Everything about Led Zeppelin Album totally explained
Led Zeppelin is the eponymous debut album of
English hard rock band,
Led Zeppelin. It was recorded in October 1968 at
Olympic Studios in
London and released on
Atlantic Records on
January 12,
1969. The album featured integral contributions from each of the group's four musicians and established Led Zeppelin's unique fusion of
blues and
rock.
Led Zeppelin also created a large and devoted following for the band, with their unique
heavy metal and
psychedelic rock sound endearing them to a section of the
counterculture on both sides of the
Atlantic.
Background
In August 1968, the
English rock group
The Yardbirds had completely disbanded. Guitarist
Jimmy Page, The Yardbirds' sole remaining member, was left with rights to the group’s name and contractual obligations for a series of concerts in
Scandinavia. For his new band, Page recruited bassist
John Paul Jones, vocalist
Robert Plant and drummer
John Bonham. During September 1968, the group
toured Scandinavia as The New Yardbirds, performing some old Yardbirds material as well as new songs such as "
Communication Breakdown", "
I Can't Quit You Baby", "
You Shook Me", "
Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" and "
How Many More Times". The month after they returned to England, October 1968, Page changed the band's name to "
Led Zeppelin", and the group entered the studio to record their debut album.
Recording and production
Recording sessions
In an interview for the
Led Zeppelin Profiled radio promo CD (1990), Page said that the album took only about 36 hours of studio time (over a span of a few weeks) to create (including mixing), adding that he knows this because of the amount charged on the studio bill. One of the primary reasons for the short recording time was that the material selected for the album had been well rehearsed and pre-arranged by the band on Led Zeppelin's
tour of Scandinavia in September 1968. As Page explained:
Atlantic Records, Page and Led Zeppelin manager
Peter Grant paid for the sessions entirely themselves, thus there was no record company money to waste on excessive studio time. In another interview, Page revealed that the recording of the first album was entirely self-funded in order to ensure that it would be free from undue influence exerted by the record company:
Fender Telecaster, a gift from Jeff Beck after Page recommended his boyhood friend to the Yardbirds in 1965 as potential replacement for
Eric Clapton on lead guitar. Page played the Telecaster as his main stage guitar in the band's early shows. He still owns the guitar but retired it after a friend repainted it to a less flattering design and it's currently locked away. He eventually switched to a 1959
Gibson Les Paul given to him by
Joe Walsh. His Gibson Les Paul Black Beauty, with 3 pickups, was stolen in on
the band's
Spring 1970 North American Tour. This gave him some of the distinct guitar tones on
Led Zeppelin II.
Page also used a Gibson J-200, borrowed from
Big Jim Sullivan, for the album's acoustic tracks.
Production
Led Zeppelin was produced by Jimmy Page and engineered by
Glyn Johns, who had previously worked with
The Beatles,
The Rolling Stones and
The Who. The album was recorded on an analog 4-track machine, which helped to give the record its warm sound. Page reportedly used natural room ambience to enhance the reverb and recording texture on the record, demonstrating the innovations in sound recording he'd learned during his session days. Up until the late 1960s, most music producers placed
microphones directly in front of the
amplifiers and drums. For
Led Zeppelin Page developed the idea of placing an additional microphone some distance from the amplifier (as far as twenty feet) and then recording the balance between the two. By adopting this "distance equals depth" technique, Page became one of the first producers to record a band's "ambient sound" -- the distance of a note's time-lag from one end of the room to the other.
Another notable feature of the album was the "leakage" on the recordings of Robert Plant's vocals. In an interview Page gave to
Guitar World magazine, Page stated that "Robert's voice was extremely powerful and, as a result, would get on some of the other tracks. But oddly, the leakage sounds intentional."
On the track "
You Shook Me", Page used his "
backward echo" technique, which involved hearing the echo before the main sound instead of after it, achieved by turning the tape over and employing the echo on a spare track, then turning the tape back over again to get the echo preceding the signal. Page had originally developed the method when recording the single "Ten Little Indians" with
The Yardbirds in 1967.
The album was one of the new breed of stereo only releases, as up until 1969 most albums were available as both mono and stereo versions.
