If you flip through a collection of vinyl or CD’s belonging to anyone who considers themselves to be a true rock fan, there is not doubt you will find a few Led Zeppelin albums. Led Zeppelin’s influence is so far reaching that it is a rare thing indeed to encounter a guitarist who has not heard of Jimmy Page, or a drummer who has not sat listening in wonder to the intricate rhythms of John Bonham. For many, listening to Led Zeppelin albums while growing up was like a kind of sonic wallpaper, an unavoidable rite of passage that brought them into rock and roll adulthood.
It was in the 1970’s that Led Zeppelin truly decided to make some of the most interesting and hard edged rock to emerge from the decade. The double album ‘Physical Graffiti’ was the first time the band had been able to assemble so many different sonic ideas together in the same space, and the results were inspiring. Epic orchestral tracks like ‘Kashmir’ sat beside the drawn out blues lament of ‘In My Time Of Dying’. Interestingly, ‘Houses of the Holy’ was also included on this album, instead of its namesake, as the band was unhappy with how it fit the tighter grouping of tracks that ultimately made the cut.
The next album, the band’s seventh, was titled ‘Presence’, and came out in 1976. Many of the songs found here were composed by Robert Plant while he recovered from injuries suffered in a car accident while on vacation in Greece. Jimmy Page assumed a larger role than normal in the production of this album, given the incapacitation of writing partner Plant, and it hit number one on the Billboard charts. Two of the tracks in particular from ‘Presence’ are fan favorites to this day: the 10 minute epic of ‘Achilles’ Last Stand’ and ‘Nobody’s Fault But Mine’, which represented the perfect fusion between drummer Bonham’s enormous drum sound and Jimmy Page’s tight guitar groove.
The last studio album that the band would record together before the untimely death of Bonham was ‘In Through The Out Door’, and this record is one of their underrated masterpieces. The band experimented with synthesizers here more than on any previous recording, and the tracks ‘All My Love’ and ‘Carouselambra’ are beautiful arrangements. Listening with the knowledge that the band would soon end their storied existence, it is easy to impart a melancholy feel to this last of the Led Zeppelin albums.
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