Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin (1969)

Release Date: January 13, 1969 (US)/March 31, 1969 (UK)
Label: Atlantic
Length: 44:45
Produced By: Jimmy Page
Rating: 8.7

Review by: Alexander Hellene
Highlights: “Good Times Bad Times,” “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You,” “You Shook Me,” “Dazed and Confused,” “Communication Breakdown,” “I Can’t Quit You Baby”

How do you write about Led Zeppelin in the 21st century? What more can be said? Haven’t they been eulogized and over-intellectualized to death?

Of course. But as hard as it is to find a fresh new angle about the band, it’s just as hard to escape their shadow. If you are a listener to any sort of hard-edged guitar-based music—or most any popular guitar-based music, really—Led Zeppelin did it first and, when they didn’t, in many cases they did it better.

A better questions to ask, then, when revisiting the catalogue of one of rock music’s biggest, brightest, brashest, and best, are: Why should I listen to them now? and, Does Led Zeppelin even matter?

Led Zeppelin is as pure and clear an artistic statement of intent, a proof of concept, as any band has put out. Like Athena from the head of Zeus, Led Zeppelin sprung fully formed out of Jimmy Page’s hirsute cranium in the ashes of his prior bid at rock stardom. No, he didn’t just sit down and pen these tunes in a furious bout of creative frenzy. Two of them are old blues covers of Willie Dixon songs (“You Shook Me” and “I Can’t Quit You”), one is based on (or stole, depending on your perspective) several blues motifs (“How Many More Times”), one was a hard-edged take on Joan Baez’ cover of an Anne Bredon tune (“Babe I’m Gonna Leave You”), and one actually was stolen, nicked from American singer/songwriter Jake Holmes, reworked and embellished by The Yardbirds, and further by Page with his new bandmates (“Dazed and Confused”). In fact, a lot of criticism levied at Led Zeppelin involves their taking without attribution, usually stated involving that they stole from black men, but as we can see here, from album one, they stole from white men and white women, and would even be embroiled in stealing from another white man when their biggest hit was released a few years later. But we’ll get to that. Suffice it to say, good artists copy, great artists steal. Just ask Jeff Beck!

Yes, the story of Led Zeppelin is intertwined with that of Beck. Page was, after all, Beck’s replacement in The Yardbirds, the little group that never quite made it as big as they arguably should have, especially considering the pedigree of their guitar players, Beck himself having replaced Eric Clapton. There was even a short-lived iteration with both Beck and Page, but that’s just too much guitar for one band. When Page, a highly respected London-based studio guitarist who had worked with the likes of The Kinks and The Who, decided he wanted to be on stage instead of behind the scenes, it was his friend Beck who pulled him into The Yardbirds. And after Beck left the group to form his own, Page recorded a few more albums with the band, working out several ideas and songs that would pop up on Led Zeppelin’s debut, and then, as the rest of the band started to drift away shortly before a tour of Scandinavia in 1968, Page saw an opportunity to put together a new group with Yardbirds bassist Chris Dreja.

Meanwhile, on July 29, 1968, the new Jeff Beck Group released Truth, which many say Jimmy Page swiped the sound and concept of for his new band.

We all know that Page put together his own version of a supergroup and went on to dominate the 1970s. But things could have turned out very differently; that Robert Plant (vocals), John Paul Jones (bass), and John Bonham (drums), weren’t Page’s first choices is often overlooked. Page considered Procol Harum drummer B.J. Wilson, who turned him down. Terry Reid was approached to sing, but Reid likewise declined, recommending some guy named Robert. Page trekked up north to see this guy sing, was duly impressed, and asked him to be his singer. Plant agreed, if his buddy John could play drums. Plant and Bonham were a package deal, and the world of rock music is better off for it.

