In the 1970s, Led Zeppelin had a perfect lineup with lead vocalist Robert Plant, guitarist Jimmy Page, drummer John Bonham, and bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones, but for one classic song they welcomed a guest singer.
The song, “The Battle of Evermore” appeared on the British rock band’s iconic fourth album in 1971 and featured Fairport Convention singer Sandy Denny on vocals—the first and only time the band recorded a vocal duet.
Written by Plant and Page, the acoustic fantasy ballad featured lyrics inspired by J. R. R. Tolkien‘s The Lord of the Rings.
Ultimate Classic Rock ranked Plant and Denny’s duet among the “Greatest Duets in Rock History” on a list topped by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” and Aerosmith and Run-DMC’s “Walk This Way.”Noting that “The Battle of Evermore” addressed “the war between good and evil,” the outlet added, “Plant’s voice would serve as the song’s narrator, while Denny represented a town crier.”
In 1995, Plant told Uncut that he was good friends with Denny, who died in April 1978 at age 31.
“For me to sing with Sandy Denny was great,” the Led Zeppelin legend said in the 1995 interview, per UCR. “Sandy and I were friends, and it was the most obvious thing to ask her to sing on ‘The Battle of Evermore.'”
Years later, the Led Zeppelin frontman explained why he needed help with the vocals.
“You have two parts of the story,” Plant said on the Digging Deep podcast in 2019. “You have the fact of the impending sort of travesty, on one hand, and on the other hand, you have this call to unity. … I started to write it so that you had a section A that told the story that would be a disaster, and I had a section B, which was the triumph and the rallying. And I tried to sing them both. And it was a very, very insane idea…. It didn’t sound right in one voice, one pitch.”
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Page also explained how Denny came to sing on “The Battle of Evermore.”
“Well, it sounded like an old English instrumental first off,” the guitar legend told the Trouser Press of the song. “Then it became a vocal, and Robert did his bit. Finally we figured we’d bring Sandy by and do a question-and-answer-type thing.”
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While “The Battle of Evermore” is one of Led Zeppelin’s most memorable songs, Plant said he was a bit “embarrassed” by its naivety.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, he said, “There were maybe one or two too many, well, hobbits” in some of his early lyrics. “I was living in a dream then, talking about C.S. Lewis and Tolkien,” he said. “But I was a kid.”
Plant added that he once confided to collaborator Alison Krauss about his regrets about the song’s theme.
“The thing about ‘Evermore’ is, I said to Alison, ‘I’m embarrassed by this.’ She said, ‘But you can’t be embarrassed, because it’s a young person’s moments [of] living in an area which is like that, which resonates that period,’” he shared.
Fifty-five years after its release, “The Battle of Evermore” remains one of Led Zeppelin’s most enchanting tracks, a rare duet in the band’s catalog that fans still love.
Related: 1969 Led Zeppelin Song, Never Played Live, Was One of Jimmy Page’s Least Favorite Tracks
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