Led Zeppelin - Houses of the Holy - Review

Songs: The Song Remains the Same, The Rain Song, Over the Hills and Far Away, The Crunge, Dancing Days, D'yer Maker, No Quarter, The Ocean.

Review:

End 1972/Begin 1973 the band discussed the plans for their new (fifth) Album. I feel they might have entertained a.o. the following thoughts: First of all, their Album IV had been a huge success so it would be wise to maintain a similar structure. On the other hand the band had grown as song writers, musicians and producers and was eager to try new roads. And thirdly, I think they just wanted to make a fun album. As a result, Houses of the Holy was launched on March 28, 1973. It is the first album of the band with only original material. It features lots of layered guitar riffs but is mostly driven by the rhythm section of the band. The lyrics are more mature and the album is extremely diverse with Rock, Prog-Rock, Folk, Reggae, Funk, Blues and Doo-Wop. And above all, it's got a Feel Good atmosphere. If I would have a point of criticism, it would be the way Robert Plant's voice is produced. Because in all honesty he sounds like a nervous chipmunk from time to time. I don't know why this was done as Live Albums show that Robert could master the songs in a normal matter. But then again, nothing is perfect isn't it!

The Album starts off with the fast, furious, thundering The Song Remains the Same, followed without pause by the beautiful, moody and almost acoustic The Rain Song. Robert sounds great here for most of the time. It's one of my favorite Led songs. It is followed by the driving rocker Over the Hills and Far Away that is another good example of the bands trade mark songs that combine acoustic beauty with Power Rock. The Crunge is a highly funky and funny James Brown pastiche and it shows the band from their most easy going and fun side. Dancing Days is one of their Classic Hard Rockers with a nice slide guitar and synthesizers. It's almost impossible to sit still while listening to this song. A lot of people have issues with D'yer Maker (Jamaica) but to me it's just a happy reggae ditty. Quite inoffensive really. Great drums by the way. It is followed by my personal all time favorite Led song, the jazzy, bluesy No Quarters. It's a so called Nordic epic about Viking warriors and the death and fear they brought wherever they roamed. It sounds very realistic and the combination of Jimmy's spooky riff, John Paul's icy keyboards and Robert's depressive vocals literally make me shiver every time I hear the song. This is pure Rock Heaven for me! I would have wished the album to stop after No Quarter but we still get The Ocean that seems a bit out of place. It's not bad as such and it swings in a sufficient way, but I don't know. Maybe it should have been programmed between Over the Hills and Far Away and The Crunge. 

So, while Houses of the Holy is not the band's best album in my opinion, it has a very high entertainment value and it gets lots of spins on my CD player, if only for No Quarter!

Rating: ********* (9 out of 10)

Black = Good Songs

Green = Great Songs

Red = Could Be Better

Who should buy this Record:  Everybody!!  Led Zeppelin’s Most Fun Album and one of the Classic Rock Albums of All Time. 

   

Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin IV - Review

Songs: Black Dog, Rock and Roll, The Battle of Evermore, Stairway To Heaven, Misty Mountain Hop, Four Sticks, Going To California, When the Levee Breaks.

Comments:

Is there anything that can be said about Led Zeppelin’s 4^th -and probably most famous Album? To be able to give a more or less objective opinion on Four Symbols or Runes or Zosa as the Album is also often called I might try not to consider the following facts:

·      Robert Plant is a Cock-Rocker who is often overdoing the wailing and showing off;

·      Led Zeppelin’s lyrics generally suck;

·      The songs on this Album get constant day to day Airplay on Classic Rock radio stations;

·      A couple of songs on the Album are not that great.

If I do that this Album would score 10 out of 10. Because no band was able to release such an Album back in 1971. Led Zeppelin has been often accused of stealing riffs from old blues songs but who didn’t. Rock & Roll and Blues only have so many possible musical combinations! It’s more how you play it than what you play and Led Zeppelin played like no band before them. And many tried to imitate them afterwards but few, if any, came close. Together with Led Zeppelin I, IV is my favorite Led Album. They are just completely different. The Debut Album is a very coherent album and the songs complement each other in an extraordinary manner. It’s almost like a perfect jam during a very inspired live show.

