by George Case
In Through the Out Door: The Sound at the Beginning of “In the Evening”
Another portentous album opener, “In the Evening” is introduced with John Paul Jones’s Yamaha GX-1 synthesizer underneath Page’s bowing a heavily distorted Fender Stratocaster and clanging a mechanical device called a Gizmotron across its strings. “It’s like a hurdy-gurdy type of thing, an electronic wheel,” said Page. “You’d hold it near the bridge [of the guitar] and depress whichever strings you wanted. It kind of rolled the strings.” The abstract tones of this passage were similar to the ones Page had created for his abortive Lucifer Rising soundtrack.
Timeline
1971
January: Led Zeppelin continues work on Led Zeppelin IV, Headley Grange.
January 25: Charles Manson, three others, found guilty in Tate-LaBianca slayings.
February 1: Reports say one-third of US college students have tried marijuana.
February 10: Los Angeles earthquake does substantial damage; aftershocks coincide with Jimmy Page and Andy John’s mixing work at LA’s Sunset Sound.
March: Led Zeppelin’s “Return to the Clubs” tour in the UK.
June 30: “Pentagon Papers,” charting US involvement in Vietnam, published in the New York Times.
July 3: Jim Morrison dies in Paris at 27.
July 6: Louis Armstrong dies, age 71.
August 1: Concert for Bangladesh, New York, featuring George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Ravi Shankar, Bob Dylan.
August–September: Led Zeppelin tour the US and Canada.
September: Led Zeppelin play Japan.
September 13: Attica prison riots leave several dead.
November 8: Led Zeppelin IV released.
Movies: A Clockwork Orange; The French Connection.
Music: The Who, Who’s Next; the Rolling Stones, Sticky Fingers; Marvin Gaye, What’s Going On; Sly and the Family Stone, There’s a Riot Goin’ On; Carole King, Tapestry; Joni Mitchell, Blue; Jethro Tull, Aqualung; John Lennon, Imagine; Don McLean, “American Pie,” Isaac Hayes, “Theme from Shaft”; Alice Cooper, “Eighteen”; Three Dog Night, “Joy to the World.”
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Sitting Round Singing Songs
Led Zeppelin Music Trivia II
Sing My Song: Zeppelin Songs with “Song” in the Title
• “The Lemon Song” (Led Zeppelin II)
• “Immigrant Song” (Led Zeppelin III)
• “The Song Remains the Same” (Houses of the Holy)
• “The Rain Song” (Houses of the Holy)
• “The Wanton Song” (Physical Graffiti)
Walter’s Walk: Led Zeppelin Songs That Could Refer to Dancing
Though seldom heard in Broadway musicals, several of the group’s tunes have titles that imply the listener should kick up his or her heels.
• “Bron-y-Aur Stomp” (Led Zeppelin III)
• “Misty Mountain Hop” (Led Zeppelin IV)
• “Rock and Roll” (Led Zeppelin IV)
• “Dancing Days” (Houses of the Holy)
• “Boogie With Stu” (Physical Graffiti)
• “Candy Store Rock” (Presence)
Only Drive You Mad: Why “Houses of the Holy” Was Left Off the Album of That Title
Unlike the Rolling Stones’ Let It Bleed, the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced, Sly and the Family Stone’s Stand!, or Van Morrison’s Moondance, there are no Led Zeppelin albums with the same name as one of their songs. Possibly such a move would have been too “poppy” for the band, who downplayed the importance of hit singles and who always insisted their albums were meant to be appreciated as organic entities—highlighting any one piece by calling a whole collection after it might relegate the rest of the material to filler in the mind of the audience. The general view is that the song “Houses of the Holy,” recorded in 1972, was heard to be incompatible with other tracks on the record Houses of the Holy, released in 1973. It was not until the next Zeppelin disc, 1975’s Physical Graffiti, that the cut made it on an LP.
Style Is New, Her Face Is the Same: Back-to-Back Zeppelin Songs with the Same Lyrics
Both “Heartbreaker” and the following “Living Loving Maid (She’s Just a Woman)” feature lines that end with the words lay their or lay your money down.
