10 Classic Rock Acoustic Songs

Distilling Led Zeppelin to just The World's Greatest Hard Rock Band almost feels wrong when you hear their music. Though the sound of John Bonham's drums and Jimmy Page's riffs set the template for what would become the harsher side of rock just a few years later, the amount of genres they covered from world music to rockabilly to even funkier tracks was unmatched by any of their contemporaries. If you wanted to feel something though, it pays to break out the acoustics.

Instead of the usual Celtic freakouts you would get on something like the Battle of Evermore, Going to California shows Zeppelin in a much softer light, with Robert Plant going on about travelling to the Sunshine State to find the girl of his dreams. Combined with the rolling figure from Page, the whole song feels like you're slowly looking at the sunrise coming over the horizon, as the girl with love in her eyes and flowers in her hair comes into view.

That doesn't mean that the traditional Zeppelin weirdness has gone anywhere though, with the middle eight taking a sonic left turn that puts us right back in the medieval mindset we had in something like Ramble On. Seeing how Zeppelin had Stairway to Heaven under their belt around this time, Going to California is the perfect example of keeping things both mellow and concise in just a few minutes.