Led Zeppelin III was released on the Atlantic label on October 5, 1970. Over 70,000 advance orders were placed in the United States alone. Demonstrating the staying power of Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin II was still at number eighty-nine after fifty-two weeks on the charts. Other new releases that week included the Stones’ Get Yer Ya Ya’s Out and the second offering of the Allman Brothers Band, Idlewild South.12 Strangely enough, the new creative vision of Zeppelin was condemned by most of the critics. Some critics accused the band of copying the Crosby, Stills, and Nash style of sweetly produced acoustic numbers. The Beatles had been praised for their innovative ideas with Sgt. Pepper’s, but Page and Plant were criticized for breaking away from the heavy strains of heavy-metal anthems. Apparently, Led Zeppelin III became a statement focusing upon the duality of light and heavy, in many ways representing the very paradox of rock and roll itself.
The presence of Aleister Crowley can also be seen with the early pressings of Led Zeppelin III. If you look closely in the runout grooves of the pressings, a very distinct “Do What Thou Wilt” can be seen. Some editions have the phrase on both sides, while later pressings have the slogan only on side two. Some early pressings contain the phrase “So Be It Mote.” This slogan has been described as the binding spell upon the magician’s incantation. But if the spell was to guarantee the financial success of the album, it was a failure.
Zeppelin album art had progressed from the burning Hindenburg dirigible to that of the “brown bomber” of Led Zeppelin II. Of course, the cover art of the second LP contained photos of the group superimposed upon the faces of a German zeppelin crew. If you look closely you can see Peter Grant’s (Zeppelin manager) and Richard Cole’s faces along with actress Glynis Johns and legendary bluesman Blind Willie Johnson.
Led Zeppelin III, however, required special treatment. The album cover was a tribute to psychedelia, complete with cutouts and spinning wheels. Unfortunately, there was a disconnect between the concept of the artist, whose name is given only as Zacron, and Jimmy Page’s original concept: “It was intended to be something like one of those gardening calendars or the zoo-wheel things that tell you when to plant cauliflower or how long whales are pregnant. But there was a misunderstanding with the artist—who is very good in fact but hadn’t been correctly briefed—and we ended up on top of a deadline with a teeny-bopperish cover which I think was a compromise.”13 Though the album contained brilliant music, the critics slammed it, and Led Zeppelin III left the charts after only thirty-one weeks. This would be the shortest time on the charts of any of the first five Zeppelin albums. If there was to be a hidden meaning in any of the song selections on the third album, perhaps it would be found in “Gallows Pole.” This new musical treatment for the medieval ballad “The Maid Freed from the Gallows” suggests “The Hanged Man” from the tarot cards. “The Hanged Man” represents change and new direction. However, if this were the case, then the next album should have blazed itself into rock legendry.
For the recording environment needed for the production of the fourth Led Zeppelin album, a mobile unit was brought to Headly Grange, a two-hundred-year-old mansion. The mansion had served for some time as a Victorian workhouse. When the band members first arrived there was a chilling presence felt throughout the house. On one particular evening, Jimmy Page glimpsed a gray, ghostly figure at the top of the stairs. He was now convinced that the mansion was haunted, due in part to its terrible past filled with the stories of the suffering, neglected poor. Page also noticed that in his bedroom the sheets upon his bed always seemed to be wet. As far as Plant and Bonham were concerned, they felt very uneasy in the dark sequestered halls. After the recordings were made, however, Page commented that the place developed a lighter feel, as if the music helped purge away the darkness. Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham were convinced that their music should be allowed to stand alone. Obviously, there was little concern for the critics’ views. For this reason, the fourth album was released untitled on November 8, 1971. Some fans refer to the album as The Four Symbols or simply enough, Led Zeppelin IV. Page exclaimed, “The music is what matters. Let people buy it because they like the music. I don’t want anything on the cover! Period!”14 Atlantic Records finally agreed to the band’s terms. Jimmy Page had suggested that each member of the band create a specific symbol for the album art. Some critics claimed that these occult symbols were Icelandic runes and contained cryptic metaphysical meanings. Page said, “Robert’s symbol is his own design—the feather, a symbol on which all sorts of philosophies have been based, and which has a very interesting heritage. For instance, it represents courage to many red Indian tribes.” Plant himself finally elaborated, “My symbol was drawn from sacred symbols of the Mu civilization, which existed about 15,000 years ago as part of a lost continent somewhere in the Pacific Ocean between China and Mexico. All sorts of things can be tied in with the Mu civilization, even the Easter Island effigies. These Mu people left stone tablets with their symbols inscribed on them all over the place—in Mexico, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, China and other places. And they all date from the same period. The Chinese say that these people came from the East, and the Mexicans say they came from the West—obviously it was something in between. My particular symbol does have a further meaning, and all I can do is suggest that people look it up in a suitable reference book.”15
Jimmy Page continued with a discussion of John Paul Jones’s symbol: “John Paul Jones’s symbol, the second from the left, was found in a book about runes and was said to represent a person who is both confident and competent, because it was difficult to draw it properly.”16 Other individuals swear that the runic symbol is taken from a symbol found on a book detailing the beliefs of the Rosicrucians, another secret society that has been said to exist since the Middle Ages.