Led Zeppelin IV is not like that. It’s much more a collection of mostly great songs put together in no particular order. It’s almost like a Greatest Hits Album. One of the reasons for this is that the band had more time to concentrate on actually writing songs of their own. This Album shows Led Zeppelin on the top of their song-writing capabilities with Stairway to Heaven as the undisputed crown on their work. If they would have stopped here they would have been called as great as the Beatles and the Stones by everybody but they didn’t and most of their later work is simply not on par with their first 4 albums.

Well let’s have a look at the individual songs then, as they are more important than the sum of the total:

The Album kicks off with the confident dark rocker Black Dog quite possibly written as an ode to Peter Green, the founder of Fleetwood Mac. The stop and go moments in the song do show similarity with Oh Well. Black Dog is not a great song but it’s loud, raw and hard and it’s a good opener.

The second song, Rock & Roll, to me represents all that Classic (Hard) Rock is about. It’s based on Rock and Roll and boogie from the fifties but played in a fast and furious way. With pounding drums, howling guitars and screaming vocals, in short everything that parents in those days were afraid of but their children adored.

The Battle of Evermore is a song that divides even the Leddest of the Fans. Some think it’s better than Stairway and some think it’s not that good. In my opinion it’s certainly pretentious but not in a bad way. I like these medieval style songs and since it’s about War, howling and wailing do not seem out of line here. And Jimmy plays a wonderful mandolin. The song also benefits froms the vocals of Sandy Denny.

I can’t find words to describe Stairway to Heaven. The melody is stunningly beautiful, Robert is actually singing, Page is great on acoustic guitar and the combination of a soft and a loud part is one of the, if not the, main trademarks of Led Zeppelin. Although I would have loved the soft part to be longer. But then we might have missed one of the best guitar solos in Rock & Roll history. It’s the song that got me really interested in Rock Music in the first place and I don’t think I’m the only one!

It’s quite a change from Stairway to Misty Mountain Hop. It’s more of a groove or chant or almost rap, set against a mixture of Arabic Music and Blues. It’s not a great song but it’s still listenable.

Four Sticks is the only song on the album I could easily live without although there is some great drumming going on. But the riff, although funky, is a bit boring and the song, well, is nothing special.

My favorite all time Led Zeppelin folk song must be the hippie Going to California, based on Joni Mitchell’s song California. 

The album closes with the unbelievable and scary When the Levee Breaks. Yes, it’s a bit too long and it does gets monotonous after five minutes or so. But it’s a great Doom Blues with these hard pounding drums, the great slide guitar and Robert’s Harmonica. Never heard a song like that before or after. I think it’s quite unique.

So after the more laid-back and folksy Led Zeppelin III, the Led was back with an album full of heavy metal rock with some mystical folk and Louisiana blues thrown in for good measure. The fans adored it and it went to #1 all around the world. And it really stood up to the test of time. For me the band reached the highest point in their careers. In terms of songwriting, in terms of mastering their instruments and in terms of production. They would go on making nice songs from here on but never again an album like this!

So I would have given this album 10 points out of 10. But let’s be honest, Robert Plant is a Cock Rocker and he does overdo the wailing and howling from time to time. And the lyrics do suck for most of the time. And I’ve heard all these songs already a thousand times before. And I’m not that fond of Misty Mountain Hop and Four Sticks although they are certainly not as bad as some would lead us to believe. So in the end it’s a very solid 9 for one of the greatest Classic Rock Albums of all time!

Rating: ********* (9 out of 10)

Black = Good Songs

Green = Great Songs

Red = Could Be Better

Who should buy this Record:  Everybody!!  One of Led Zeppelin’s Best Album and one of the true Classic Rock Albums of All Time. Get It Now!

Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin III - Review

Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin III - 1970

Songs: Immigrant Song, Friends, Celebration Day, Since I've Been Loving You, Out On The Tiles, Gallow's Pole,Tangerine, That's the Way, Bron-Y-Aur Stomp, Hats Of To(Roy) Harper

Type of Music: Rock, Folk Rock and Blues with tiny bits of Glam Rock and Country

Comments:

After the huge success of the first two albums, I'm sure Jimmy and Robert called for a band meeting. Because they had to decide what to do musically. They could of course continue in the same style as Led Zeppelin I & II (Rock and Blues) with the danger that people would grow tired or try out some new directions with the danger of scaring off the old fans. I think they also wanted to show their fans they could write some music of their own without having to look for old blues songs. In the end the Band reached a compromise. I think that Jimmy and John got one side (of the original Album) that would be filled with Rock and Blues and Robert and (part of) Jimmy got the other side, basically filled with folk rock. I wouldn't go so far as to call this Robert's Album because Jimmy had already flirted with Folk music in his Yardbirds days but it is a fact that Robert's later solo-work is much more in line with Led Zeppelin III, than with I and II.

