So, yes, I missed posting my two main Lord of the Rings-inspired Music posts on the actual day of J.R.R. Tolkien’s birthday. But, hey, let’s celebrate a belated 133rd birthday for the Professor with a second Led Zeppelin Song that owes a clear debt to Middle-earth.
We’ve established that the members of Led Zeppelin were a bunch of nerds. And, in particular, super into Lord of the Rings.
From the band’s 1969 Led Zeppelin II, Ramble On is another one of their songs that, if you really squint, or do whatever the listening equivalent of squinting is, is about Lord of the Rings. E.g:
“‘Twas in the darkest depths of Mordor, I met a girl so fair
But Gollum and the Evil One crept up and slipped away with her.”Lyrics via Genius.
So, yeah, they’re clearly name-dropping, um, names from Lord of the Rings, but I have never read an interpretation that successfully lays out that the song is actually about Lord of the Rings. Mordor is a terrible place to pick up girls, and even if we’re going for a purely metaphorical read, “girl so fair” could kinda-sorta, maybe describe the Ring, but Gollum and Sauron didn’t actually manage to steal the Ring.
Well, Gollum did, I guess, but then he fell into the volcano…
Fundamentally, this is just a bunch of nerd songwriters namedropping their favourite book. Writers do that all the time — you know, like how Bilbo Baggins is always telling people he likes less than half of them half as well as they deserve.
Basically, it’s a song about somebody who either can’t or won’t settle in one place for too long — bear in mind that ramble means “to wander around in a leisurely, aimless manner” — that happens to include a couple of Lord of the Rings references:
“Ramble on, and now’s the time, the time is now
To sing my song, I’m going ’round the world, I gotta find my girl
On my way, I’ve been this way ten years to the day
Ramble on, gotta find the queen of all my dreams.”Lyrics via Genius
It’s jaunty, folksy and it’s pretty catchy:
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