Led Zeppelin’s widely acclaimed fourth album was released in November 1971. In the wake of the lukewarm response to the band’s third LP—which had included a significant acoustic and folk music influence—the group elected to release their fourth album without a title. In fact, the outer sleeve contained no text at all, although each member of the band chose a personal symbol for inclusion on the inner sleeve. Because of this, the album is sometimes referred to as Four Symbols, but is now most commonly known as Led Zeppelin IV. Despite these eccentricities, the album was a huge hit for the band, and went on to become their best-selling release.
Although any conversation about the album is typically dominated by the eight-minute epic ‘Stairway To Heaven’, for most bass players the stand-out track is the album opener, ‘Black Dog’. Built around a serpentine riff penned by Jones, the song remains a Led Zeppelin favorite to this day.