1971 Hard-Rock Classic, Featuring Iconic Opener by the ‘King of Rock Drumming,' Ranked Best Drum Intro of All Time
Led Zeppelin's fourth album is one of the most iconic rock records of all time. Best known for the epic anthem "Stairway to Heaven," the first side of the 1971 classic rock album also features back-to-back bangers with "Black Dog" and "Rock and Roll."
Both songs highlight the thunderous drum work of late drummer John Bonham, "the undisputed king of rock drumming," as named by BBC's Classical Music.
Fifty-five years after its release, Bonham's iconic snare and open-high-hat drum intro for "Rock and Roll" was ranked the best drum intro of all time by Ultimate Classic Rock. The eclectic ranking featured everything from Aerosmith's "Walk This Way" to the Go-Go's "We Got the Beat," with the Zeppelin classic topping the list of 40 songs.
"Bonham was all about propulsion, moving the song forward with tempo and force," the music site shared. "Here, the constant cymbal strikes in the intro make you think the whole thing could careen out of control. But this was Zeppelin – everything was played as intended, every hammer drop and crash in its place. This was rock 'n' roll, and for a while there wasn't another band on the planet that could play it better. There still might not be."
The song was created spontaneously in the studio
Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page once revealed that "Rock and Roll" was born out of a spontaneous jam session.
Speaking with The Times in an interview, the legendary guitarist recalled that the song came off the cuff in the studio during a jam led by Bonham.
"We were recording another number ['Four Sticks']," Page said. "We'd just finished a take, and John Bonham did the drum intro, and we just followed on. I started doing pretty much half of that riff you hear on ‘Rock and Roll' and it was just so exciting that we thought, ‘Let's just work on this.' The riff and the sequence was really immediate to those 12-bar patterns that you had in those old rock songs like Little Richard, etc. And it was just so spur-of-the-moment the way that it just came together more or less out of nowhere."
In Bonham's brother Mick's book, John Bonham: The Powerhouse Behind Led Zeppelin, the late rocker was quoted as saying his drumming was influenced by "early soul" records.
"I've always liked drums to be bright and powerful," the late drummer once said. "I like our act to be like a thunderstorm."
Related: 1975 Classic Ranked 'Greatest Ever' Led Zeppelin Song
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This story was originally published June 15, 2026 at 12:13 PM.