Communication Breakdown: Led Zeppelin’s Instrumentals
A total of four studio tracks have no vocal accompaniment: “Black Mountain Side” (Led Zeppelin), “Moby Dick” (Led Zeppelin II), “Bron-yr-Aur” (Physical Graffiti), “Bonzo’s Montreux” (Coda). Onstage, the band stretched out many songs to hand solo spots to Jimmy Page (“Heartbreaker,” “Dazed and Confused,” the unreleased “White Summer” merged with “Black Mountain Side,” and a stand-alone guitar showcase on the ’77 US tour), John Bonham (the drum solos “Pat’s Delight” or “Over the Top,” which later evolved into “Moby Dick”), and John Paul Jones on keyboards (“Your Time Is Gonna Come,” “No Quarter”). “I had to learn how to snap my fingers, because that looked quite jazzy,” conceded Robert Plant, left out of such displays. “And sometimes, when I was at a loss, I used to sit cross-legged on the piano looking like an interested gnome.”
10
To Build a Dream
Other Musicians Featured in Led Zeppelin’s Music
Most of Led Zeppelin’s four- or five-piece contemporaries freely brought in outside performers to augment their songs, often retaining them as regular hires to join them in the studio or in concert. But Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham were a more self-contained unit that very seldom required anyone else to step in (particularly with the multitalented Jones in the lineup), and when they did it was by choice rather than necessity. Thus there are only a handful of people besides Led Zeppelin who can be heard playing Led Zeppelin.
Four Already, Now We’re Steady: Recorded Music
Viram Jasani plays tabla on “Black Mountain Side.” (Now a promoter with the UK-based Asian Music Circuit, Jasani declined to be interviewed for this book.)
Sandy Denny sings a duet with Robert Plant on “The Battle of Evermore.”
Ian “Stu” Stewart plays piano on “Rock and Roll” and “Boogie With Stu.”
Mick Bonham (John Bonham’s younger brother) blows the whistle, beginning at 2:30, in “Fool in the Rain.”
Unidentified string players play backup on “Friends.”
Unidentified string players provide orchestration on “Kashmir.” Peter Grant recounted a tale of road manager Richard Cole being sent to London’s Southall district to find “a Pakistani orchestra” for the song, although John Paul Jones has said of the track that “we did the strings with an English orchestra in Olympic Studios.”
It Was Really, Really Good: Live Performances
In concert, Led Zeppelin occasionally brought extra players onstage with them, more for spontaneous get-togethers than as any indispensable accompanists. Jimmy Page admitted that he was sometimes stretching to incorporate all of a given song’s overdubbed guitars into a single live performance but, as he noted, “There are times when I’d just love to get another guitarist on [stage], but it just wouldn’t look right to the audience.”
Jack Lancaster and Mike Evans, saxophonists for Blodwyn Pig and the Liverpool Scene, respectively, came on to jam “Long Tall Sally” with Led Zeppelin following the Pop Proms show at the Royal Albert Hall on June 29, 1969.
An unidentified female bassist subbed for John Paul Jones, called back to England to see his ailing father, for the medley finale of a Cleveland show on August 26, 1970.
“Fool in the Rain” featured a brief contribution from John Bonham’s brother, Mick.
Courtesy of Robert Rodriguez
Richard Cole, Zeppelin’s road manager, occasionally got to sit in on congas during the “Whole Lotta Love” finale of some English and European dates.
Chris Welch, an English rock journalist, played congas on “Whole Lotta Love” in Frankfurt, Germany, on July 18,
1970.
Phil Carson, an Atlantic Records official, friend of the group, and later manager of Jimmy Page, was invited to share the stage with Led Zeppelin on a few occasions. He played bass on “C’mon Everybody” at a Dublin gig on March 6, 1971, and again on the same song at Osaka, Japan, on September 28 of the same year. In Frankfurt, Germany, on June 30, 1980, he participated in a reprise jam on “Money.”