Dreja, however, decided to quit music to focus on photography—he’d later contribute the band photograph to the back cover of Led Zeppelin—leaving Page with no bassist. In any event, Page’s friend and colleague, session bassist, keyboardist, and arranger John Paul Jones, the stage name of one John Baldwin, known for his work with Donovan, among others, either answered a newspaper ad or a call from Page himself, to play bass with his new group. Shrugging his shoulders and telling his wife he’d be out for a bit, Jones went to the rehearsal space. The first song the band played was a future Zeppelin live concert staple, Tiny Bradshaw’s “Train Kept A-Rollin,” later to be made famous by Aerosmith, and according to Jones, the place just exploded. Page had his band. Now all they needed, after a quick tour of Scandinavia as The New Yardbirds, was a new name and an album.

Led Zeppelin (L-R: John Bonham, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones)

The name was an easier problem to solve. There’s a great rock n’ roll legend that Page, or maybe Page and Beck, were planning on starting a band with The Who’s disgruntled Keith Moon on drums and John Entwistle on bass and vocals, who were thinking of leaving their day job. When discussing how the project might be received, someone used the phrase “It’ll go over like a lead balloon,” prompting Moon, or maybe Entwistle (accounts differ) to say, “No, more like a lead zeppelin!”

The album, however, was trickier, considering that the band had no record deal. But Page had connections, and he along with former Yardbirds manager Peter Grant, self-funded the recording over 36 hours. Using a combination of covers, old Yardbirds songs, and some new ideas that Page had been kicking around, Led Zeppelin bursts forth with a heavy sound hitherto unknown in the world of rock n’ roll. The album starts off strong with a series of double-jabs to the face that soon erupts into the full-fledged rock beatdown of “Good Times Bad Times,” introducing the world to John Bonham’s mighty right foot, John Paul Jones’s busy yet melodic bass playing, Jimmy Page’s incendiary riffing and soloing, and Robert Plant’s banshee-wail. It’s all there in under three minutes of run time, and the party was just getting started.

A lot of Led Zeppelin’s uniqueness has to do with the individual member’s talents, but a lot also comes from Page’s innovative production techniques. He was one of the first to really use room ambience, allowing the instruments, especially the drums, to breath. He was also adept at layering an army of guitars for maximum crunch, and used some wild effects on Plant’s voice, particularly some backwards echoes near the end of “You Shook Me.”

Let’s talk about the member’s abilities. Modern-day critics and reflexive Boomer-music haters like to say Plant’s voice was annoying and his lyrics cornball misogyny, Page’s guitar playing was “sloppy,” Bonham played basic, simple part, and Jones . . . nobody has anything negative to say about John Paul Jones, actually, as he is widely considered the most talented pure musician in the group.¹ But these people all miss the point. Yes, Plant was nobody’s Pete Townshend or Neil Peart lyrically, Page was nowhere near as fluid as Jeff Beck,² and Bonham’s approach wasn’t exactly subtle, but the thing is Led Zeppelin was the first, and if you don’t get a visceral thrill from Plant’s screeching high notes, or John Bonham beating his drums like they owe him money, you might not have a pulse.

A word about Bonham: try playing the groove to “Good Times Bad Times.” Go ahead, do those triplets on the bass drum while keeping the hi-hat steady the entire time with your left foot, maintaining the cowbell part, and nailing the syncopated pattern on the snare drum and toms. After you’ve mastered that, show me how easy it is to play the falling-down-the-stairs fills on “Dazed and Confused” and “How Many More Times.” And that’s just on this album: if Bonham’s such a basic and boring drummer, why do professional drummers to this day speak in awe of his power, his taste, his feel, his ability to swing, and his ridiculously difficult parts on songs like “Achilles Last Stand” and “The Fool In the Rain” to name a few?

If Plant is so annoying, why is he still a template for hard rock and heavy metal singers? And if Page is so sloppy, why did he influence 50-plus years of rock guitarists?

Anyway, there still notes and stuff to talk about here. Let’s get to it.