Led Zeppelin III tends to be the " forgotten" album as it was released between the top albums II and IV. Part of this is understandable as the fans of the first hour had expected the third album to be more in line with I and II. But Led Zeppelin III has aged well and with time most fans started to discover the jewels hidden on this Album. Today, there are numerous fans who rank it amongst their favourite Led albums. There is a reason for that namely the intrinsic quality of most of the songs. Let's have a look at them.

The album starts off with one of my favourite Led rockers. I don't care where they got the riff for the Nordic inspired Immigrant Song but it's timeless and Robert's vocals are great here. It had the same impact on me in those days as Paranoid by Black Sabbath. The text is an indication that the band paid more attention to the lyrics when compared to the previous Album. There are two more rockers on III, Celebration Day and the funky offbeat Out on the Tiles. Both are good although not spectacular. The first is a bit of a Glam Rocker that would have fitted on an Album from say T. Rex or David Bowie or the Sweet from the early seventies. The latter however should get much more attention than it usually does. However, they can't beat "Immigrant Song" in my opinion. 

Then we have the two blues songs on the Album. The absolute cracker Since I've Been Loving You and the weird and forgettable Hats Off to (Roy) Harper. The first of the two however is one of the all time great blues performances by any band in rock history. It would have fitted perfectly on their Debut Album. As it is, it forms a welcome interlude between the rockers and the folk. It's a very tight song with great vocals by Robert and an excellent solo from Jimmy that would be the inspiration for many solos in the eighties. 

Don't you consider Friends a rocker I hear you ask? Well yes, it is, but it's much more complex and almost psychedelic and it has grown a lot on me. For a number of years I considered it to be okay but nothing more but I've come to really appreciate this more experimental song with its unusual rhythm and great acoustic guitar from Jimmy. Today I consider it one of the highlights of the Album. 

That leaves us with the acoustic Folk Section. Gallow's Pole starts off slowly but when it gets underway there is no way of stopping it. Some country picking going on there as well if you pay close attention. And who of you is not tapping along with the country-folk rocker Bron-y-Aur Stomp? Impossible to sit still. And finally Tangerine and That's the Way, two beautiful folk/pop/rock songs that I consider to be a couple of the Led's finest moments. 

I know, Robert's vocals are a bit cocky from time to time as usual, but on this album it does not scare me off that much. Maybe a bit at the end of Gallows Pole. The Album still takes us back a bit to Led Zeppelin I and II but it also shows us some new directions without getting too eclectic as Houses of the Holy. 

There are people who have their reservations about this album and sometimes I do miss a bit of the force and the emotion that made Led Zeppelin I such a great record. Still, I consider it to be the hidden gem in the Led's work and it deserves a solid 8. 

Rating: ******** (8 out of 10)

Black = Good Songs

Green = Great Songs

Red = Could Be Better

Who should buy this Record:  Everybody!! A great Folk-Rock Album with excellent songs.

Jan van den Ende                    

April 2012

Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin II - Review

Songs: Whole Lotta Love, What Is And What Should Never Be, The Lemon Song, Thank You, Heartbreaker, Living Loving Maid (She’s Just a Woman), Ramble On, Moby Dick, Bring It On Home

Comments: Let’s go back for a moment to the debut Album. The cover of the album is really provoking. Of course it shows the burning Zeppelin “ Hindenburg” and you could argue that it symbolises a new band breaking into the seventies with full might. But in the end it represents the Phallus Erectus. Robert Plant like Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull fame was obsessed by it and it would be a great influence in the Led’s work.

