This song doesn't get enough respect. How Many More Times is the engine that drives the Led Zeppelin I bus, and it does so with an emotionally bold and lascivious hormonal spirit. Meanwhile, the passengers travel in relative comfort. Popular Good Times Bad Times sings along with the kids up front and the mysterious Dazed and Confused dazzles everyone in the center, spinning tales of its latest 30 minute live adventure. "Yeah, you're exactly right, girls, when Jimmy gets out the bow I do sound pretty amazing, don't I?" Hyperactive Communication Breakdown blathers away to itself and makes faces out the window. Only sadly romantic Babe I'm Gonna Leave You up near the front and quietly smoldering You're Time Is Gonna Come are aware of the dark power that pushes them along.
How Many More Times is Dazed and Confused's less colorful sibling. It's a heavy blues rock epic with a Bradbury Something Wicked This Way Comes shell around it. Eerie and sinister, you can tell that there's some strange magic coursing through its veins. It starts off all cool and cocky, swinging cymbals and walking bass, stepping down into a smoky club. Then Jimmy Page paints on some late 60s wah chords and shakes us by the scruff of our necks. At 0:35 we step on the gas, as John Bonham pounds the skins and Robert Plant moans out
How many more times, treat me the way you wanna do...
It is a muscle car of a riff, open E-octave higher E-D-B-D, repeat. The distorted guitar and bass play in unison, creating a thick tone that can also be heard in the main riff of Black Dog. Robert sings a bunch of grumbling jealous guy blues.
At 2:03, we head into a tunnel, torches burning along the walls. Page cranks out the heavy psych riffs and Bonham plays one amazing fill after another. At 3:03 we appear to take on a drum corps and some heavy military equipment that we might need as we approach a hazy and unexplored territory.
We enter this kind of murky Area 51 at the 3:40 mark. Kind of a slowed down cross between the middle sections of Whole Lotta Love and Dazed and Confused. Jimmy bows the guitar and Bonham lightly dances upon the drums. Robert himself is in a fog, surrounded by the ghosts of old bluesmen:
I was a young man, I couldn't resist...
By 5:10 we are accelerating towards the light at the end of the tunnel. However, before we exit, at 5:30 we are stopped by Rosie at the tollbooth. We chat with her for a bit, pleading with her to come along with us. At 5:48 the drum corps start to get anxious. "We need to be at the base by 2200 hours, driver. Little Robert Anthony can play later. Let's get going." Well, this doesn't sit well with the band. Jimmy plays some spiky chords and whips some notes at the drum corps. Robert warns the drum corps to relax:
Well, they call me the hunter, that's my name..."so you guys just calm down, OK? Don't make me mad." Robert waxes nostalgic about his hunter exploits, then finally at 7:06 the driver has had enough and the bus heads off down the road and into the night.
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