Everything that made Led Zeppelin Led Zeppelin is on here. There are the rockers like “Good Times Bad Times” and the proto-punk rave-up “Communication Breakdown,” a song the band would stretch out and turn funky live. The electrified blues covers of “You Shook Me” and “I Can’t Quit You Baby” might have cribbed their approach from Beck’s versions, but the bone-crushing drums and guitar-and-vocal call-and-response were a pure Zeppelin innovation, truly re-wiring this African-American idiom through a new filter. And at least the band credited the original artists.

There are also elements of the “light and shade” approach Page took to Led Zeppelin’s sound on Led Zeppelin: “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” crackles with a cold, wintery acoustic guitar line that rolls like leaves on a chilly breeze, building the tension until exploding in a descending frenzy. And then the back-and-forth keeps going, pounding listeners into submission with its whipsawing tonal shifts. Songs like this didn’t help the band shake its reputation as being “unsubtle,” something that would be brought up over the years, but it makes for exciting rock n’ roll. “Your Time Is Gonna Come” stays sweet, with its double-tracked organ intro and light touch, prefiguring future songs like “Hey Hey What Can I Do,” “Tangerine,” and “Thank You.” The lyrics are pretty cringey and the song overall a bit too unremarkable to stand out compared to the rest of the album, but it shows that Led Zeppelin was certainly about more than pure aggression and power. And “Black Mountain Side,” the second half of Page’s live instrumental double-feature “White Summer/Black Mountain Side,” showcases Led Zeppelin’s fascination with alternate tunings and Eastern music.

For pure aggression and power, Led Zeppelin’s two side-closing epics fit the bill. “Dazed and Confused” might come off as misogynistic these days (“Lots of people talkin’, but few of them know/The soul of a woman was created below!) but damn if it doesn’t thrill. Everything, from the ominous bass intro, the multi-tracked guitar orchestra, and the thundering drums, adds to the drama in a manner so ridiculous, so overblown, so bombastic, it’s very hard not to fall in love with it. Add to this Page’s experimentation with playing his guitar with a violin bow, the wild sound effects and great use of dynamics before the mid-song explosion, and you’ve got yourself a bona fide rock classic.

Led Zeppelin was considered so heavy at the time, that even the Beatles took notice. Black Sabbath were heavily influenced by Led Zeppelin, unsurprising considering that Bonham was friends with Ozzy and Co. I mean, you have to remember Led Zeppelin came out when the hippy movement was still in full swing; check out the self-professed, sandal-clad hippy Robert Plant and the boys playing “Dazed and Confused” on the British Supershow documentary in early 1969. It’s about as against the prevailing zeitgeist as you could get. Led Zeppelin might not have ended the hippy moment, but they sure benefited from it being over.

Less successful is “How Many More Times.” It’s a fun song, with another killer bass riff that works through a variety of blues motifs, but it feels less like a coherent song a la “Dazed and Confused” and more like a pastiche. The guitar solos, though, are exquisite, and it serves as a fitting conclusion to one of rock’s best debut albums.

So why does Led Zeppelin still matter? Because like it or not, all the elements of hard rock and heavy metal coalesced here first. Cream and Jimi Hendrix and Deep Purple might have started the train rolling, The Who and Jeff Beck might have been a little too ahead of their time, and Black Sabbath might have taken things further, but Led Zeppelin laid down the blueprint of a new, heavier, riff-based form of rock that we’re still enjoying to this day.

It’s also just really fun and really well played, and a lot smarter than critics of “big dumb arena rock” would have you believe.

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Led Zeppelin

1. Good Times Bad Times

2. Babe I’m Gonna Leave You

3. You Shook Me

4. Dazed and Confused

5. Your Time Is Gonna Come

6. Black Mountain Side

7. Communication Breakdown

8. I Can’t Quit You Baby

9. How Many More Times

1. In addition to being a fantastically inventive, melodic, tasteful, and dexterous bass player, Jones is a legitimately wonderful pianist, adding flavor to the band’s sound, not to mention his keyboard and synthesizer work. Jones also played acoustic guitar and mandolin, as well as arranging string parts. Just a monster musician that doesn’t get the recognition he deserves.

2. This is for all my fellow Zappa fans out there.