Led Zeppelin IV | Full Documentary | Jimmy Page | Robert Plant | John Bonham | John Paul Jones

There’s no question that led zeppelin’s fourth album released in 1971 was the one that took the band beyond rock god status turning them into social icons [Applause] Oh Well at the end of 1970 led zeppelin were really at a a great peak in their career as far as the public were concerned but a bit of a trough personally because they were so exhausted after almost two years of non-stop touring At the time of recording the fourth album uh zep were probably pretty tired from all the touring they’ve been doing in america so there might have been some tension there Obviously the first three albums have really established them worldwide they’d worked at a very fast pace and i think when they get to set four it was the first time they’d really taken stock and worked at their own pace They’ve done six tours of america they’ve had three platinum albums absolutely massive arguably they were the biggest live rock band on the planet at that particular twenty-six time larynx’s [Applause] [Applause] in their careers huge when they started recording for you know successful sellout tours of america successful sellout tours of this country uh three out of three albums behind them but what what made it quite interesting was the fact that uh the press had been quite critical

About that zeppelin iii in this country you know if you listen to all the arms you’ll be able to listen to something and say that sounds like exactly because it’s a saying you know but in actual fact each album is very different there’s a lot of different things on

Each bar yeah and i thought three was especially different from one and two which were basically very heavy sort of music and there’s a lot of acoustic stuff on three yeah the third album had been received with a little bit of disdain even by their hardcore fans over here because a lot of

People considered it a little bit too folky zeppelin three um tend to get branded as one of the more folky albums it had a lot of more sort of guitary sort of pentangly folky rhythmic tracks on it there was no restraint with the whole idea of being

With or without an amplifier i mean we just did whatever we wanted to do they desperately wanted to do something to appease the british media and more more to the point they wanted they wanted to make their stamp on the uk i think up to that point everything had

Been a whirlwind from 68 when they formed to 71 and it was the first time i think they all took stock and that’s why the album comes out in a very measured way i used to get music papers and things like that in the end i didn’t get them because they had this

Policy that you would god one minute the next you know and that’s the way that they you know to keep the paper going and controversy and stuff you know and in the end i thought trash The album came off the back of the mysterious and slightly more folky led zeppelin 3 and took everyone by surprise but why what was the incredible magic that seems to this day to seep through the music it’s a combination of myth paganism and alternative passions that fuse together with powerful inspiring

Libido-led music to create one of the ultimate albums Make you sleepy Never once to take the easy path the band decided to use the rolling stones mobile studio installing it in the forbidding victorian grandeur of hedley grange in hampshire because it was open plan i think the sound that paige wanted quickly you know became a power he wanted a vast expansive sound which that

Album has got and again it was down to him as a studio craftsman which he is he knows the sound he wants to hear you know the way i see recording is to try and capture the sound of the room the vibe and the emotion of the whole moment

And try and convey that across you know that that’s the very essence of it um and so consequently you’ve really got to catch as much of the room sound as possible you don’t like anybody in the studio when you’re playing a guitar do you no

I usually i usually just limber up for a while and then do maybe three solos to take the rest of the three they took it out of the studio because i think they felt that the studio compressed them a little i think you know within four walls

Um of a studio there was only so much they could do It’s incredulous that jimmy page has gone down as saying that he actually used to get nervous in the studio when you consider the amount of sessions that the guy played on i suppose now it was him now it was led zeppelin you know and it wasn’t just

Some fruitcake pop record that he was playing on that he had to deliver he has been stated as saying that he got a little bit jittery in the normal studio environment so it was natural for them to go somewhere where they felt comfortable where they could take breaks as and when

They wanted without looking at a clock ticking it was the beginning of quite a few acts that did that and i think zeppelin was quite a pioneer of that that actually got the idea from fleetwood mac i think flew and matt were the first people to

Go into headley grange but he set a precedent really but i think the reason it works so well was because they were able to spend a whole week you know literally ensconced in the place but it wasn’t all about recording you know it wasn’t there’s a studio time two till