Album artwork
Led Zeppelin's front cover, which was chosen by Page, features a black-and-white image of the burning
Hindenburg airship. The image refers to the origin of the band's name itself: as the story goes, when Page,
Jeff Beck and
The Who's
Keith Moon and
John Entwistle were discussing the idea of forming a group, Moon joked, "It would probably go over like a lead balloon". To which Entwistle allegedly replied, "...a Lead Zeppelin!" The album's back cover features a photograph of the band taken by former-Yardbird
Chris Dreja. The entire design of the album's sleeve was coordinated by
George Hardie, with whom the band would continue to collaborate for future sleeves.
Hardie recalled that he originally offered the band a design based on an old club sign in San Francisco—a multi-sequential image of a
phallic zeppelin airship up in the clouds. Page declined but it was retained as the logo for the back cover of Led Zeppelin's first two albums and a number of early press advertisements. During the first few weeks of release in the UK, the sleeve featured the band's name and the
Atlantic logo in turquoise. When this was switched to the now-common orange print later in the year, the turquoise-printed sleeve became a
collector's item.
Led Zeppelin's album cover received widespread attention when, at a
28 February 1970 gig in
Copenhagen, the band were billed as "
The Nobs" as the result of a threat of legal action from aristocrat Eva von Zeppelin (a relative of the creator of the
Zeppelin aircraft), who, upon seeing the logo of the
Hindenburg crashing in flames, threatened to have the show pulled off the air.
Music
The conceptual originality of the album was displayed on tracks such as "
Good Times Bad Times" and "
Communication Breakdown", which had a unique and distinctively heavy sound new to the ears of young music-buyers in the late-1960s. "Communication Breakdown" would become monumental in its influence: In the documentary "Ramones - The True Story", Page's sped up, downstroke guitar riff is cited as guitarist
Johnny Ramone's inspiration for - and basis of - his punk-defining, strictly downstroke guitar strumming.
Led Zeppelin also featured delicate
steel-string acoustic guitar by Page on "
Black Mountain Side", and a combination of acoustic and electric approaches on their adaptation of "
Babe I'm Gonna Leave You".
"
Dazed and Confused" is arguably the album's centerpiece: a foreboding arrangement featuring a descending bass line from Jones, heavy drumming from Bonham and some powerful guitar riffs and soloing from Page. It also showcased Page playing guitar with a cello bow (an idea suggested by
David McCallum Sr., whom Page had met while doing
studio session work). The bowed guitar in the middle section of the song brought psychedelic rock to experimental new heights, especially in extended stage versions, building on Page's earlier renderings of the song during the latter days of
The Yardbirds. "Dazed and Confused" would become Led Zeppelin's signature performance piece for years to come.
The bowed guitar technique is also used on "
How Many More Times", a song which features a "Bolero" riff and a broken-down noise section in which Robert Plant howls
Albert King's "The Hunter" (a blues song popularised by singer Koko Taylor).
Many of Led Zeppelin's earliest songs were based on blues standards, and the album also included three songs composed by others: "
You Shook Me" and "
I Can't Quit You Baby", both by
blues artist
Willie Dixon; and "
Babe I'm Gonna Leave You". Regarding the last of these, at the time guitarist
Jimmy Page mistakenly believed he was adapting a traditional
folk song he'd heard on a Joan Baez record, but this was corrected on subsequent rereleases after it was revealed that the song was composed by
Anne Bredon in the 1950s. Dixon, on the other hand, received proper credit as the composer of his two songs on this album (although "You Shook Me" would later be additionally credited to
J. B. Lenoir) but would go on to settle out of court with Led Zeppelin over partial use of other material of his on Plant's lyrics to "
Whole Lotta Love". On "You Shook Me", Plant vocally mimics Page's guitar effects - a metallicised version of the "
call and response" blues technique.
Jeff Beck had previously recorded "You Shook Me" for his album,
Truth, and accused Page of stealing his idea. With
John Paul Jones and drummer
Keith Moon of
The Who, Page had played on (and says he arranged) "Beck's Bolero", an instrumental on
Truth that would be grooved into the mix of the
Led Zeppelin jam "How Many More Times". These cross-pollinations led to a rift between Beck and Page, who had played in the Yardbirds together and been friends since childhood. In fact, it was Page who first suggested Beck for the Yardbirds' guitarist position when he was contacted by the band after
Eric Clapton's departure.