After the release of their first album the band started touring in the UK and the USA. As always there was the commercial urge to produce a follow up so during the tour the band got into the studios in London, New York and Los Angeles from time to time to record. This rush basically had three important consequences:

1.       There simply wasn’t enough time to record only new material. So the band used pieces of existing blues material that were part of their live shows. A lot has been said about them ripping up blues artists but I don’t see any problem there as it happens all the time in the music industry. I do think however they should have given sufficient credit to the authors;
2.       The Sound Quality got a bit muddy. Again, much has been said about that. The original record suffered a bit from it but the re-mastered version released in 1994 is of excellent quality;
3.       Since there was not enough time to produce layers upon layers, the music was crisp, energetic and very much to the point. 

The last observation becomes immediately clear when the Album Opener Whole Lotta Love (# 4 Billboard) breaks out the loudspeakers. A Great riff, great bass and great drums. A real explosion! I graduated from high school back in 1970 and this album was one of my presents alongside Santana’s first Album and Pearl by Janis Joplin. We played these records all day and all night while drinking a “couple” of beers. Yeah, I know, the middle part of Whole is a bit too long although it sounds rather cool when you listen to it with your headphones on. And Robert Plant made good his promise on the cover of the debut Album and had his first recorded orgasm. This part sounds a bit dated today but in 1969 we all loved it. Nobody had ever done that before.

In my opinion, What Is And What Should Never Be is the best track on the Album. It’s got everything that makes Led Zeppelins music so interesting. It’s dark and it’s light, it’s quiet and it’s loud and these combinations work perfect here. I suppose you could call it a ballad and as such it could have done without the screaming part. But I like it the way it is. It’s different and special. Great Song.

Robert Plant & the Squeezed Lemons then perform The Lemon Song. The band used a number of old blues classics and glued them together. It’s not a great song but it’s certainly interesting and the bass playing is amazing. As far as I could ascertain, Robert had his second and last musical orgasm here on Led Zeppelin II and even seemed to fall out of bed during the final stages.  

Thank You is a beautiful pop song with childish lyrics but with a great feeling to it. It was written for Robert’s wife Maureen and I suppose she was very touched by it. On the other hand there were these bands of groupies awaiting Robert after each concert so I’m not so sure what really happened when the mountains crumbled to the sea.

The songs Heartbreaker and Living Loving Maid are usually played together as almost one song and that works fine. Heartbreaker is a great Hard Rock Riff and one of the high marks of the Album. Jimmy really shines here. Living Loving Maid is a quite simple fast rocker but it’s well done and to the point.

Ramble On is a kind of folk-rock song that people either like or hate. I like the guitar playing a lot, am confused by the silly lyrics and annoyed with Robert’s screaming. But it’s not a bad song. It should have been a Single release but the band wasn’t into that sort of stuff. At least not at that point in time.

How many words would have been written about the drum solo in Moby Dick. It’s too long but in 1969 everybody included a drum solo on their albums so what the heck. Let’s forgive them for always and forever shall we? The song has a great Riff!

And finally there’s Bring It On Home, apparently sung by Robert through his harmonica or maybe some other gadget. You could argue the band was trying to sound as an authentic blues band or you could say they were trying to see if they could get away with anything. I think it’s okay although it might have fitted better on the debut album.

And that’s it, Led’s Second Album. In my opinion it’s a great album, just as good as the band's first effort. But it’s also completely different. The first album was a coherent Blues album with prog-rock and folk influences. This one however is a collection of great songs and a crossover of Hard Rock and Heavy Metal with the occasional references to the blues and a bit of folk. All the guys played extremely hungry and eager on this record with great results. If anything, the lyrics are a bit simple and dull but the music makes you forget that for most of the time. The Album meant the commercial and artistic breakthrough for the band. The cover of the album seems to confirm that with the Phallus seemingly exploding. Look out world, The Led is out!

Type of Music: Hard Rock and Heavy Metal mixed with bits and pieces of Progressive Rock, Blues and Folk.

Rating: ********* (9 out of 10)

Black = Good Songs

Green = Great Songs

Red = Could Be Better

Sound Quality: Good. Be sure to get the re-mastered version.

Chart Success: The album made it to number 1 in the Billboard Album Top 200.

Who should buy this Record:  Everybody!!  Led Zeppelin’s Breakthrough Album and one of the true Classic Rock Albums of All Time. Get It Now!

Jan van den Ende                                   March 2012