Four it was we’ll go in when we want to go in if we want to go in at seven we’ll do it if you want to do it two in the morning we’ll do it and i think a lot of the music came out in a very relaxed way because of that

Lack of discipline Headley grange wasn’t exactly the most welcoming of locations when they arrived at the place it was december 1970 and the harsh weather had set in the house was freezing so in true rock star style the band decided to burn what remained of the banisters in fact they’d already done something similar on a

Previous visit a damp and creepy place and andy johns who was to engineer the record maintained that it was haunted i think part of the reason they chose it was i think because it was haunted i think jimmy page in particular rather like the idea of creating this somewhat

Spooky atmosphere which certainly imbued a lot of zep’s early recordings he always felt there was quite strong sort of cosmological forces at work within zeppelin i mean at that period in rock music anyway there was quite a strong undercurrent of mysticism and it was all new it’s all being

Discovered and talked about for the first time so it wasn’t like a kind of pretentious sort of um publicity stunt by any means these were just ideas and thoughts and feelings that young musicians had at the time and that was kind of searched maybe our quest for um something different in life

Some explanation for life was quite crucial i think to the creation of the music so it wasn’t just a great big commercial enterprise leds up and there was a lot of deep stuff going on as well it’s incredible to take note of the fact that they only spent six days there when

Recording the fourth album which must count as some of the six most productive days ever in the history of rock Until the new lives make me a happy man black dog is a rather a very powerful introduction to led zeppelin iv i think they’re almost deliberately making this very positive statement because the previous third album had been not criticized but slightly uh disappointing for some fans who felt it

Was too too much towards acoustic music they’d made an acoustic statement on that album and black dog was really saying we’re back we’re sexy we’re loud well we are led zepplin [Applause] the song began with the sound of paige’s guitar warming up which most bands would

Have instantly cut out of the final mix not this lot why not invite the listener into the inner circle by giving them a peek of led zeppelin preparing to perform well led zeppelin was very much a live act let’s face it you know they were the greatest live acts of all time

And i think every time they went into the studio or went to record an album wherever it was there was an edginess that was in them from playing lives that they wanted to bring to the recording i really do believe that if you leave accounting on a track

Um and i used to do this with quo a hell of a lot if you leave the end a little bit ragged somehow it takes the listener there to the environment it’s not this disembodied piece of music that just has a nicely edited beginning and a nicely

Edited end and those little bits of of supposing the outtake just give it a it’s like a little bit of fresh air it’s like a bit of reality oh they’re not that big to me i never even thought they were outtakes i just thought they’re right that’s part of the track it’s it’s

Humanity it’s what happened at the time if you listen to the start of black dog you can hear the sound of the tape machine starting up just worrying as the machine was put into record uh you can hear what page later called his guitar army he’s scrubbing the guitar and

Getting ready to rock and so it’s it’s it’s it i just think they they did it because they could [Applause] God I think the whole thing is that f4 is a band having great fun and that’s one of you know the key attributes of that album you know they’re really having a blast you do message songs what what is the message that that you’re trying to get

Sort of a message of enjoyment you know the whole the whole idea of music from the beginning of time was for people to you know be happy If black dog isn’t a musical come on i don’t know what it is it has to be the most direct set of lyrics in rock as far as describing what you’d like to do when you kept that woman home [Applause] [Applause] black dog hang on a second i think i have those lyrics here hey mama said the way you move going to make you sweat going to make you groove Gonna make you sting i mean for god’s sake that’s almost like sexually transmitted disease spiel at its best isn’t it really um it’s brutal well in this house this headly grange there was a there was a old black dog there and it and it’s uh one night it went off

Because it was really it was really quite old and the one i obviously been off you know doing the things that dogs do and came back and slept all day and you know just it was it was quite a powerful image at that time so we called it black dog

It’s a very bold statement and uh starting off kicking off with robert plant in full voice screaming and shouting in timeless fashion and uh you know being answered in in the way that plant and paige did that was their kind of a showpiece really was the way that they