John “Bonzo” Bonham’s locking three circles were described by Plant as being representative of the Trilogy—man, woman, and child: “I suspect it had something to do with the mainstay of all people’s belief. At one point, though—in Pittsburgh, I think—we observed that it was also the emblem for Ballantine beer.”17 One of the band’s acquaintances suggested that Bonham’s symbol was actually the wet circular rings left on a bar by placing his beer bottles down in a pattern. After all, Jimmy Page had once claimed that John Bonham was the champion beer drinker in all of England.
The mysterious symbol of Jimmy Page has yet to be deciphered. Plant once claimed that Page told him the meaning, but now he has forgotten. The symbol became so dominant that many fans refer to the fourth album as Zoso. At one time or another fans have suggested that the symbol is in the shape of three sixes (666), the Bible and Crowley’s infamous Mark of the Beast. This is unlikely. At least some fans have suggested that the name is from Curious George, the Monkey, also known as Zoso, from a popular children’s book series. Other suggestions state that the symbol is taken from Cerberus, the guardian of the gates of hell, or that the Zoso symbol bears a striking resemblance to the alchemical symbol for mercury.
The most likely meaning is a symbol that crosses into the mystical world of metaphysics between the living and the dead. The term Zoso sounds very much like the name of the first pharaoh of Egypt, Zoser, in Egyptian lore. Zoser established the first dynasty and built the first step-pyramid. (In ancient Sumer the ziggurats, step pyramids, were used by priests to determine the will of the gods.) Early civilizations believed that the steps on these structures resembled a ladder where the gods could visit man from the heavens—in this case, the original “Stairway to Heaven.” Page, however, claims that the symbol is not a pronounceable word, so perhaps the talisman is an enigma of man’s search for ultimate knowledge. Perhaps that is why some individuals see a smiling face in the symbol, a friendly reminder of just how far we have yet to come. Some followers believe that the four symbols are placed in a magical order, with Page and Plant’s outer symbols protecting the weaker inner emblems. This has been taken to suggest the creative powers within the band, as well as Plant�
��s and Page’s fascination with the occult and ancient Celtic mythology.
Page and Plant designed the cover for the fourth album. The old man carrying the sticks upon his back is said to represent complete harmony with the natural world. This is a nineteenth-century Romantic characteristic very representative of William Wordsworth’s leech gatherer in “Resolution and Independence.” Page explains, “The old man carrying the wood is in harmony with nature. He takes from nature but he gives back to the land. It’s a natural cycle and it’s right. His old cabin gets pulled down and they move him to those horrible urban slums, which are terrible places.”18 When the album jacket is opened the old man’s picture is found to be hanging on a wall that may suggest the cycle of past, present, and future, or Shelley’s theme of mutability in which “everything ripens and rots.” The old man, like Words-worth’s leech gather, completes a cycle of unity with nature. They both take from the land, but through their respective deaths, they in turn decay slowly back into nature, becoming one again with the Universal Spirit. Curiously, to some onlookers the “old man” appeared to be somewhat hunchbacked. In Ida Grehan’s Irish Family Names, the author presents a genesis of the family name Crowley. Crowley is derived from O Cruadhlaoich, which is translated as “hunched back.” Perhaps this includes yet another reference to “the wickedest man alive.”
