When Led Zeppelin decided to release their fourth album with no title and no identification on the sleeve, they were told it would be "professional suicide". According to producer and guitarist Jimmy Page, it was a deliberate move to thwart the critics: "It wasn’t easy. The record company were sort of insisting that the name go on it. There were eyes looking towards heaven if you like. It was hinted it was professional suicide to go out with an album with no title. The reality of it was that we’d had so many dour reviews to our albums along the way. At the time each came out it was difficult sometimes for the reviewers to come to terms with what was on there, without an immediate point of reference to the previous album. But the ethic of the band was very much summing up where we were collectively at that point in time. An untitled album struck me as the best answer to all the critics — because we knew the way that the music was being received both by sales and attendance at concerts."
They began recording at Basing Street Studios in London; but moved to Headley Grange, a remote Victorian house in East Hampshire, where they used the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio. Overdubs were done at Island Studios, and the initial mixing was done at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles. The release date was pushed back because more mixing was needed in London.
Page says, "After all this crap that we'd had with the critics, I put it to everybody else that it'd be a good idea to put out something totally anonymous. At first I wanted just one symbol on it, but then it was decided that since it was our fourth album and there were four of us, we could each choose our own symbol. I designed mine and everyone else had their own reasons for using the symbols that they used."
Despite the predictions, the album was a huge success with both critics and fans, selling more than thirty-seven million copies worldwide and topping album charts in the UK and Canada. In the US, it is the third highest-selling album of all time.
It is commonly referred to as 'Led Zeppelin IV'; but also as 'Four Symbols', 'The Fourth Album', 'Untitled', 'The Runes', 'The Hermit', and 'ZoSo'.
http://www.ledzeppelin.com/
'Black Dog'
Led Zeppelin - Black dog by Salut-les-copains
'Rock and Roll'
'Stairway to Heaven'
full album:
side one
1. "Black Dog"
John Paul Jones Jimmy Page Robert Plant
4:54
2. "Rock and Roll"
John Bonham Jones Page Plant
3:40
3. "The Battle of Evermore"
Page Plant
5:51
4. "Stairway to Heaven"
Page Plant
8:02
side two
5. "Misty Mountain Hop"
Jones Page Plant
4:38
6. "Four Sticks"
Page Plant
4:44
7. "Going to California"
Page Plant
3:31
8. "When the Levee Breaks"
Bonham Jones Memphis Minnie Page Plant
7:07
While Zeppelin was in the "preferred" studio at Island recording this album...upstairs from them (in the larger and apparently more technically challenged studio), another landmark album was being recorded: Jethro Tull's "Aqualung".
ReplyDeleteDuring a break from "IV", Jimmy Page went upstairs to greet the members of Tull, whom they'd had open for them on a previous tour of the US. When he got there, Martin Barre was in the middle of recording the guitar solo for the album's title track. When Jimmy Page waved at Martin, Mr. Barre said he had a choice: wave back, and start the track again, or keep going. He chose to keep going, and the solo he laid down--his first of the session--ended up being the ONLY take, and the one ultimately committed to tape and pressed to vinyl.
Given the timing of the two bands being in the same place at the same time, I sometimes wonder if the enmity between Ian Anderson and Robert Plant hadn't existed if Ian would have guested on wind-instruments on Stairway To Heaven...
Sadly, we will never know.
Funny old thing, bruised egos...