"Going to California"

When Led Zeppelin released some of their live performances a few years ago, the nicest surprise for me was hearing their acoustic set. That's not something I'd ever heard (as it wasn't on the live album "The Song Remains the Same"), and it blew me away.

The live version of "Going to California" was especially beautiful, with Jimmy Page's acoustic guitar and John Paul Jones' mandolin weaving together. The DVD gives some hint of how the finger-picking is done, but didn't give me enough to play it myself.

Yet again, YouTube comes to the rescue, with a very clear lesson on how to play it. It's in "double drop-D" tuning, where both E-strings are tuned down to D. After watching this lesson twice, I can fumble my way through the song. I need a lot of repetition on the right hand, to burn in the finger-picking pattern, but it's fun and sounds great.

I was playing it last night while watching the Olympics when Sarah came in from work, grabbed a snack, and sat down next to me. She recognized what I was playing right away, which pleased me a lot.

Here's Zeppelin playing it in 1975.