Jimmy Page’s friend artist Barrington Colby completed the album’s inner drawing. This artwork was produced in pencil and gold paint and the work’s original title is View in Half or Varying Light. Page had this to say about the symbolism of the work: “The Hermit is holding out the truth of and enlightenment to a young man at the foot of the hill. If you know the tarot cards, you’ll know what the Hermit means. (The divinatory meaning of the Hermit is usually interpreted as a warning against proceeding on a given course without retirement and contemplation).”19 In Romantic literature, especially in Wordsworth and Coleridge’s works, the Hermit is seen as Rousseau’s “noble savage,” a being who is one with nature in a pantheistic relationship. For those of us who delight in hidden images, there is a belief that if you should hold a mirror perpendicular to the mountain the Hermit is standing upon in the Colby drawing, the mountain, through its reflection, becomes a black dog or dragon. And as far as another hidden cryptic message in the vinyl run-offs, you will notice two hidden encryptions: on side one in the run-off band you can see “porky” and side two, the term “pecko duck” can be seen—not exactly Crowley’s Book of the Law!
The ultimate Crowley reference, however, lies not in the artwork but in the recording of the number-one rock song of all time—“Stairway to Heaven.” “Stairway to Heaven” has been voted the all-time rock favorite of FM rock. It was revolutionary in that the song lasted almost eight minutes and commanded great devotion from rock radio. One station in Florida was so en-amored with the song that it played it continuously over and over at least fifty times. But this promotion didn’t work and the station was soon off the air. The structure of the song demonstrated the depth of Led Zeppelin’s creativity. The first section is very light and melodic, building to a thunderous climax of searing guitar and crashing pounding drums. There has been no other song before or since that has managed to capture both the texture and raw energy of this rock masterpiece.
In the United States during the late 1970s and early 1980s, a movement was formed to question whether hidden messages existed in popular recordings. The number-one target of this investigation was Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.” Knowing Page’s fascination with Aleister Crowley, some fans felt that “Black Dog” was actually an introduction to the dark side. John Paul Jones commented that the song received its name from a black dog that kept entering the studio during the recording session, so the song was then named in its honor. But rock fans who had been raised on conspiracy theory, from the Kennedy and King assassinations to the “Paul is dead” rumors, would not accept such a simple answer. Books on the occult suggested that religious prayers and hymns were often recited backward as a tribute to Satan and an affront to Christianity. With these as a guide, the word “Dog” can be seen as a reversal of “God.” With this logic the song could serve as a salute to a “Black God,” who would then be identified as Satan. Obviously, this had to be quite a stretch. The lyrics suggest more of Robert Plant’s feelings about large, “big-legged” women than his devotion to a dark lord. But there may be something to the hidden message in “Stairway to Heaven.”
The lyrics mention that there are “two paths you can go by” and that “there’s still time to change the road you’re on.” To followers of the occult, this suggested “the left-hand and right-hand paths” of Satan and God, of evil and good. There is also mention of a piper that “leads us to reason.” The piper, to some listeners, could be viewed as a symbol of Pan, the mythological god complete with horns and cloven hoofs. Was this another reference to Lucifer and Crowley? It was also common knowledge that Crowley had instructed that his own poem “Song to Pan” be read during his burial service as a final tribute to his pagan views. The Crowley contribution may well be suggested by a reading of his Magick in Theory and Practice. Crowley states that if a magician wants to truly practice magic that “he must train himself to think backward by external means, as set forth here following, let him learn to write backward, let him learn to walk backward, let him constantly watch, if convenient, films and listen to records reversed.”20 This declaration may finally explain the true purpose of the infamous hidden message in “Stairway to Heaven” along with the Zeppelin lyric that reminds us that “sometimes words have two meanings.” In this case, the meaning can be determined by listening to the vocal lyric forward and then backward, much in the way that Aleister Crowley may have intended.