Clive Coulson, a Led Zeppelin roadie, hammed it up on “C’mon Everybody” at the aforementioned ’71 Osaka show.
Ron Wood, future Rolling Stone and ex-Face, came onstage for an encore of “Communication Breakdown” at Nassau Coliseum on February 13, 1975.
Mick Ralphs, guitarist for Swan Song act Bad Company, played an encore of Jerry Lee Lewis’s “It’ll Be Me” on May 22, 1977, in the Convention Center at Fort Worth, Texas.
Keith Moon, the uncontrollable Who drummer, partying hard while exiled to Los Angeles, joined the band for Bonham’s “Moby Dick” and an encore of “Whole Lotta Love,” at the LA Forum on June 23, 1977.
Simon Kirke, the drummer for Bad Company, played along with “Whole Lotta Love” at Munich’s Olympiahalle on July 5, 1980.
Timeline
1972
January–June: Led Zeppelin record Houses of the Holy.
February 28: President Richard Nixon makes historic visit to Communist China.
February: Led Zeppelin tour Australia and New Zealand.
March 24: British prime minister Edward Heath imposes parliamentary rule on Northern Ireland following increased violence.
May 16: Alabama Governor George Wallace critically injured by gunfire.
June 17: Five burglars arrested for break-in at the Watergate hotel, Washington, DC.
June: Led Zeppelin tour North America.
August: Heavy US B-52 raids on North Vietnam.
September 5: Eleven Israeli Olympic athletes are killed by Black September terrorists, Munich.
October: Led Zeppelin play Japan.
November 8: Richard Nixon wins US presidential election in a landslide.
December 26: Chilean athletes admit to cannibalism after an Andes plane crash.
Movies: The Godfather; Deliverance; Deep Throat.
Music: The Rolling Stones, Exile on Main Street; Stevie Wonder, Talking Book; Deep Purple, Machine Head; David Bowie, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars; T. Rex, The Slider; Neil Young, Harvest; the Temptations, “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone”; Mott the Hoople, “All the Young Dudes”; Johnny Nash, “I Can See Clearly Now.”
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Are We Rolling?
Led Zeppelin in the Studio
Gauge Is on the Red: Where Zeppelin Recorded
Although the band maintained the same record label and producer-guitarist over their twelve-year span, they never confined themselves to a single studio to make their music. Already experienced in a range of studios in England and the US when Zeppelin was formed, Jimmy Page always kept his ears open for the most advanced, most convenient, and most comfortable places to record, and at different times different sites met his criteria. Sometimes the spot was determined by the group’s peripatetic touring circuit, others by their technical sophistication, and others by their relaxed ambience. A few of these were used no more than once or twice for overdubs or demo takes, while others were where entire albums were rehearsed, taped, and mastered. This list comprises all the recording rooms, jam scenes, and mixing booths where Led Zeppelin’s albums are known to have been prepared and finalized.
A&M Studios, 1416 North LaBrea Avenue, Los Angeles
This was one of many North American settings where preliminary takes for Led Zeppelin II were laid down in the spring and summer of 1969.
A&R Studios, 112 West Forty-Eighth Street / 322 West Forty-Eighth Street / 799 Seventh Avenue, New York
Led Zeppelin II was given its final mix by Jimmy Page and Eddie Kramer over two days in these New York locations (the studio business occupied several buildings, all of which are listed here). Some takes were also originally recorded in A&R.
Ardent Studios, 1457 National Street, Memphis, Tennessee
Parts of Led Zeppelin III were recorded at Ardent in 1970 with engineer Terry Manning. The album’s final mix, and the inscription of Aleister Crowley’s “Do What Thou Wilt” on the master runoff groove, were also completed here.
Atlantic Studios, New York
Atlantic has been cited as another Led Zeppelin II recording site.
Electric Lady Studios, 52 West Eighth Street, New York
Several songs from Houses of the Holy received their final mixes at this legendary studio, designed by Jimi Hendrix.
Groove Studios, New York
Parts of Led Zeppelin II were recorded here.
