1. Led Zeppelin - I
2. Led Zeppelin - II
3. Led Zeppelin - IV
4. Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffiti Cd 1
5. Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffiti Cd 2
6. Led Zeppelin - Houses of the Holy
I was listening to some live youtube footage of Led Zeppelin from the late 70s. Goodness they were rough in those days, especially Jimmy Page. During one clip someone in the crowd shouts out "Jimmy you suck" and to be brutally honest they were right. Apparently young Jimmy was ravaged by heroin addiction and it got me thinking about the celebrated rock 'n' roll lifestyle of drugs and sex and (actually very good) rock 'n' roll. But surely if the rock stars of the era really were living such a lifestyle, all the time, they would never have been able to record music or turn up for gigs, let alone play. And here we do have some evidence, but generally it makes me think the stories are exaggerated.
Not much to add to the much celebrated music here. I think there were only 9 Led Zeppelin albums in all – like Fawlty Towers, a case of quality over quantity! There also hasn’t been a huge deluge of outtakes and re-releases and compilations and live albums (thankfully) to dilute their catalogue in the intervening years since their demise in 1980 (the one official live album The Song Remains the Same recorded circa 1973 isn't that great to be honest - I remember buying it before II on the expectation of a 14 minute version of the Top of the Pops theme tune only to be left underwhelmed by a ramshackle jam of Whole Lotta Love).
From their debut in 1969 the style develops from power blues to sophisticated heavy rock to a sort of funky rock 'n' roll (I was most confused on first hearing some of the stop/start tracks on the later albums but they sound ahead of their time now). Page’s guitar stays just the right side of loose and easy on the recordings. I prefer Plant’s voice on the debut, and on the latter albums where he calms a little – I know it was the fashion at the time but the heavy rock scream prevalent on most rock records in the early 70s sounds intrusive and dated now. You can also hear throughout why John Bonham is considered as one of the greatest of rock drummers.
The covers were consistently great too. The top of this post being the haunting Houses of the Holy cover, shot at Northern Ireland's Giant's Causeway. I checked out the cover stars. They were a brother and sister - both now in their 40s.
In those days bands took much care over the presentation of their product. This included gatefold sleeves which ironically Led Zeppelin employed for all their single albums (barring the first) up until their only studio double album Physical Graffiti which was housed in an elaborate single sleeve with inner covers that would show through cut away windows on the front.
Led Zep IV is the one that has achieved mythical status. Whole books have been written on this album alone including this very enjoyable entry in the 33 1/3 series. There has been much analysis on the cover too - famously eschewing either the name of the band or the title of the album except for 4 mysterious symbols:
Without specific permission but with much credit and recommendation which I hope more than compensates I thought I'd reproduce a comprehensive description of the IV cover by Rob Young which appears in his brilliant book on the history of British folk music, Electric Eden:
This artificially aged grain is a common device in the film stock of this period. It is most effectively utilised on one of the best-selling rock albums of the time, which dates from the epicentre of the period.
The famous layered image, which uses the gatefold format to intensify its play of close-up and distant zooms, is also a near-perfect visual counterpoint to the opening of T.S.Eliot's Four Quartets, where the poet meditates on time past and time present being both perhaps present in time future.
No textual clues, just a haggard, bowler-hatted Victorian labourer in a field, stooped with the weight of the faggots bundled on his back. He rests for a moment on a gnarled staff, the ghost of a vanished rural peasantry, now the subject of a kitsch painting that's nailed to layers of faded, peeling wallpaper on a damp cottage wall.
With the wings of the gatefold spread open, we see that the cottage wall is half demolished, and it now stands on a vacant lot overlooking a grimy row of deadbeat, red-brick terraced houses, over which a dove-grey tower block stands monolithic.
The unknown photographer has captured one of those English summers where the clouds never quite let the sun through; even though the bushes are clearly in leaf and flower, the sky is stained with the threatening pink of impending hail.
The tower block is Butterfield Court in Dudley *, one of Birmingham's many suburban outcrops. Birmingham is a creation of the Industrial Revolution, a massive manufacturing city planted in the heart of what was rural England, and which sucked the agricultural workforce into its factories and cramped housing. Positioned on a hillock, Butterfield Court's twenty storeys can, on a clear day, be seen thirty or forty miles away, from the tranquil meadows of Worcestershire and Shropshire: an ever present symbol of urban encroachment. IV's cover illustrates an ongoing social, historical and environmental process.
Someone dies from hunger nearly every day...
...reads the faintly discernable text of a billboard poster for Oxfam, plastered on the side of a terraced house. Elsewhere in the world, famines and hardships continue to blight the lives of millions of feudal workers, even as the fungus of new towns extends its gentrifying footprint. The cottage, the terrace and the tower block: three generations of workers' housing. Even here, the dialogue between country and city, progress and conservation, hangman and daughter is being perpetuated - a "battle for evermore" - in a single, mass-marketed image.
It's a brilliant cover and as Rob Young shows above there is a lot of information that can be gleaned from this picture. A+ for one of those English Language exercises where you had to so describe such a picture.
*Debate has been had at Bamyasi HQ. On checking the location of said Butterfield Court and obtaining photographic evidence it would appear there is a strong case for the infamous block of flats actually being Salisbury Tower in the Ladywood district of Birmingham. Salisbury Tower is clearly a better match:
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| The original shot |
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| Salisbury Tower today |
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| Butterfield Court today |
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