What Is And What Should Never Be Custard Pie Ten Years Gone Led Zeppelin

What Is And What Should Never Be Album: Led Zeppelin II (1969)
Custard Pie Album: Physical Graffiti (1975)
Ten Years Gone Album: Physical Graffiti (1975)
by Led Zeppelin

What Is And What Should Never Be alternates between hushed verses and an explosive chorus as Robert Plant sings about whisking a fair maiden to castle where they will join together as one.

According to the book Hammer of the Gods: The Led Zeppelin Saga, he wrote the lyric reflecting on his affair with his wife's younger sister.

What Is And What Should Never Be makes liberal use of stereo as the guitars pan back and forth between channels. The vocals were phased during Robert Plant's screaming part.

What Is And What Should Never Be was one of Plant's first songs recorded by the band, and also marks the first appearance of drummer John Bonham's Chinese gong, which he set up as part of his drum kit in concerts. The gong appears in the middle part among Jimmy Page's guitar riffs.

Led Zeppelin played What Is And What Should Never Be live from 1969 to 1972.

What Is And What Should Never Be was one of the first debut appearances of Jimmy Page's Gibson Les Paul guitar. The guitar is heard here hopping back and forth between stereo channels.

In Billy Joel's 1997 appearance in VH1's Storytellers, Joel plunks this out as part of his medley-intro to "We Didn't Start The Fire."

The Led Zeppelin DVD contains a live version of "What Is And What Should Never Be" performed at the Royal Albert Hall.

Custard Pie is based on various American blues recordings, including Blind Boy Fuller's 1939 "I Want Some Of Your Pie" and Brown McGhee's 1947 "Custard Pie Blues." It's the first song on the double album Physical Graffiti.
An influence on this song is "Drop Down Mama," a 1935 blues song by Sleepy John Estes with Hammie Nixon, which goes:

Drop down, baby, let your daddy see
Drop down, my lady, just dream of me
Well, my mama allow me to fool around all night long

These lines are very similar to the opening verse of "Custard Pie":

Drop down, baby, let your daddy see
Drop down, mama, just dream of me
Well, my mama allow me to fool around all night long

Zeppelin bass player John Paul Jones played the electric clavinet on Custard Pie; Robert plant played the harmonica break.
Actual custard pie involves a pie shell filled with custard and other ingredients. You might not think of it this way, but both pumpkin and banana cream are custard pies.

It is speculated that "custard pie" is a euphemism for female sexuality and/or genitalia. Other songs which associate pie and women include The Beatles' "Wild Honey Pie," The Four Tops' "I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)," and of course Warrant's "Cherry Pie."

Led Zeppelin hardly ever played Custard Pie live. According to their official site, there's only one documented performance: in Rotterdam on January 11, 1975.

In 1990, the three living members of the band got together at the wedding for John Bonham's son Jason and they all played Custard Pie as part of a jam session - that's quite a wedding band!

Custard Pie is from the album Physical Graffiti, which sold 16x platinum for Led Zeppelin... in the US alone.

"Custard Pie" was recorded at Headley Grange, long about January-to-February 1974.

This includes a snippet from "Shake 'em On Down" by the blues musician Bukka White.

Jimmy Page joined The Black Crowes briefly and covered Custard Pie on their album Live at the Greek.

Robert Plant wrote the lyrics about a girlfriend who made him choose between her and his music 10 years earlier, hence Ten Years Gone. She got the boot. In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine (March 13, 1975) the interviewer, Cameron Crowe, asked Robert Plant what gambles he had taken. Plant replied: "Let me tell you a little story behind the song 'Ten Years Gone' on our new album. I was working my ass off before joining Zeppelin. A lady I really dearly loved said, 'Right. It's me or your fans.' Not that I had fans, but I said, 'I can't stop, I've got to keep going.' She's quite content these days, I imagine. She's got a washing machine that works by itself and a little sports-car. We wouldn't have anything to say anymore. I could probably relate to her, but she couldn't relate to me. I'd be smiling too much. Ten years gone, I'm afraid. Anyway, there's a gamble for you."

Jimmy Page used some 14 guitar tracks to overdub the harmony section on Ten Years Gone, which was originally intended to be an instrumental number. He cites this track as an example of a Led Zeppelin song that wasn't riff-led, relying on orchestrated guitars instead.

John Paul Jones used a strange 3-necked guitar and bass pedals to play Ten Years Gone live. This became too much of a chore and they dropped it from their setlists in 1977, but they brought it back when they opened and closed the Knebworth Festival in 1979.

Robert Plant: "'Ten Years Gone' has been meticulously assembled from different sections written by Jimmy. After the tremendous focus dedicated to such a song, we played anything to warm ourselves up. This is how 'Trampled Underfoot' and 'Custard Pie' were born."