Royal Orleans

"Royal Orleans" is a song by English rock group Led Zeppelin, from their 1976 album Presence.

Overview
When in New Orleans on concert tours, members of the group would stay at the Royal Orleans Hotel, and the song is reportedly based on an incident that occurred there. The story goes that, once when staying at the hotel in the early 1970s, a member of Led Zeppelin accidentally brought a drag queen up to his room, thinking he was a woman. Both smoked marijuana and fell asleep, the drag queen with a lit joint in her hand, which caught fire and burned the room down (though everyone escaped). The lyrics include lines such as "Be careful how you choose it" and "Poor whiskers set the room alight" to reference the event.

It has been suggested that the member of the band referred to in the song was bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones. The song suggests that it is John Paul Jones from the line: And when the sun peeked through

John Cameron with Suzanna,

He kissed the whiskers, left & right

John Cameron was a studio rival of John Paul Jones.

In an interview he gave to Mojo magazine in 2007, Jones clarified the reliability of this rumour, stating that:

The transvestites were actually friends of Richard [Cole's]; normal friendly people and we were all at some bar. That I mistook a transvestite for a girl is rubbish; that happened in another country to somebody else... Anyway 'Stephanie' ended up in my room and we rolled a joint or two and I fell asleep and set fire to the hotel room, as you do, ha ha, and when I woke up it was full of firemen!

"Royal Orleans" is the only song on the album credited to all four members (or any members besides Robert Plant and Jimmy Page). Vocalist Robert Plant wrote most of the lyrics, using the song as a way to poke fun at Jones, allegedly because of a comment Jones once made that vocals were the least important part of the band. The song was the B-side of "Candy Store Rock". Drummer John Bonham played bongo drums on this track.

Live performances
"Royal Orleans" was never performed live by the band at Led Zeppelin concerts.