In an interview he gave in 1975, Page offered his own perspective on the album's music:
Success and critical acclaim
The album was advertised in selected music papers under the slogan "Led Zeppelin - the only way to fly". It initially received poor reviews. In a stinging assessment,
Rolling Stone magazine asserted that the band offered "little that its twin, the
Jeff Beck Group, didn't say as well or better three months ago". It also called Plant "as foppish as
Rod Stewart, but nowhere near so exciting". As was noted by rock journalist
Cameron Crowe years later:
first U.S. concert tour. Before that, Atlantic Records had distributed a few hundred advance white label copies to key radio stations and reviewers. A positive reaction to its contents, coupled with a good reaction to the band's opening concerts, resulted in the album generating 50,000 advance orders. It stayed on the Billboard chart for 73 weeks and held a 79-week run on the
British chart. By 1975 it had grossed $7,000,000.
The success and influence of the album is today widely acknowledged, even amongst those critics who were initially sceptical. In 2006, for example,
Rolling Stone stated that
According to Lewis
In 2003 the
TV network VH1 named
Led Zeppelin the 44th greatest album of all time. It is widely regarded as marking a significant turning point in the evolution of
hard rock and
heavy metal.
Accolades
* denotes an unordered list
Track listing
Side one
"Good Times Bad Times" (Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, John Bonham) – 2:46
"Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" (Robert Plant, Page, Anne Bredon) – 6:41
"You Shook Me" (Willie Dixon, J. B. Lenoir) – 6:28
"Dazed and Confused" (Page) – 6:26
Side two
"Your Time Is Gonna Come" (Page, Jones) – 4:34
"Black Mountain Side" (Page) – 2:14
"Communication Breakdown" (Page, Jones, Bonham) – 2:27
"I Can't Quit You Baby" (Dixon) – 4:42
"How Many More Times" (Page, Jones, Bonham) – 8:28 (listed as 3:30 on record sleeve deliberately by Jimmy Page in order to trick radio stations into playing the song.)
Robert Plant participated in songwriting, but wasn't given credit due to unexpired contractual obligations.
Some cassette versions of the album reversed the order of the sides. For these versions, side one began with "Your Time Is Gonna Come" and ended with "How Many More Times", while side two began with "Good Times, Bad Times" and ended with "Dazed and Confused".
Personnel
Led Zeppelin
Jimmy Page – acoustic, electric, and pedal steel guitar, backing vocals, producer
Robert Plant – vocals, harmonica
John Paul Jones – bass guitar, organ, keyboards, backing vocals
John Bonham – drums, timpani, backing vocalsAdditional personnel
Viram Jasani – tabla on Black Mountain Side
Chris Dreja – back liner photo
George Hardie – cover design
Glyn Johns – engineer, mixing
Peter Grant – executive producer
CD Mastering engineers
Barry Diament - original CD (mid-1980s)
George Marino - remastered CD (1990)
Chart positions
Album
| Year |
Chart |
Position |
| 1969 |
Billboard Pop Albums (Billboard 200) |
10 |
Singles
| Year |
Single |
Chart |
Position |
| 1969 |
"Good Times Bad Times" |
Billboard Pop Singles (Billboard Hot 100) |
80 |
Certifications
| Certifier |
Certification |
Sales |
| RIAA (U.S.) |
8x Platinum |
8,000,000 |
Release details
| Country |
Date |
Label |
Format |
Catalog |
| US |
1969 |
Atlantic |
LP (mono version) |
8216 |
| US |
1969 |
Atlantic |
LP |
SD8216 |
| UK |
1969 |
Atlantic |
LP |
588171 |
| Japan |
1969 |
Atlantic |
LP |
MT1067 |
| US |
1971 |
Atlantic |
LP (reissue) |
7208 |
| UK |
1972 |
Atlantic |
LP (reissue) |
K40031 |
| Japan |
1972 |
Atlantic |
LP (reissue) |
P8041A |
| US |
1977 |
Atlantic |
LP (reissue) |
SD19126 |
| US |
1982 |
Atlantic |
CD |
SD19126 |
| US |
1994 |
Atlantic |
CD (remastered) |
82632 |
| Japan |
2003 |
Atlantic |
CD (replica sleeve) |
208264 |
| US |
2006 |
Atlantic |
LP (200g audiophile reissue) |
SD8216 |
Further Information
Get more info on 'Led Zeppelin Album'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://led_zeppelin__album.totallyexplained.com">Led Zeppelin (album) Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
