All the darkness and intensity of Presence reached fever pitch, when drummer John Bonham helped beat up a security guard backstage. Worse was to come. A day later, Robert Plant learned that his young son, Karac, had died from a viral infection at home in the UK.
And one that led to Plant walking away from Led Zeppelin. Immediately, John Paul started writing full numbers on it.
They contacted me. The studio was only known for ABBA and they wanted an internationally known rock group to record there, and would Led Zeppelin consider it.
It was biting cold, snow everywhere…. He gave me a guitar, which was very sweet. A day later I met Benny [Andersson]. Benny was the one with the beard and the keyboard, yes? At the time Benny was still married to Frida [Lyngstad]. So we all went out to a club together one night. They were nice people. The album sounds a little bit contained. It was a state-of-the-art studio, but there was no ambience. Then we had to use a machine to create a fake ambience.
Did you know that? The way we listened to music then was to make your own interpretation. We were still a few years away from videos where they told you what the song was about. In the early stages of Led Zeppelin I wrote lyrics. Ask Page about his drug use and he clams up, every time. The impression is that they were in a huddle together while you were otherwise engaged.
Hmm… I do remember them being in a huddle, yes. Robert Plant also grew as a songwriter. With its haunting ambiguity, the song could be about class, racism, homosexuality or even ecological disaster. Or what about Celebration Day , a song that sounds like a berserk Slinky due to the fact that John Paul Jones is playing his bass with a guitar slide?
One show in Reykjavik, and he comes back a Viking. Fronting Zeppelin will do that to a man. Opening with the rhythmic battering-ram that is Good Times Bad Times , the immediate impression you got from hearing Led Zeppelin for the first time was one of pure shocking power, its opening salvo summing up everything the name Led Zeppelin would quickly come to represent.
A pop song credited to Page, Jones and Bonham built on a zinging, catchy chorus, explosive drums and — at exactly the right moment — a flurry of spitting guitar notes, it pointed the way forward for rock music in the 70s, towards heavy-duty riffage and mallet-swinging drums.
Even the acknowledged covers on the Zeppelin album drew accusations of plagiarism. In fairness, listening to both tracks now, four decades on, what is most striking is the lack of similarity between the two tracks. The most blatant steal on the first Zeppelin album, though, occurred on the track ironically destined to become one of the most closely associated with Jimmy Page: Dazed And Confused.
Although credited solely to Page, the original version of the song had been written by a year-old singer-songwriter named Jake Holmes. Although acoustic, it included all the signature sounds from the Zeppelin version including the walking bass line, the eerie atmosphere and the paranoid lyrics.
Again, Zeppelin took it to a different place entirely. Strictly speaking, not the most original debut album, then. But as first steps go, Led Zeppelin was pretty sure footed. One of the best Led Zeppelin albums, right outta the blocks. The gauntlet had been thrown. Jimmy Page was making his mark. The opening riff and drums of Good Times Bad Times is probably the best any band has ever done to announce themselves to the world. There was a unity of spirit and a unity of direction of sound.
With monstrous growth in stature had come the acquisition of home studio facilities — ideal for honing and perfecting recordings. Originally called first The Overture and then The Campaign , it was only when Plant started scribbling verses for it that it ceased to be an instrumental and became his paean to the music of the world, whatever form it takes.
And if that was too esoteric for you, Over The Hills And Far Away blows the cobwebs off with a folksy-acoustic intro before bursting into a rocker worthy of IV. Influenced by a trip to India, the snake-hipped riff and slouching melody were inspired by a raga Page and Plant overheard at a wedding during their stay. Both heavier and more textured than their debut, it far outstripped the success of its predecessor. Their label, Atlantic, received advance orders of , copies — nearly 10 times as many as Led Zeppelin.
It peaked at No. The musical revolution they had started had now officially gone worldwide. That record and the period around it seems like a tidal wave now.
They had their feet under the table, but now they had to prove themselves. In its infamous review of the band's debut album , Rolling Stone called Jimmy Page "a writer of weak, unimaginative songs. That Led Zeppelin went on to become one of the greatest rock bands of all time is a testament to the raw talent brought together in this group.
Where Zeppelin I suffered from being too reverent to their blues idols, II showed exactly what these musicians were capable of artistically.
These songs not only established the Led Zeppelin sound, they remain among the band's defining tracks. Released in October , II largely helped direct where the genre would go for the next decade, with Zeppelin at the forefront of popular music. Zeppelin II has become the outline for heavy metal and rock albums, and is often considered one of the most influential records of all time for good reason.
In fact, I very nearly listed it as number one, as it's my personal favorite Zeppelin album and the first record I remember taking from my dad. It feels almost impossible to rank any album other than IV at the top of this list. In fact, upon writing that sentence I didn't plan on listing every track on the record, but couldn't decide which songs to leave out.
There are entire books written about this song. Entire works just about Jimmy Page's guitar solo alone, one that has literally never been recreated since. But that one song is somehow not enough to overshadow the rest of the record, which in just eight tracks manages to hit the entire scope of Led Zeppelin music, from blues to ballads to hard rock. What's interesting is that IV became such a stereotype of rock music success that both critics and fans have developed a biased hatred for it, as Steven Hyden explained in his book , Twilight of the Gods.
Despite being viewed as a boilerplate rock album in , it's impossible to ignore the lasting influence and success of IV. United States. It marks the first time in a while that Page relented and allowed titles on the cover art. The inside sleeves are also marked by catalog numbers. The printer Gothic Print Finishers Ltd.
The band composed and arranged the songs for Physical Graffiti at a country house in Hampshire, where they experimented and recorded enough new ideas to make the album a double. This album, like many reissues, is a much darker color than the original printing.
This is because the printers layer the new artwork and text credits over the old. For this album, the version with the altered distribution credits is much darker. Volume One is a Led Zeppelin boxed set that is now out of print. It was printed in a limited edition in under the Classic Records label.
This allowed the new editions to use a tube-amplified, all-analog mastering process.
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