Led Zeppelin Song Pops Up in NBC Olympics Commercial

Once upon a time, Led Zeppelin were strict about licensing their music to corporations for commercials. The wall came down momentarily when Cadillac used IV's "Rock and Roll" in 2004. So imagine our surprise today when — while anxiously today's finale of the Woman's Canoe/Kayak finals (which the Australians took gold and silver in) — NBC aired a commercial promoting their Olympic coverage using Zep's "Bring It On Home" as its soundtrack. Supposedly, "Bring It On Home" is the catch phrase for this summer's Olympics, (with "It" meaning gold medals, which the U.S. is doing quite prodigiously). Here's hoping they start using "Kashmir" in all their training montages.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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