Wearing and Tearing
1982 song performed by Led Zeppelin
"Wearing and Tearing" is a song by English rock group Led Zeppelin. It is the eighth and final track on their 1982 compilation album, Coda. It was recorded at Polar Studios in Stockholm, Sweden, during the In Through the Out Door sessions on 21 November 1978.
Release and performances
The origins of "Wearing and Tearing" can be traced to jams during "Dazed and Confused" earlier in the 1970s. It is notably featured in the 1972 live album How the West Was Won. Due to space constraints, "Wearing and Tearing" was one of three songs recorded at Polar Studios which were omitted from In Through the Out Door and later released on Coda, the other two being "Ozone Baby" and "Darlene". The group considered releasing it as a special commemorative single in time for their performance at the 1979 Knebworth Festival, but this plan was abandoned because of time constraints. The song was never performed at Led Zeppelin concerts, but Jimmy Page and Robert Plant played it at their Knebworth reunion in 1990.
Critical reception
Led Zeppelin biographer Dave Lewis sees "Wearing and Tearing" as a statement that the group could compete with the punk bands popular at the time. Ted Drozdowsk commented that the song was "Proof that when it came to energy and aggression, punk rockers had nothing on the Zep." In a contemporary review of Coda, Kurt Loder of Rolling Stone described "Wearing and Tearing", along with "Ozone Baby" and "Darlene", as "about as wonderful as hard rock & roll gets."
See also
List of cover versions of Led Zeppelin songs – "Wearing and Tearing" entries
Notes
Citations
References
Drozdowski, Ted (7 July 2011).
“Wearing and Tearing” enters the record as 1982 song performed by Led Zeppelin. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Wearing, Tearing and song can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7978155. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1982, 1978, 1972 and 1979.
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This entry incorporates text from “Wearing and Tearing” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.