"Going to California" is a ballad written and performed by the English rock band Led Zeppelin. It was released from the band's untitled fourth album in 1971.
The song started out as a song about Californian earthquakes and when Jimmy Page, audio engineer Andy Johns and band manager Peter Grant travelled to Los Angeles to mix Led Zeppelin IV, they coincidentally experienced a minor earthquake. At this point it was known as "Guide to California". In an interview he gave to Spin magazine in 2002, Plant stated that the song "might be a bit embarrassing at times lyrically, but it did sum up a period of my life when I was 22."
This live version, from Led Zeppelin's performance at Earls Court in 1975, is featured on disc 2 of the Led Zeppelin DVD and again on the Mothership DVD:
Lyrics
Spent my days with a woman unkind
Smoked my stuff and drank all my wine
Made up my mind to make a new start
Going To California with an aching in my heart
Someone told me there's a girl out there
With love in her eyes and flowers in her hair
Took my chances on a big jet plane
Never let them tell you that they're all the same
The sea was red and the sky was grey
Wondered how tomorrow could ever follow today
The mountains and the canyons started to tremble and shake
As the children of the sun began to awake
Seems that the wrath of the Gods
Got a punch on the nose and it started to flow
I think I might be sinking
Throw me a line if I reach it in time
I'll meet you up there where the path
Runs straight and high
To find a queen without a king
They say she plays guitar and cries and sings
La la la la
Side a white mare in the footsteps of dawn
Tryin' to find a woman who's never, never, never been born
Standing on a hill in my mountain of dreams
Telling myself it's not as hard, hard, hard as it seems
Songwriters: Robert Anthony Plant / James Patrick Page
Going to California lyrics © Warner Chappell Music, Inc