Jimmy Page has released an early demo of “The Rain Song” to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the release of “Houses of the Holy”.

Page released the track, titled “The Seasons,” through his website on March 28 using the website’s “On This Day” section.

“On this day, 50 years ago to the day, ‘Houses of the Holy’ was released,” Page wrote. “My original idea for the opening tracks for ‘Houses of the Holy’ was that a short overture would be a rousing instrumental introduction with layered electric guitars that would segue in to ’The Seasons’, later to be titled ‘The Rain Song’. Again there would be a contrasting acoustic guitar instrumental movement with melotron that could lead to the first vocal of the album and the first verse of the song.”

“‘The Seasons’ was a memo to myself as a reminder of the sequence of the song and various ideas I’d had for it in its embryonic stage. I’d worked on it over one evening at home. During the routining of the overture now titled ‘The Plumpton and Worcester Races’, the half time section was born and the overture shaped in to the song, ‘The Song Remains The Same’. These rehearsals were done in Puddle Town on the River Piddle in Dorset, UK.”

“The first set of recordings were done at Olympic Studios with George Chkiantz. We then came to record at Stargroves, Sir Mick Jagger’s country home, and, like Headley Grange, with the Rolling Stones recording truck. ‘The Song Remains The Same’ was played on a Fender 12 string, the same one used on Becks Bolero, with my trusty Les Paul number 1 on overdubs in a standard turning. The ‘Rain Song’ was an unorthodox tuning on acoustic and electric guitars. On live shows, it became a work-out feature for the double neck.”

This is the first authorised release of Led Zeppelin music since 2018

Interestingly, “The Seasons” was released through Page’s website, not Led Zeppelin’s, and the band’s official social channels and record label haven’t shared the unreleased track.

The release of “The Seasons” is the first authorised release of Led Zeppelin music since the band released a two-track Record Store Day vinyl single on April 21, 2018 that contained alternative mixes of “Rock And Roll” and “Friends”.

It appears that Page has been aware of this demo of “The Rain Song” for many years and previously misplaced the recording before discovering it some time between 2014 and 2020.

“I had a home demo of ‘The Rain Song’, but unfortunately the tapes have been lost. Which is a real bastard,” Page told Classic Rock Magazine in 2014. “I literally had the full piece from beginning to end. I had the Mellotron idea and everything on it. But the version of ‘The Rain Song’ on the new companion disc is a really cool one. It’s got less piano on it, so you get more of the guitar textures.”

Then in a 2020 interview with Rolling Stone, Page said: “I recently found a really early tape that had been missing for a long while, but it’s got the full orchestration of ‘Rain Song.’ It goes all through to the very end, the same way that you know it, even with the bit in the middle where it goes a bit heavier, before it goes back to the light and caressing parts. It’s all in there, the Mellotron and everything. And it’s not played as well, like the John Paul Jones version, because I knew he could do a really good job on it. But it’s there, every part of it, every phrase is there, slightly different. And then you hear things that didn’t get used.”