Worked like a traditional blues act call and response is the phrase and that’s what they did in that piece Started telling a friend she gonna be a star what is important about the song is that classic riff that has totally screwed up so many guitar players from then until the present day it even screwed up john bonham apparently for a while until he suss that i can just grip my teeth and

Regardless of what those buggers are doing i can just play fours all the way through it And the lift was an impossible riff it had three four time had four full time you know no other band could go away and actually do that lift it was unique and when you heard it it didn’t stack up but for some reason paige made it work You have a riff fighting against another beat but because everything is separated into crotchets so one two three four two two three four eventually everybody comes back together so for a moment in the riff everybody’s drifting around floating around each other and they all lock in again And then you’ve got the solo at the end of the track i mean it’s a complete heads-up you know yardstick he’s a leads up in yardstick and i think again it says everything about the fun they were having it was relaxed it was spontaneous you know they knew

Where they wanted to come from they had a few templates but nobody really knew where it would end up you know a black dog is a track that just ends up spiraling off into the sunset which is fantastic [Applause] So Page and jones the band’s two studio masters explored every nook and cranny of the house in order to get the maximum sounds they set up bonham’s drum kit in all sorts of strange places including the hallway the whole situation was fraught with spontaneity the unmistakable groove of rock and roll

Happened thanks to one of those happy accidents that only seemed to occur with the true greats i don’t think that led zeppelin set out to be a blatantly experimental band in the way say like king crimson or even emerson lake and palmer or any of the progressive rock groups were

Um they didn’t make a great thing about it at heart they were rock and roll band they played blues they played traditional rock and roll but at the same time they did um set out to incorporate new ideas in the studio they would use whatever was lying around

They would experiment with the drum sounds and in a place like headley grange with a mobile truck we’re not talking about in london at one of the then state-of-the-art studios we’re talking about a damp cold old house with a recording truck outside i’m all in favor of recording trucks but

But back then they weren’t as sophisticated as they are now and some of the effects and things that they got out of what was available to them was quite astonishing paige had always been one want to try anything out the violin though is a classic thing violin bow on a guitar

Which he made a stage feature [Applause] [Applause] Uh They did experiment but not in a pretentious self-conscious sort of way it’s uh it was a matter of bringing in new ideas all the time into each piece and to see if it would work [Laughter] [Laughter] Their experimentation was quite tastefully done i always thought Rock and roll is is uh again if you saw zeppelin live when they were using it as the the first song the intro song uh it was just like watching four animals being unleashed from cages and it was it was you know the perfect the perfect way to start a set so A rock was uh rather like black dog said this is led zeppelin back powerful and heavy rock and roll was also saying this is led zeppelin traditional led zeppelin we know all about rock and roll music this is what we were brought up on because there was always a certain

Element of snobbishness maybe emanating from traditional rock and roll fans who saw bands like the who and zeppelin these young usurpers really didn’t take them terribly seriously jimmy page um was always big on you know the 50s guitar heroes you know james burton scotty moore plant loved uh little richard sadie on

It was a throwback to the 50s and of course it kicks off with this uh famed drum introduction that john bonham plays which is like the hi-hat and the snare drum kicks the whole thing into touch they were working on the track four sticks which was just not coming together and

John bonham went off into this doodle which was basically the drum part for keeper knocking by little richard paige instinctively fell into the riff they recorded about 12 seconds of it and it broke down but then they thought hey we got something here so four sticks was temporarily shelved and

They went on recorded rock and roll [Applause] [Applause] You know recorded in 15 minutes flat and that’s fact it’s not a myth within 15 minutes of having the idea bang down you know no six months in the studio then you know that’s what i got along some of the best rock tracks ever have been recorded as quickly as that [Applause] oh [Applause] you only hear a few bars and you’re pulled into it it’s an arrangement not many rock bands can do arrangements which means actually changing the volume and the tempo and the pace and varying the instruments most bands go from a to b and it’s loud at the beginning and loud