Headley Grange, Liphook Road, Village of Headley, Hampshire, UK
Much rock ’n’ roll history was made in the country home, originally built in 1795, that became Led Zeppelin’s unofficial recording residence. Initial or final tracks for Led Zeppelin III, IV, and Physical Graffiti were put down within its spooky confines (Jimmy Page said he saw a ghost on the premises), most famously the echoing drums of “When the Levee Breaks.” Along with the Band’s Big Pink, the Rolling Stones’ Nellcôte villa, and Sly Stone’s 783 Bel Air Drive, Headley Grange is one of the most important improvised recording rooms in popular music.
Island Studios, 8–10 Basing Street, Notting Hill, London
Songs from Led Zeppelin III and IV were completed at this popular and well-appointed studio, including “Stairway to Heaven.”
Juggy Sound Studio, New York
Material for Led Zeppelin II was taped at this Big Apple obscurity.
Mayfair Studios, New York
Ditto.
Mirror Sound, Los Angeles
Ditto, only in LA.
Morgan Studios, London
Ditto, only back in the UK. “Thank You” is said to have been recorded here.
Mountain Studios, Montreux, Switzerland
During Zeppelin’s tax exile, which began in 1975, the Swiss resort town was a desirable haven. The pulverizing Coda drum solo “Bonzo’s Montreux” was taped here in December 1976.
Musicland Studios, Arabellastrasse 5, Munich
All of Presence was recorded and mixed during a three-week period in November and December 1975 at this in-demand site in the basement of the large Arabella Hotel in West Germany. Robert Plant noted of the hotel that “there was a whorehouse on the fourth floor,” but this may be incidental.
Mystic Sound Studios, Los Angeles
Again, parts of Led Zeppelin II were recorded here.
Olympic Studios, 117 Church Road, Barnes, London
Olympic was the closest thing to Led Zeppelin’s home base in their early years; preliminary or finishing work on Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin II, Led Zeppelin III, Led Zeppelin IV, Houses of the Holy and Physical Graffiti was done here, including all of the classic debut record and the epic “Kashmir.” Olympic was one of Britain’s premier studios through the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, where music by the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Pink Floyd, Procol Harum, the Eagles, Queen, and the Beatles (“All You Need Is Love”), among many others, was made. Acquired by Richard Branson’s Virgin company in 1987 and taken over by EMI in 1992, the fabled Olympic was shut down in 2009.
Polar Studios, 58 Sankt Eriksgatan, Stockholm
In Through the Out Door was made at these new Swedish studios, the roost of pop superstars Abba, in late 1978.
Quantum Studios, Los Angeles
Quantum was yet another studio at which portions of Led Zeppelin II were recorded.
The Rolling Stones’ Mobile Studio
Symbolic of the creative and economic clout enjoyed by rock acts of the epoch, the Stones’ £65,000 trailer permitted them and the artists who rented the platform from them to make professional-quality recordings outside the sterile confines of urban office buildings. The “back to the land” ethic infused the resultant music, w
here the more casual atmosphere and homier acoustics inspired the players to some of their most intimate performances. Sessions for Led Zeppelin III and IV, Houses of the Holy, and Physical Graffiti were facilitated by the Stones’ studio.
Ronnie Lane’s Mobile Studio
Similar in technology to the Rolling Stones’ rig but cheaper to use, this portable booth was on hand for various Physical Graffiti tracks. Jimmy Page played benefit shows for ex-Face Ronnie Lane’s arms (Action Research into Multiple Sclerosis) charity in 1983. The well-liked Lane died from MS in 1997.
The Sol Studio, Cookham, Berkshire, UK
All the basic tracks for Coda were mixed at this studio, once owned by Elton John producer Gus Dudgeon and acquired by Page in the early 1980s.
Stargroves, Tothill Road, Newbury, Berkshire, UK
A lush country home belonging to Mick Jagger, Stargroves was the site of numerous sessions (using the mobile units) for Houses of the Holy, Physical Graffiti, and eventually Coda.