Editor’s Word: The controversy over which Led Zeppelin album rocks hardest will most likely by no means finish. In that spirit, Jim Shahen solid his vote a yr in the past immediately for the band’s sixth album, 1975’s Bodily Graffiti, because the document 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 assume is the definitive Led Zeppelin album.
Two questions for you.
The subject is Led Zeppelin.
First: What phrases would you employ to explain the band?
My reply: Monolithic. Mighty. Musically formidable. Sneakily numerous. Technically sensible.
Second: What’s the definitive Led Zeppelin album, the one which finest describes what they’re all about?
Potential solutions: Led Zeppelin II. Strong selection. Laborious to select in opposition to an LP that has “Complete Lotta Love”, “Heartbreaker”, “Moby Dick”, a music 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 preferred, selection. 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 sensible Lord of the Rings homages in “Battle of Evermore” and the trippy “Misty Mountain Hop”, plus it closes out with the swaggering blues metallic of “When the Levee Breaks”. Positive, you could possibly play it secure, choose Led Zeppelin IV and really feel assured in your choice. However, once more, it’s the flawed reply.
My (100% right) reply: Bodily 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 precisely that. It lends itself to stylistic detours and sonic experimentation. However in recording one, an artist runs the danger of their ego inspiring boredom and diminishing what might have been an ideal 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 arduous 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 easy rockers that first introduced Zeppelin to prominence. “The Rover” is anchored by one in every of Jimmy Web page’s crunchiest guitar grooves and a pummeling beat from John Bonham. Then there’s “The Wanton Track”, a blistering 4 minutes of Zeppelin firing on all cylinders. Web page uncorks one in every 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. The truth is, 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 fingers of a lesser singer, “Boogie with Stu” can be a forgettable Ritchie Valens-indebted, boogeyin’ jam session. As a substitute, 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 remaining facet. And there are a pair of tracks rooted in metaphor that put the sooner referenced “The Lemon Track” 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 chunk 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 Track” 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 Below 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 Surprise’s “Superstition”, he performs some frenetic, red-hot funk. It’s the muse of the music, 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 expertise, it’s additionally residence to their most interesting interpretation of the blues with “In My Time of Dying”. The piece begins on a foreboding be aware and slowly builds rigidity with its acoustic nation blues deathbed lamentations. Then the strain explodes when the bombastic heavy blues-rock kicks in, and the music’s narrator is lastly dealing with his loss of life. 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 thus far, 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 constructions. All that’s actually wanted is the inclusion of one in every of Zeppelin’s definitive hits to convey 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 not likely 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. To start with of this, the phrases “stylistic detours,” “sonic experimentation,” and “grand, sprawling inventive statements” have been used. The operatic sweep of “Kashmir”, from Web page’s droning riff to the luxurious string and horn orchestration and the various rhythmic constructions of the music, 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 music has enchanted and endured, serving as an eight-minute illustration of the paranormal aura and energy which might be staples of the group’s mythology.
By just about any metric — vital, business, 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 midst of the rock legends’ crowning achievement and finest work, Bodily Graffiti.
Decide up a replica of Bodily Graffiti right here…
Bodily Graffiti Paintings
