	"When the Levee Breaks" (8)

"Going to California" is a song by the English rock band Led Zeppelin from their fourth album, released in 1971. The song's wistful folk-style sound, with Robert Plant on lead vocals, acoustic guitar by Jimmy Page and mandolin by John Paul Jones, contrasts with the heavy electric-amplified rock on several of the album's other tracks. The song was (like "Stairway To Heaven") inspired by the instrumental song "Taurus," recorded by Spirit.

The song is about singer/songwriter Joni Mitchell, with whom Plant and Page were both infatuated, and was inspired by her "California". Plant sings "They say she plays guitar/and cries and sings". In live performances of the song, Plant would often say the name "Joni" after this stanza:

To find a Queen without a King, They say she plays guitar and cries, and she sings Joni Ride a white mare in the footsteps of dawn, Tryin' to find a woman who's never, never, never been born. Standing on a hill in my mountain of dreams, Telling myself it's not as hard, hard, hard as it seems.

The main vocal melody inspired Pearl Jam's 1998 song "Given to Fly". Also, Fuel did a remake of this song on their album Something Like Human. Aaron Lewis of Staind covered this song in a charity solo show in his old high school, Longmeadow High (link to the performance).

[edit] Trivia

• The original title was "Guide To California."
• This started as a song about earthquakes, but developed into a song about the search for a woman.
• When Page, an engineer, and their manager flew to Los Angeles to mix the track, there was an earthquake near San Diego.
• Zeppelin performed this during their acoustic sets.
• This came from a poem Jimmy Page wrote on a notebook. He found it awhile later and branched off from there.

[edit] External links

• Review: All Music Guide
• Guitar tabs

[edit] Sources

• Led Zeppelin: Dazed and Confused: The Stories Behind Every Song, by Chris Welch, ISBN 1-56025-818-7
• The Complete Guide to the Music of Led Zeppelin, by Dave Lewis, ISBN 0-7119-3528-9