“It sounds like nature coming through the speakers”: Jimmy Page shares rare home recorded demo of Led Zeppelin’s Ten Years Gone

Jimmy Page has shared the original homemade demo of Led Zeppelin's Ten Years Gone, presenting the classic in a raw, unfiltered format.

The English guitar legend uploaded the track to his YouTube channel over the weekend (on March 29) as a “footnote” to a track that featured on 1975's expansive and experimental LP, Physical Graffiti.

It was recorded by Page at his Elizabethan manor house, Plumpton Place in East Sussex, England, ahead of the band convening at Headley Grange to work on what would become their sixth studio album.

The demo features several layers of edge-of-breakup guitars, with some tracks clipping, giving them a more distorted menace. It's free of drums or vocals, but shows quite clearly why Page often saw his guitar parts as orchestrations. You can also hear the beginnings of the tracks' lead lines, though those licks later underwent some refinement.

“I presented this rough mix to the band at Headley Grange in order to do this for real,” Page writes in the video’s caption. “Robert Plant came up with some lyrics for my music that were extraordinary, and then we arrived at the song Ten Years Gone.”

The song, of course, would go on to be a Led Zeppelin classic, with the brooding rock ballad delivered with a subtle snarl and edge.

Speaking to Rolling Stone, super producer Rick Rubin once said he was floored by the song.

Ten Years Gone - Home Demo - YouTube

Watch On

“[It’s] a deep, reflective piece with hypnotic, interweaving riffs,” he said. “Light and dark, shadow and glare. It sounds like nature coming through the speakers.”

Several unreleased Physical Graffiti tracks were sold at auction in 2014, with the album getting an anniversary remaster the following year. But this is the first time one of the record's tracks, as embryonic as this, has become available for public consumption.

In related news, Dweezil Zappa is eyeing Jimmy Page for his mega-shred instrumental project. Paul Reed Smith has also claimed that Page played one of his guitars, and the display he put on was one of the best he's ever seen.