Is Led Zeppelin's "When The Levee Breaks" an early example of dronerock?

Dronerock was invented by LaMonte Young and the Dream Syndicate, end of story. Perfected by the Velvet Underground, popularised by the Beatles on Tomorrow Never knows.

What do you know... invented by Americans, perfected by Brits, just like everything else, dammit.

Led Zep certainly had their proto-drone moments. But then there's downright silliness like No Quarter.

I'm with gygaz on the blues thing - Most Zep has a standard Blues 3-chord structure. Dronerock only occurs with 2 chords or less. Does Tangerine have 2 chords or 3? I can't remember, and all my Zep cassettes are sitting in storage at my mum's house in NY.

The Velvets improved pure drone by making it rock - adding beats, a bassline and lyrics, which is what constitutes good rock without compromising the drone. (see Melody Laughter). And then some fucker thought "Hey! let's add a melody to dronerock!" and then invented that glorious oxymoron, my favourite genre, (I nearly typed gender, what a typo) DRONEPOP!!!

(everytime i read "dreamy syndicate" my brane replaces it with "dream police")

..Sundar, do you share namesakes with Lakshiminarayana?

Drone or not (it's drone?), it's one of the best blues song EVER.

Love his voice so much.

An early 1970s rock equivalent to the Theater of Eternal Music is Grand Funk Railroad's "I'm Your Captain."

Or maybe "Hats Off (To Roy Harper)" which is also open C (though also patently obviously blues).

yonug piece's are not drones, they are single notes (but very long ones)

Don't recognize the name but my last name is very common in southern India.

As for more Indian drone, try the vocal traditions of the Dagar Brothers.

This statement threw me when I first read it. However, I finally got around to looking up the definition of "drone" in music, so without further ado:

In music, an accompanying constant tone or harmony, usually octave or fifth. It is a feature of many classical and folk traditions, and is produced by many instruments of folk music, including the Indian vina, bagpipes, and hurdy-gurdy. Drone effects in written music include the organ pedal point and the musette dance form.
Drone is also the name given to the three lower pipes of the bagpipes, which produce a fixed chord above which the melody is played on the chanter also a bowed instrument with a single string stretched on a stick over a bladder sometimes called a bumbass.

Among examples of drone in the concert repertoire are Wagner's overture to Das Rheingold/The Rhinegold (185354) and the mystery chord of Schoenberg's third orchestral piece Farben/Chord Colours from the Five Pieces for Orchestra (1909).
- courtesy of Hutchinson Encyclopedia

So, in short, a drone can be either a harmony OR tone that is either repeated or constant. So by this definition, LaMonte Young's work would seem to be drone music, due to the presence of very long, sustained notes. Similarly, a one-chord song would be drone music by virtue of having a constant harmony.