Led Zeppelin (album)

Led Zeppelin is the debut album of the English rock band Led Zeppelin. It was recorded in October 1968 at Olympic Studios in London and released on Atlantic Records on 12 January 1969 in the US and 31 March 1969 in the UK. The album featured integral contributions from each of the group's four musicians and established Led Zeppelin's fusion of blues and rock. Led Zeppelin also created a large and devoted following for the band, with their take on the emerging heavy metal sound endearing them to a section of the counterculture on both sides of the Atlantic.

Although the album initially received negative reviews, it was commercially very successful and has now come to be regarded in a much more positive light by critics. In 2003, the album was ranked number 29 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

Background

Recording and production

Recording sessions

In addition, since the band had not yet signed their deal with Atlantic Records, Page and Zeppelin's manager Peter Grant paid for the sessions entirely themselves, meaning there was no record company money to waste on excessive studio time. In another interview, Page revealed that the self-funding was to ensure artistic freedom, "I wanted artistic control in a vice grip, because I knew exactly what I wanted to do with these fellows. In fact, I financed and completely recorded the first album before going to Atlantic... It wasn't your typical story where you get an advance to make an album—we arrived at Atlantic with tapes in hand... Atlantic's reaction was very positive — I mean they signed us, didn't they?"

The group recorded their songs reportedly for £1,782. Led Zeppelin expert Dave Lewis noted that "[w]ith the possible exception of the 12 hours that the Beatles took to record their first album at Abbey Road, rarely has studio time been used so economically. Led Zeppelin's debut album went on to gross more than £3.5 million, just short of 2,000 times more than they invested!" This was a different guitar from those he favoured for later albums (most notably a Gibson Les Paul). Page played the Telecaster through a Supro amplifier.

Production

Page reportedly used natural room ambience to enhance the reverb and recording texture on the record, demonstrating the innovations in sound recording he had 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 Plant's vocals. In a 1998 Guitar World interview, 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." In 2001, Greg Kot wrote in Rolling Stone that "The cover of Led Zeppelin... shows the Hindenburg airship, in all its phallic glory, going down in flames. The image did a pretty good job of encapsulating the music inside: sex, catastrophe and things blowing up."

Composition

"Dazed and Confused", based on the 1967 Jake Holmes song of the same name, is often considered to be the album's centerpiece; its arrangement features a descending bass line from Jones, heavy drumming from Bonham and distorted guitar riffs and soloing from Page. It also showcased Page playing guitar with a violin bow (an idea suggested by David McCallum Sr., whom Page had met while doing studio session work). This technique was also employed on "How Many More Times", a song which features a "Bolero" riff and an improvised shift in cadence. 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:

For material, we obviously went right down to our blues roots. I still had plenty of Yardbirds riffs left over. By the time Jeff [Beck] did go, it was up to me to come up with a lot of new stuff. It was this thing where [Eric] Clapton set a heavy precedent in the Yardbirds which Beck had to follow and then it was even harder for me, in a way, because the second lead guitarist had suddenly become the first. And I was under pressure to come up with my own riffs. On the first LP I was still heavily influenced by the earlier days. I think it tells a bit, too... It was obvious that somebody had to take the lead, otherwise we'd have all sat around jamming for six months. But after that, on the second LP, you can really hear the group identity coming together.

Plant is credited on the album with "occasional bass". In an interview he gave to Rolling Stone magazine in 2005, Plant made reference to this:

In truth, I was an occasional bass player. It says so on Zeppelin I, next to my name: vocals, harmonica and occasional bass. Very occasionally -- once, I think, since 1968. How in God's name that ended up on the cover is so funny. I'm sure Jonesy [John Paul Jones] didn't like it [laughs]. But I suppose every time he fucked up he could say it was me.

Reception

As was noted by rock journalist Cameron Crowe years later: "It was a time of 'super-groups', of furiously hyped bands who could barely cut it, and Led Zeppelin initially found themselves fighting upstream to prove their authenticity."

However, press reaction to the album was not entirely negative. In Britain the album received a glowing review in the Melody Maker. Chris Welch wrote, in a review titled "Jimmy Page triumphs — Led Zeppelin is a gas!": "their material does not rely on obvious blues riffs, although when they do play them, they avoid the emaciated feebleness of most so-called British blues bands". It stayed on the Billboard chart for 73 weeks and held a 79-week run on the British charts. By 1975 it had grossed $7,000,000.

Legacy

[The album] was pretty much unlike anything else. The arrangements were more sculpted than those of Cream or Jimi Hendrix, and the musicianship wasn't cumbersome like Iron Butterfly's or bombastic like Vanilla Fudge's. The closest comparisons might be to MC5 or the Stooges—both from Michigan—yet neither had the polish or prowess of Led Zeppelin, nor did Led Zeppelin have the political, social or die-hard sensibility of those landmark bands. What they did have, though, was the potential for a mass audience.

According to Lewis:

Time has done nothing to diminish the quality of one of the finest debut albums ever recorded. There's an urgency and enthusiasm about their performance that retains timeless charm. The nine cuts offer a tour de force of powerful yet often subtle dynamics... And let's not forget the fact that with this album, Page virtually invents the guitar riff as a key songwriting component.

In 2003, VH1 named Led Zeppelin the 44th greatest album of all time, while Rolling Stone ranked it 29th on the magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. It is widely regarded as marking a significant turning point in the evolution of hard rock and heavy metal.

Accolades

Track listing

"How Many More Times" was listed as 3:30 on the record sleeve deliberately by Page in order to trick radio stations into playing the song.

It has been said that Plant participated in songwriting but wasn't given credit because of unexpired contractual obligations resulting from his association with CBS Records. |align="center"|11 |- | UK Albums Chart |align="center"|6 |- | US Billboard The 200 Albums Chart |align="center"|10 |- | French Albums Chart |align="center"|115 |- | Japanese Albums Chart |align="center"|36 |- |} {| class="wikitable sortable" !Chart (1970) !align="center"|Peak Position |- | Norwegian Albums Chart |align="center"|16 |- | Spanish Albums Chart |align="center"|1 |- | German Albums Chart |align="center"|32 |- | Australian Go-Set Top 20 Albums Chart |align="center"|9 |- |}

;Singles {|class="wikitable" !Year !Single !Chart !Position |- | 1969 | "Good Times Bad Times" | US Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart (Pop Singles) | align="center"|80 |- |}

Sales certifications

Personnel

;Additional personnel

References

External links

Category:1969 albums Category:Albums produced by Jimmy Page Category:Atlantic Records albums Category:Debut albums Category:English-language albums Category:Grammy Hall of Fame Award recipients Category:Led Zeppelin albums Category:LZ 129 Hindenburg

This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.