Led Zeppelin: Classic Or Dud?

Well said. The combination of all those qualities is what makes it so great.

don't really understand the artificial/unplayable statement

While I respect 'When The Levee Breaks' for its musicianship and its fantastic drum sound, it actually does very little for me in comparison to other Zeppelin tracks. I don't think 'When The Levee Breaks' has EVER excited me in the way that 'Achilles Last Stand' has over the years, for example.

c'mon, the slide riff in Levee's chorus is what elevates it to next level

drumsdrumsdrumsdrums

(don't get me wrong,I do love Achille's tho, for its proto-metalness)

'Achilles' has that magnificent drum fill as well!

Presence underrated by many IMO

am still not quite over my horror that ppl voted for 'Friends' as most hated in the tracks poll
so mean

i love that song. Not a huge III stan but hat's one of my favs.

Presence overrated by many more like. Love Achilles, love Tea For One, but if ever an album could use a bit of relief - piano, comedy skit, anything.

iii is p great

that's...the complete opposite of what i would ever want on that album

xpost

i mean it's Zeppelin, not Queen 2

I absolutely LOVE 'Friends' - Page's acoustic guitar playing mixed with that great string arrangement. Superb. Love the way it segues into 'Celebration Day', too.

otm

Presence overrated by many more like. Love Achilles, love Tea For One, but if ever an album could use a bit of relief - piano, comedy skit, anything.

― Ismael Klata, Friday, January 11, 2013 7:17 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That part in 'Nobody's Fault But Mine' where Page is playing the intro riff while Bonham and JPJ go off on that really tight rhythm will never get old!

I absolutely LOVE 'Friends' - Page's acoustic guitar playing mixed with that great string arrangement. Superb. Love the way it segues into 'Celebration Day', too.

Is that strings or a mellotron?

funny i just put zep on this morning for the first time in a long time

i'm in a 10 minute short play right now which uses the Battle of Evermore as the intro song and it's making me yearn for my turntable at the moment (most of my Zep's on pilfered vinyl, y'see)

Is that strings or a mellotron?

― aloo mutter, aloo fatter (WilliamC), Friday, January 11, 2013 7:23 PM (39 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think it's actual strings on that one, rather than a Mellotron!

From Wikipedia...

"Friends" is one of the few Led Zeppelin songs that includes strings. Bass player John Paul Jones did the string arrangement. Some people have expressed surprise at the fact that Jones received no writing credit for this song, given that he was entirely responsible for its string arrangement.[2]
The outro to "Friends" includes a Moog synthesizer, which provides a link to the next track on the album, "Celebration Day". The only known live performance of the song by Led Zeppelin was on 29 September 1971 in Osaka, during the band's Japanese concert tour, as exhibited on a number of Led Zeppelin bootleg recordings of the show. If listened to closely, Page can be heard asking Plant if he wanted to perform the song when John Bonham had returned from unknown activities backstage.

Hahahaha... 'unknown activities backstage'...

iirc the segue from Friends -> Celebration Day is such due to trying to mask a tape error. Quite probably more eloquently explained on the above wiki.

I am in the mood to read a bio -- any rec's on a good Led Zep one?

The studio tea boy inadvertently deleted the Celebration Day intro iirc, before fleeing in fear for his life when he realised what he'd done.

Hammer Of The Gods, VG

Yeah, I've heard that story too... iirc, it was the drums at the beginning that got erased and Jimmy Page had to find some way of patching it up and came up with that Moog tone to join the track together with 'Friends'. For me, it's one of the great happy accidents! Whoever erased those drums deserves a medal.

DVD shocked me with how great they sounded on Kashmir and Achilles, given Page at his heroin peak, Bonzo's heavy boozing and Plant's Zeppelin range long since shot.

don't really understand the artificial/unplayable statement

From Wiki:

Page recorded Plant's harmonica part using the backward echo technique, putting the echo ahead of the sound when mixing, creating a distinct effect.[4]
"When the Levee Breaks" was recorded at a different tempo, then slowed down, explaining the "sludgy" sound, particularly on the harmonica and guitar solos. Because this song was heavily produced in the studio, it was difficult to recreate live; the band only played it a few times in the early stages of their 1975 U.S. Tour, before dropping it for good.

In the May 2008 issue of Uncut Magazine, Page elaborated upon the effects at the end of the song:
Interviewer: How was the swirly effect at the end of "When the Levee Breaks" achieved? I always imagine you sitting there with a joystick...
Page: It's sort of like that, isn't it? It's interesting: On "Levee Breaks" you've got backwards harmonica, backwards echo, phasing, and there's also flanging; and at the end, you get this super-dense sound, in layers, that's all built around the drum track. And you've got Robert, constant in the middle, and everything starts to spiral around him. It's all done with panning.[9]

Also, the drum sound, while achieved practically, is almost impossible to get live, since it's such a product of the recording location.

