Editor’s Observe: The talk over which Led Zeppelin album rocks hardest will most likely by no means finish. In that spirit, Jim Shahen solid his vote a 12 months in the past immediately for the band’s sixth album, 1975’s Bodily Graffiti, because the file celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. We revisit his essay immediately as Bodily Graffiti begins its push for 50. Agree with him? Disagree? Tell us which album you suppose is the definitive Led Zeppelin album.
Two questions for you.
The subject is Led Zeppelin.
First: What phrases would you utilize to explain the band?
My reply: Monolithic. Mighty. Musically formidable. Sneakily various. Technically good.
Second: What’s the definitive Led Zeppelin album, the one which finest describes what they’re all about?
Doable solutions: Led Zeppelin II. Stable alternative. Laborious to select in opposition to an LP that has “Complete Lotta Love”, “Heartbreaker”, “Moby Dick”, a tune using a lemon as a sexual euphemism, and a few Tolkien-inspired fare. It’s strong, however sadly it’s incorrect.
Led Zeppelin IV. The most secure, and arguably the most well-liked, alternative. Has all of the staples of basic rock radio, like “Black Canine”, “Rock and Roll”, and “Stairway to Heaven”. You additionally get the folkie facet with “Going to California”, two extra good Lord of the Rings homages in “Battle of Evermore” and the trippy “Misty Mountain Hop”, plus it closes out with the swaggering blues steel of “When the Levee Breaks”. Certain, you may play it secure, decide Led Zeppelin IV and really feel assured in your determination. However, once more, it’s the flawed reply.
My (one hundred pc right) reply: Physical Graffiti, the double LP that celebrates its fiftieth anniversary immediately. Right here’s why.
Led Zeppelin by no means did something small. At its finest, the group went for grand, sprawling inventive statements, generally to the purpose of extra. A double album, by its very nature, is strictly that. It lends itself to stylistic detours and sonic experimentation. However in recording one, an artist runs the chance of their ego inspiring boredom and diminishing what may have been an awesome single LP by tacking on a bunch of filler. However if you’re Led Zeppelin, an act that had already spent half a decade cohesively weaving collectively strands of exhausting rock, blues, country-folk, and funk into your sound, a double album is a perfect outlet to chop free.
And that’s what makes Bodily Graffiti so particular, so quintessentially Zeppelin. Over the course of 15 tracks, the band showcase the complete vary of their capabilities, pursuits, and ambitions.
You’ve acquired the comparatively simple rockers that first introduced Zeppelin to prominence. “The Rover” is anchored by considered one of Jimmy Page’s crunchiest guitar grooves and a pummeling beat from John Bonham. Then there’s “The Wanton Music”, a blistering 4 minutes of Zeppelin firing on all cylinders. Web page uncorks considered one of his most torrid riffs, the rhythm part hits you within the intestine, and Robert Plant’s screaming vocals are godlike. And attractive. Very, very attractive. In truth, if there’s one lyrical thread that runs by Bodily Graffiti, it’s simply how libidinous Plant was between the years 1972 and 1975 and the actually superior and awesomely unsubtle lengths he was keen to go to ascribe phrases to it.
The swaggering glam blues of “Sick Once more” is about some groupies the fellows, ahem, knew from Los Angeles. Within the palms of a lesser singer, “Boogie with Stu” could be a forgettable Ritchie Valens-indebted, boogeyin’ jam session. As an alternative, Plant’s squealing admonitions that he “don’t need no tutti-frutti, no lollipop, come on child simply rock” make it one of many highlights of the LP’s last facet. And there are a pair of tracks rooted in metaphor that put the sooner referenced “The Lemon Music” to disgrace, musically and lyrically.
First is the opening observe of Bodily Graffiti, “Custard Pie”. John Paul Jones mimics Web page’s dirty lick on the electrical clavinet, offering the perfect backdrop for Plant to thirstily entreat some unhappy mama to ditch her man and permit him to “chew on a bit of your custard pie.” Like a lot of the band’s work, it’s rooted in blues tropes (on this case, that of the backdoor man), however whereas songs like “The Lemon Music” or “Since I’ve Been Loving You” are comparatively formalist when it comes to adhering to blues constructs, it’s on “Custard Pie” that Zeppelin actually took their blues background and turned it into one thing uniquely their very own.
Zeppelin takes this funkier spin on the blues even additional only a handful of songs later, leading to what is that this author’s favourite observe on the album. “Trampled Underneath Foot” takes its lyrical idea from Robert Johnson’s “Terraplane Blues” and warps it into one thing wild. Jones is again on the clavinet. Drawing inspiration from Stevie Marvel’s “Superstition”, he performs some frenetic, red-hot funk. It’s the muse of the tune, accentuated by Web page’s wah-wah-filtered fretwork. Excessive of that, Plant gloriously preens and leers and drives the automotive parts-as-sexual-metaphor theme so far as he can.
Whereas Bodily Graffiti is a showcase for Led Zeppelin’s genre-repurposing abilities, it’s additionally residence to their best interpretation of the blues with “In My Time of Dying”. The piece begins on a foreboding be aware and slowly builds pressure with its acoustic nation blues deathbed lamentations. Then the strain explodes when the bombastic heavy blues-rock kicks in, and the tune’s narrator is lastly going through his demise. Clocking in at 11 minutes, “In My Time of Dying” is sweeping, dramatic, and highly effective, and one of many boldest musical moments within the group’s profession.
Simply on the idea of what’s been talked about up to now, the case for Bodily Graffiti as THE Led Zeppelin album is almost made. The band refined its hypersexual, riff-rock and took it to new ranges. On “Homes of the Holy” and “Down by the Seaside”, Web page and Plant reveal a knack and appreciation for traditional pop hooks and buildings. All that’s actually wanted is the inclusion of considered one of Zeppelin’s definitive hits to deliver this reply on residence. And a double LP that’s gone 16 x platinum most likely has a type of, proper?
Proper.
Bodily Graffiti has “Kashmir”. There’s probably not something you possibly can say about “Kashmir” in 2020 that hasn’t already been stated prior to now 50 years, however let’s give it a shot. At first of this, the phrases “stylistic detours,” “sonic experimentation,” and “grand, sprawling inventive statements” had been used. The operatic sweep of “Kashmir”, from Web page’s droning riff to the luxurious string and horn orchestration and the various rhythmic buildings of the tune, is all of that. “Kashmir” is swirling and mysterious, reliant on un-Zeppelin-like instrumentation and preparations for its hypnotic brilliance.
It’s deeply embedded within the popular culture panorama, serving as a punchline to a Clooney-Pitt-Damon gag in Ocean’s 12 and re-entering the music charts when Puff Daddy sampled it for his hit 1998 single “Come With Me”. In 2014, the reside take from Zeppelin’s 2007 reunion present gained the band its first Grammy. For 50 years, this tune has enchanted and endured, serving as an eight-minute illustration of the magical aura and energy which might be staples of the group’s mythology.
By just about any metric — crucial, industrial, or artistically — “Kashmir” is a grand triumph, a crown jewel within the band’s catalog.
And there’s no higher place for that jewel to be nestled than in the course of the rock legends’ crowning achievement and finest work, Bodily Graffiti.
Choose up a duplicate of Bodily Graffiti here…
Bodily Graffiti Art work
