Led Zeppelin – All My Love

This synth driven song was a memorable one from the In Through The Out Door album. It’s not your usual love song. It’s about Robert Plant’s son Karac who died in 1977 from a stomach virus when he was 5 years old. Robert has said “It was paying tribute to the joy that he gave us as a family.”

Robert Plant holding his son Karac and walking beside his daughter

Some Zeppelin fans didn’t like this album as much. I have always liked the album but I don’t consider it their best or worse. Like with Who songs…the drums here are a stand out.

John Bonham and Jimmy Page didn’t take to the song too well. They thought it was a little too soft for Zeppelin. Page said it was fine on the album but he would not have wanted to go in that direction in the future.

Robert and John Paul Jones wrote this song.

Robert Plant: “In Through The Out Door wasn’t the greatest thing in the world, but at least we were trying to vary what we were doing, for our own integrity’s sake,” “Of all the (Led Zeppelin) records, it’s interesting but a bit sanitized because we hadn’t been in the clamor and chaos for a long time. In ’77, when I lost my boy, I didn’t really want to go swinging around- ‘Hey hey mama say the way you move’ didn’t really have a great deal of import anymore.”

From Songfacts

Zeppelin vocalist Robert Plant and bass player John Paul Jones wrote this. The band had drifted apart, with guitarist Jimmy Page and drummer John Bonham hanging out together and rarely showing up on time for recording sessions. As a result, many of the songs on In Through The Out Door were put together by Plant and Jones, with Page and Bonham adding their parts late at night.

This changes key on the last chorus.

You don’t hear much synthesizer in Led Zeppelin’s canon, but “All My Love” contains a synth solo played by John Paul Jones. In Through The Out Door was recorded at Polar Studios in Stockholm, which was owned by Abba. Benny Andersson of Abba had a Yamaha GX-1 synth in the studio that Jones used on the track.

This was only played live during Led Zeppelin’s 1980 tour of Germany.

Robert Plant had another son, Logan, in 1979 before In Through The Out Door was released. He has talked about how his images of Logan and Karac sometimes blur together, with his joy for Logan’s life tempered by the pain of Karac’s death. Plant’s 1993 solo track “I Believe” is also about Karac.

All My Love

Should I fall out of love, my fire in the light
To chase a feather in the wind
Within the glow that weaves a cloak of delight
There moves a thread that has no end

For many hours and days that pass ever soon
The tides have caused the flame to dim
At last the arm is straight, the hand to the loom
Is this to end or just begin?

All of my love, all of my love
All of my love to you, oh

All of my love, all of my love, oh
All of my love to you

The cup is raised, the toast is made yet again
One voice is clear above the din
Proud Arianne one word, my will to sustain
For me, the cloth once more to spin, oh

All of my love, all of my love, oh
All of my love to you

All of my love, all of my love, yes
All of my love to you

Yours is the cloth, mine is the hand that sews time
His is the force that lies within
Ours is the fire, all the warmth we can find
He is a feather in the wind, oh

All of my love, all of my love, oh
All of my love to you

All of my love, ooh yes, all of my love to you now
All of my love, all of my love
All of my love, love, sometimes, sometimes

Sometimes, sometimes, oh love
Hey, hey, hey
Hey, hey, hey
Ooh yeah, it’s all my love

All of my love, all of my love, to you now

All of my love, all of my love
all of my love to, to you, you, you, yeah
I get a little bit lonely

Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player.

32 thoughts on “Led Zeppelin – All My Love”

  2. I really liked In Through the Out Door. It’s one of my favorite Zeppelin albums along with II and Physical Graffiti. But yeah, some of my Zep head friends didn’t like it as well. I liked the more progressive sound that didn’t rip off Blues legends (and Spirit) without giving them credit.

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    1. When I first listened to it I wasn’t aware of their past as much…so I wasn’t a Zeppelin Snob…never have been because I like them but they were never up there with the Who or other bands to me…no I’m a Beatles snob!

      I know what you are talking about though. Borrowing is a good thing but at times they did a little more…I’m glad people like Willie Dixon won and got credit…but yea I like the acoustic/hard music the best like Over The Hills and Far Away.

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  3. One of my favorite Zep songs (although I admit, I’m not a diehard fan… I love some of their tracks but am less than lukewarm to some of theirs as well) , sad backstory to it though. In through the Out Door was a solid album and showcased their real strength to me – diverse sound from a range of musical influences.

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  4. I’ve always loved this song, and never knew it was a tribute to Plant’s son who tragically died at such a young age. Though their sound was a bit too hard for my liking when they first came on the scene, I fell in love with Led Zeppelin as a result of ‘Stairway to Heaven’, which has remained by all-time favorite song for the past 48 years! I bought “Led Zeppelin IV”, but none of their other albums. My sister bought “In Through the Out Door” and I made a bootleg copy on a cassette. I also really love “Fool in the Rain”.

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    1. Fool In The Rain is a favorite of mine also. I much prefer their light/dark songs like Stairway To Heaven and Over The Hills and Far Away. I love to hear Jimmy on an acoustic much more than their hard blues.

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      1. Me too, and it’s often the softest songs I prefer from hard rock or metal bands (e.g. ‘The Sounds of Silence’ by Disturbed, ‘More Than Words’ by Extreme, and even ‘Beth’ by KISS, a band I otherwise don’t care for)

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      2. Hard Luck Woman I like by Kiss also. If it’s hard…it has to have a very good melody. Melody is everything to me…this sounds old fashion but if I can’t hum it…I usually don’t like it.
        I guess that is the reason I like power pop so much.

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  5. Led Zeppelin was the ultimate party group, but as time changes everything, even rock and rollers eventually want to settle down. Life is about more than the party and when tragedy strikes home you have to wake up and smell the coffee.

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  9. It’s one of my favourite Zep songs, though the album isn’t really. You said synths didn’t feature much on Zep albums, I’m thinking… was No Quarter organ or synth? I’m not sure, but that song was a big part of Zep. It was a terrible shame about his son, I think he probably never really recovered from losing him and that, amongst other things, probably contributed to the band’s eventual demise. Bonzo’s death must really have been the last straw.

    Curiously, I was looking at the vinyl album’s sleeve yesterday. I’d forgotten I still had it (I’ve nothing on which to play vinyl anymore after having accidentally broken the stylus on our only record player and can’t seem to find a replacement stylus! That was a first for me…) Anyway, the inner sleeve of In Through The Out Door has artwork on it that can be colour-washed by using a brush and plain water and! I used to play with colouring books make like that when I was a child, so when I first got the record, of course I had to do it!

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    1. I think it’s an Organ on No Quarter but I could be wrong.
      When I was a kid we had some kind of pen that when you marked over certain things in a book made for it…things appeared. I do remember that about the cover of that album.

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  13. I remember this playing on the radio. It was released just before I started 8th grade. I love the opening synth. It sounds like strings. It’s very haunting and I have always loved it. I had no idea it was about Karac (middle name Pendragon…of all things…fits in with his occult leanings). I’ve always wondered who Arianne was.

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