10 Famous Rock Songs That Were Almost Called Something Else
5. Led Zeppelin's The Song Remains The Same - Almost Called “The Overture” Or ”The Campaign”
The Song Remains the Same is a firm favourite amongst Led Zeppelin fans and would go on to lend its name to the 1976 concert film directed by Peter Clifton and Joe Massot.
And to think, it had not one, but two alternative titles at some point in time.
It was first conceived as an instrumental piece called The Overture that was going to lead into The Rain Song on the album Houses of the Holy, but Robert Plant had other ideas. The singer decided that the music was too good not to have lyrics, so the band decided to run with this new approach.
The name then went from The Overture to The Campaign, before Led Zep realised that was far too tame. They changed it shortly thereafter, and The Song Remains the Same began the opening track on the album.
When it was first played on tour, the song still didn't have an official title, so Plant would introduce it on stage as just being called Zep. So does that technically mean there were three alternative titles? Possibly, but there isn't time to go into that now.
There's still half a list left to do.