Guitarist Jimmy Page told The Trouser Press:

‘Rock And Roll’ was a spontaneous combustion. We were doing something else at the time, but Bonzo played the beginning of Little Richard’s ‘Good Golly Miss Molly’ with the tape still running and I just started doing that part of the riff. It actually ground to a halt after about 12 bars, but it was enough to know that there was enough of a number there to keep working on it. Robert even came in singing on it straight away.

Rolling Stone ranked it as Led Zeppelin’s #9 song, saying:

Zeppelin were struggling to rehearse ‘Four Sticks’ when Bonham spontaneously played the now-famous snare and open-high-hat drum intro to ‘Rock and Roll,’ which imitates the first few bars of Little Richard’s 1957 hit ‘Keep A Knockin’.' The song – initially called ‘It’s Been a Long Time’ – expresses a palpable longing for youth and the innocence of Fifties rock: Plant refers to the Stroll, an old dance, and to ‘The Book of Love,’ by the Montones, from 1958. But the music recasts rock & roll as something fierce and modern.

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