The hidden message occurs in the verse that states, “If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow, don’t be alarmed now. It’s just a spring clean for the May Queen.” Many listeners have pondered what a “bustle in a hedgerow” means. The answer may lie in two explanations. First, the track is not a true backward mask. In a backward mask a recording is simply played backward. This is the case in many of the celebrated recordings said to contain hidden messages, which will be discussed later. The “Stairway to Heaven” track is actually created with a phonetic reversal. The “hidden” message could be recorded and then turned over. As the tape is heard backward, new lyrics could be composed with the same basic phonemes creating what may be considered as strange word play. The Beatles were able to experiment with this method in “Revolution 9.” The phrase “number 9, number 9” when reversed sounded suspiciously like “turn me on, dead man.” This was one of many “clues” that created the “Paul is dead” hysteria that swept the Western world. Starting with the verse that begins with “If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow …” and carrying on until “and it makes me wonder,” a hidden Satanic prayer is said to be heard. Personally, I have no problem picking up key phrases. The first phrase begins with “Here’s to my sweet Satan. The one will be the sad one who makes me sad whose power is in Satan.” This is very clear, except for with “Here’s to …” some listeners instead hear a phrase that sounds more like “The Lord is my sweet Satan.” There is little doubt that the lyric, when reversed, does sound like “my sweet Satan” and “the one will be the sad one who makes me sad whose power is in Satan.” The next line is said to be either, “He’ll be with you, Satan, Satan, Satan,” or “He will give you 666.” This section is not as clear to me. The last line sounds like “So follow him with worship, bring me yourself, my sad Satan.” The “my sad Satan” is extremely clear, whereas the simple phrase before it may be open to interpretation. The chorus section “and it makes me wonder,” which follows this verse, plainly says “I will sing because I live with Satan.” The last vocal phrase states, “And she’s buying a stairway to Heaven.” As the phrase is reversed some listeners claim that a backward phrase states, “Play music backward, hear words sung.” When you experiment listening to this section backward try not to do
it late at night. But if you do—just remember, I warned you!
The second explanation for the “bustle in your hedgerow” was rumored to be a sexual innuendo for the female genitalia. The “spring clean for the May Queen” was said to be a reference to a young girl’s coming of age with the start of her first menstrual cycle. Perhaps the listener should decide which explanation is the oddest.
The strange use of Led Zeppelin’s occult references continued with the release of Houses of the Holy in March of 1973. The album art design depicted two fair-skinned, blond, naked children climbing the rocks to the top of some mysterious mountain. The cover photograph was taken by Aubrey Powell and is hinted to be based upon the science-fiction novel Childhood’s End. The color separation had first made the children purple, but when corrected the color was transformed into an orange glow. When the album jacket is opened, an image of a man is seen. He is holding one of the children above his head in an almost sacrificial rite directly in front of a ruined citadel. The two children eerily bear a strange resemblance to Robert Plant’s two children, Karac and Carmen. The strange irony in this photograph lies in the fact that Karac would die mysteriously within four years of the album’s release. He was not quite one year of age when this album was produced.
The song lyrics also contained many occult allusions and were printed on the album’s inner sleeve. “Walking side by side with death, the devil mocks their every step” from “No Quarter” would effectively serve as a chilling premonition of the terrible tragedies yet to befall the band. In “The Ocean” Plant supposedly sings, “Got a hellhound on my trail ’cause it’s hell I’m headed for.” Strangely enough, by invoking the Robert Johnson lyric, Robert Plant would be the first member of the band to be devastated by tragedy. Unfortunately, this is a misheard lyric and an urban legend. It plays very nicely with the Robert Johnson connection; however, the actual lyric is said to be, “Got a date, I can’t be late, for the high hopes hailla ball.”
Take a Walk on the Dark Side Page 12