Led Zeppelin
“It’s more like a stream of consciousness.” Jimmy on that solo, from that song, from that album.
While there are shining jewels throughout Led Zeppelin’s catalogue, one of their albums shines from start to finish, as close to rock’n’roll perfection as it’s possible to get. In its 50th year, we take an in-depth look at the power, the glory, the beauty and the majesty that is Led Zeppelin IV.
‘ Hey-hey mama, said the way you move/Gonna make you sweat, gonna make you groove…’ By 1971 we had come to expect explosive opening gambits from Zeppelin albums; Good Times Bad Times, Whole Lotta Love and Immigrant Song had been no slouches. But as a statement of intent, Black Dog was something else: a song that seemed to change the temperature in the room, with Robert Plant’s unadorned shriek announcing that what we were holding in our hands – this strange, archaic-looking vinyl set, with its cover images of peeling wallpaper and an old man gathering twigs – was the only record we needed in our lives from now on. Then came Jimmy Page’s deathless, tempodefying riff… and it was off to the races.
With their first three albums, Led Zeppelin had already covered more ground than most bands manage in a career. There had been the debut’s go-faster and borderline-litigious blues standards. The hard-rock riff encyclopedia of II. The folkrock tumble of III. But it was on IV – or whatever else you wanted to call it – for which the band mostly eschewed the industry studios of London for Hampshire’s Headley Grange, and bent the quirks of that ghostly pile to their own will, that they finally had the head space and omnipotence to become
Led Zeppelin in excelsis.
Of course, the music on IV was rooted in the most ancient of musical forms, from The Battle Of Evermore’s trilling, mistshrouded folk to the Bonzo-battered reimagining of Memphis Minnie’s When The Levee Breaks. But with the four members writing, playing and producing out of their skins – and the sessions flavoured by everything from stray mutts to brushes with the supernatural – IV felt like a work that could not have been created by any other band. Zeppelin were now a genre unto themselves, operating with a confidence that ensured even the album’s softer moments were underpinned by swagger.
Fifty years and more than 37 million sales down the line, it’s fair to say that Led Zeppelin IV started the rolling-boulder momentum that made Zeppelin the defining rock band of the early 70s. Yet it’s the musical legacy that endures. You could mount a credible pub argument for II or Physical Graffiti as the pinnacle of the Zep catalogue, but both of those high points fumble the ball at some point, or have tracks you wouldn’t miss if they weren’t there.
IV is, quite simply The One. Then and now, it comes as close to front-to-back perfection as any record in rock’n’roll: a golden run of eight glorious tracks, as hooky as a greatest hits, but with a depth that means you can still – as we have in the pages that follow – squeeze untold juice from, even a half-century later.