All about the song Black Dog and its guitar riff. Which was written by John Paul Jones. I recall reading JPJ saying something like - ‘They never got us confused with Black Sabbath after that…’
A nice little challenge to all Guitar players… 
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Odd thing to say as the two were so different in sound that if anyone had such poor hearing and/or scope of musical appreciation to have confused them before that, no guitar riff could make a difference!
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Just checked - I got it wrong…
John Paul Jones where he said after the release and success of Led Zeppelin IV, "No one ever compared us to Black Sabbath after this record ".
Thanks for posting this.
I had always thought there was something odd about the timing in Black Dog, but without any musical training I couldn’t put my finger on it other than the guitar and percussion seemed to drift in and out of time.
There is. John Bonham couldn’t work out what JPJ and Page were doing at first, its been said. But he tried playing just 4/4 against it and it worked. That why the Guitars and Drums seem to shift around. As they go out of syn then back in.
Maybe this helps…?
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Subtitles!
“Everything…is separated into crotches”
Lol.
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That’s just the Vocals…!!!
I think Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath were quite comparable:
- 4-piece band,
- great drummers,
- fine bass players who also did keyboards,
- two of the best guitar players of their generation,
- set the template for their respective sub-genres (Lemmy once said LZ defined the vocabulary of heavy rock),
- distinctive vocalists,
- able to stretch things out live.
Incidentally, the musicians playing in different time signatures which align every 12 bars (or whatever) is pretty cool but a not uncommon thing in rock.