NewsNow: The only Led Zeppelin songs not to feature a guitar solo.

No matter how well you know the rock band Led Zeppelin there is a good chance that when you do think of them one of the few images that comes to mind is the flowing hair of Jimmy Page pointed downward as, with his head bowed, he furiously noodles up and down his fretboard delivering one of his signature guitar solos.

Of course, the quartet were far more than just Page and his axe. Robert Plant should certainly be thought of as the blueprint for what rock singers would become in the coming decades, the contribution of John Paul Jones’ musicality to the band’s success is well underrated while John Bonham is still regularly regarded as the greatest percussionist of all time. However, the pervading image of the group is usually that of Jimmy Page and his swashbuckling guitar work.

Ever since their menacing debut in the embers of the 1960s, Led Zeppelin have champioend the all-hallowed electric guitar as their ultimate weapon. ‘Whole Lotta Love’, ‘Dazed and Confused’ and ‘Black Dog’ all rest heavily on the sharpened blade of Page’s instrument and there is little point in proclaiming just how ubiquitous the guitar work in ‘Stairway To Heaven’ is.

The latter track is so routinely cited as one of the most prominent guitar solos of all time that it has tarnished the entire discography of the group. It is, in wider music circles, assumed that Led Zeppelin incorporated some form of electrified solo in all of their songs. But the truth is, there is a huge range of tunes that didn’t involve Page laying down some of his fine fretboard work.

Thankfully, one Reddit user has compiled a list of the tunes from the band that don’t have a searing guitar solo so that we might take in the softer side of Led Zeppelin. 27 tracks don’t feature Page delivering a solo, which is around a third of the group’s recorded songs. Its an astounding fact that perhaps shows just how powerful Page’s solos are that they can command such an image of the group.

Of course, in the list, the majority of those songs without solos are acoustic hits like ‘Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You’, ‘Bron-Y-Aur Stomp’, ‘The Battle of Evermore’ and ‘Going to California’ with another set of tracks coming from their instrumental releases. The mammoth ‘Moby Dick’ and ‘Black Mountainside’ both come without a guitar solo. But there are some more regular tracks too, including ‘The Rain Song’, ‘Kashmir’ and ‘When The Levee Breaks’.

Led Zeppelin’s influence extended far beyond their active years. They were instrumental in shaping the sound of hard rock and heavy metal, with their approach to guitar solos becoming a template for countless bands that followed. However, it was their ability to blend complexity with raw emotion in their music that ensured Led Zeppelin would be remembered not just for their powerhouse guitars but their dexterity away from the instrument.