Latest News ‘The right Led Zeppelin album for the right time, according to Jimmy Page
When it comes to Led Zeppelin albums, it’s easy to fixate on the numbers. There’s a good reason, too—there are few runs of four albums that are strong in any rock band’s back catalogue. It gets even more unbelievable when you consider those were the band’s first four records. Sure, most of the band were session musicians long before they got together and won the West, but as most supergroups show, just because you’ve got tenure doesn’t mean the music you make will be any good.
Led Zeppelin were savvy, though. They had a vision for the core of their sound, the hyper-charged American blues of their debut album played as loud as possible for as long as possible, and how to develop it. Led Zeppelin II and III added elements of folk, pop and jazz before IV acted as a sort of culmination, ascending Zep to “biggest band in the world” status on the back of a record that still reads like a greatest hits album if you look at the track listing.
However, no matter how earth-shattering those records were, the two that came after them might just be even better. Houses of the Holy sees the band experimenting more than ever, taking elements of funk, psychedelia and reggae into a record that many sneered at upon release. However, context is everything, and its follow-up, Physical Graffiti, is a record so staggering that it improved Houses reputation immensely, as people could see now what that album was building towards.
Physical Graffiti, though, is very much Zep’s answer to The White Album. Not only is it the out-there, slightly antagonistic choice for the best album they ever made, but it’s also the album they made at the very peak of their creative powers. They had “experimented” with the previous albums, and Physical Graffiti was when they demonstrated what they had learned. Note the difference between a dalliance with funk like Houses’ ‘The Crunge’ and an actual, powerful funk track like ‘Trampled Under Foot’.
This isn’t me reading into anything, either. The band has hailed Physical Graffiti as the highlight of not only their creativity but also their independence. Page elaborated on the reasons for this in an interview with The Independent, saying, “Physical Graffiti was the first piece of Led Zeppelin product on our own label, the right album for the right time. We had material that was left over from the fourth album and needed to be heard.”
He elaborated by saying, “Other people had done double albums, and I was really keen to do a double showing all that we were capable of, from the sensitive guitar instrumentals through to the density of something like ‘In the Light’ and the urgency of something like ‘In My Time of Dying’. Every track has its own character.”
Physical Graffiti is a document not only of a band in its prime but one that knows it. A band fully aware of their capabilities yet still pushing themselves. There may be more visceral thrills in the earlier records, where they’re still figuring things out, but there’s nothing quite like a band playing—if you’ll pardon the pun—at full flight.