You can hear the volume fader being (quickly) turned up on the drums when they come in on "Celebration Day", which had to be done since the drums at the beginning of the song had accidently been erased. The segue from Friends is indeed a brilliantly-executed happy accident. I miss analog recording....

really enjoying barney hoskyns' new zep tome, not finished it yet but it's an oral history and it really works.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-I5_-17QKk that Friends performance in Osaka

really enjoying barney hoskyns' new zep tome, not finished it yet but it's an oral history and it really works.

― I had such a fontasy (stevie), Saturday, January 12, 2013 5:20 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Samesies..... I was expecting yet another cash-in Zep puff piece like so many interchangable coffee-table Zep bios that have appeared so frequently over the last decade that seem to use each other as source material. This one is different, going behind and beyond the hackneyed, and is filled with interviews with key people that shaped their career and their music. Highly recommended.

Barney's awesome, so I wasn't surprised to be enjoying it as much as I am. Found Hammer Of The Gods to be empty and sleazy, and couldn't get more than a chapter or two into Richard Cole's own book, which was poorly written and played out like a Confessions Of The Road Manager.

That Richard Cole book is terrible. It was next to the till in HMV for about 2 quid and still wasn't worth it.

The way Coles tells those stories of groupie abuse, it's in a queasy, creepy way that leaves you feeling complicit for reading.

I've heard bad things about Hoskyns' Tom Waits book. I guess Tom Waits put out a call to ask people not to talk to him, and ... nobody talked to him. But he wrote the book anyway.

I'll def get the Zep, though.

I'm imagining this entire book being a passive aggressive goldmine now

"Had ANYBODY ANSWERED MY CALLS, I would have asked what Tom Waits bandmates thought of his performance in Dracula, because I had this really great segue planned, but nooooooooooooooooooooo..."

Seconding the bile over the Cole book. it's presented in the manner of "this is what really happened 'cos I was there", yet rehashes the exact same stories form the Steven Davis book, in roughly the same order with about the same level of detail. Davis should have sued.

The Hoskyns book is really great. Glosses over the stuff that we don't need to read about again (mud shark, hotel robbery, Riot House, etc.) and really focuses on the personalities/psychological makeup of the band and their extended circle.

Cool.

Apparently the Waits book is kind of passive aggressive! Sort of like, well, if you won't verify my queries, I'm going to over-rely on what few sources I have on record.

Hoskyn's book about The Band is great

Seconding the bile over the Cole book. it's presented in the manner of "this is what really happened 'cos I was there", yet rehashes the exact same stories form the Steven Davis book, in roughly the same order with about the same level of detail. Davis should have sued.

Not surprising, since Cole seems to have been Davis' main source of info/gossip/defamation for Hammer of the Gods

I'll hunt down that Hoskyns book, sounds good!

I read Hoskyns' book all about "zoso" and it was quite interesting. Didn't realize how long it was in the can before it could finally be released (after epic and abortive mixing/mastering problems were fixed.) Apparently recording was all done only a few months after III was released.

W/r/t to Hoskyns' Waits book, I don't think its passive-aggressive, though it definitely suffers from a lack of input if not from Waits himself, but people in his band/circle. I mean the book is pretty glowing overall.

Sure, but when faced with conjecture without confirmation, it's a bit of a gamble to just stick with conjecture. I'm mostly shocked at how long the Waits book is given that no one cooperated.

Well, actually there's a ton of stuff from Bones Howe, musicians from the 70s records, old LA cronies, San Diego folk people, etc, mostly its just not a lot of currently associated people, no new stuff from Jarmusch, no Keith Richards, no Smokey Hormel (and actually in some of the emails in the appendix you get the sense that some of these folks wish they could talk to Hoskyns). Hoskyns does mine the interviews he did with Waits in the 85 and 99 pretty deep. You definitely get the sense Waits isn't involved, but I think Hoskyns does a good job of painting a picture overall. It just isn't as good as his Band book or "Waiting for the Sun".

Is it Bones who says he decided to talk because Waits was once basically like family but then he got totally cut off for no reason, with no warning?

Pretty much, Bones does they had a meeting before "Swordfish" where Waits's says he doesn't want to work together anymore and Bones agrees that he wouldn't be right person to produce a record like that, but yeah then they don't see each other again for 10 yrs. Most of the players from the 70s-era kind of have the same story.

When Jimmy Page met Lez Zeppelin

Has anyone seen Jeff Krulik's documentary "Led Zeppelin Played Here"? He interviews people who are convinced they saw Led Zeppelin play the Wheaton Youth Center in Maryland in 1969, a show that has no documentation and does not appear to have actually happened. Same guy who made Heavy Metal Parking Lot.