Writers: John Paul Jones, Jimmy Page, and Robert Plant
Producer: Jimmy Page
Recorded: November/December 1978 at Polar Studios, Stockholm, Sweden
Released: August 15, 1979
| Players: | Jimmy Page—guitars Robert Plant–vocals John Paul Jones–bass, piano John Bonham–drums |
| Album: | In through The Out Door (Swan Song, 1979) |
In Through The Out Door, Led Zeppelin‘s final studio effort, came after a period of setbacks for lead singer Robert Plant–including serious injury in a car crash and the death of his young son.
It was released at a time when the group’s very relevance was being called into question by the punk movement of the mid- and late-’70s. Zeppelin had been targeted as a symbol of the bloated dinosaur rock punk sought to annihilate.
The album prevailed, topping the album chart in the U.K. in its first week of release and the U.S. survey in its second. Sales figures from the first 10 days were over two million.
The response to the album increased hunger for the band’s entire catalogue, prodding Atlantic to ship 1,000,000 copies of previously released albums to stores in September 1979. That fall, the entire Zeppelin catalogue made Billboard‘s 200 chart, breaking the previous record of most records on the chart–which Zeppelin had set in 1975.
“Fool In The Rain” became the band’s sixth U.S. top 40 hit, reaching Number 21 on the Billboard singles chart in January 1980.
The joyous samba arrangement that bursts out from the song actually comes from the Argentinean television themes Plant and bassist John Paul Jones heard during the 1978 World Cup soccer games.
Although it was Plant’s firm stance that the band must continue to branch out in unexplored musical territory, it was really Jones who took the lead on the song–and the album, for that matter. The least heard-from band member in previous years, Jones received lead songwriting credits on six out of the album’s seven tracks. He was also responsible for the bulk of the arrangements.
The song’s identifying features, in addition to the samba-swing, are Jones’ whistle break and drummer John Bonham‘s walloping of the tympani.
Led Zeppelin never performed “Fool In The Rain” live.