Video Classics: ‘Hey Hey What Can I Do’ – Led Zeppelin

Robert Plant Performs in 2006 (Jim Dyson, Getty Images)

What can you do when you love a woman who won’t be true? This was the question posed by Led Zeppelin‘s “Hey Hey What Can I Do.”  What you can do is listen to the video and listen to Robert Plant sing out the answer, and decide for yourself if it’s a good one.

“Leave her where the guitars play” is the answer. That sounds like leave her. Unless you and most of your friends play guitar. Which sounds like most all of Led Zeppelin. In which case, you’re not leaving her at all. Which means, well ‘hey, hey what can I do?’ The lyrics of the song reflect a similar frustration as Plant, at least until the final stanza, in which he packs his bags and leaves her with those guitar players. He’s a vocalist, so I suppose it makes sense after all.

All kidding aside, “Hey Hey What Can I Do” is a classic Zepp song that hit the charts as the B-Side to “Immigrant Song” in 1970, right about the time the band were transitioning from their earliest years on their way to becoming ‘the biggest band in the world’, based largely on their approach to releasing only album-oriented rock. That’s one of the things that makes “Hey Hey What Can I Do” all the more unique. Of all the band’s extensive catalog, it is the only non-album track released during the band’s existence.

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