At the ends nobody knew and they didn’t know that it was going to have the effect it did you’ve got a lyric that can be interpreted any way you like it was probably the one that got a lot of attention but it wasn’t you know the holy grail

That took a while what is it about i think because of the way he writes he manages to retain an air of mystery it just was the last track on side one but it obviously became a lot more than the last track on side one over the years There’s a lady shoe all that glitters is gone and she’s buying the stairway to heaven and when she gets there she knows if the stars are all closed with a word she can get what she came for [Applause] i think it is the perfect arrangement although it’s an eight-minute song the build is absolutely magical and there’s a funny thing that happens when you hear it on the radio or a mate plays it again at first you think oh no not stairway to heaven again and almost in spite of

Yourself you find yourself getting drawn into it and it finishes and you think yeah that’s great and yet you start out thinking if i never hear that song again i’ll be perfectly happy it’s um it’s a haunting sound but it didn’t sound um stilted or it wasn’t struggling i mean so much

Progressive rock which went on for about 17 minutes of a double album maybe would become you know exhausting and uh lose its way whereas stairway to heaven the reason it’s so successful i think it works like a little compact piece of classical music it’s probably um

One of the most famous pieces of music in in rock history we can clearly see in this big romantic theme there are um clear echoes of the the romantic school of composition it owes a great debt to beethoven and mendelson composers like that and rhythmically it’s very very close to

J s bach’s famous prelude from the preludes and fugues both pieces are strikingly similar in many respects both written in c major both four four time very similar construction in terms of the melody and it’s also interesting in the the jimmy page uh employs the device of the sharpened f And is this unexpected f sharp that makes the melodic shift in the whole piece and jimmy page introduces that much earlier into stairway to heaven but it’s very similar to the kind of call and response structure of the back piece with his so you can see how the the two pieces

Are are very closely related the prelude and fugue is quite widely used in rock music proko harum famously employed it as did richie blackmore and rainbow on a number occasions so you’ll find it quite frequent and it’s it’s influence for me is definitely there in stairway to heaven

It really built a little bit like the zeppelin sort of mystique built through the years and it was through being played live that it claimed the status that it did you know and then it became a millstone around their neck in the end but early

On and in the context of the album and the great thing about it now is that because it’s been much maligned and you know lolf harris and all this when you play it now and if you dare to play it and that’s what you know it’s

Almost a fear factor always stare at a heaven i don’t play that track anymore when you do play it it’s still a song of great beauty it may not be the you know the best thing on the album but it’s a song of great beauty and it has a lasting effect Is The amount of analysis that’s gone on the amount of web chat rooms the amount of books that have been written just about the meaning of the lyrics it’s absolutely totally metabolics if you like what’s it about lyrical searching yeah um does it make much sense possibly does the plant did it really matter

Probably not if you want to interpret lyrics in a certain way and it gives you some inner meaning you’ve bought the material then that’s absolutely fine even if you discount the lyrics which are whatever they are they are it’s a lovely melody one of the most lasting melodies of any rock song

Um and then you know the inventive sort of guitar seller at the end one of the most inventive guitar solos ever ever [Applause] [Applause] It’s again it’s one of these songs where if you have a moment with either someone else or or just a moment where you’re watching the sunrise or something it’s one of those moments that this piece of music if it connects it’s going to connect into every vein you’ve got going and

Makes something inside you your little atoms are stirred by it you’re being it’s one of those songs that actually connects with your being Um I still have a very very very big place for stairway to heaven in my life Of course there was more to the record than just the music the album cover has created so much interest and interpretation over the years the band wanted it to be released without any reference to a title or their name commercial suicide screamed their label atlantic so zeppelin decided to compromise

However when this band compromised it was never anything other than fascinating not to mention challenging there were record company problems when the record came out the fact there was no title on the the cover it didn’t say led zeppelin anywhere on the outer sleeve of the album which caused

Panic and confusion at atlantic records particularly in america where they thought what are these guys doing how are we going to sell an album with no name on the car you’ve got to have led zeppelin on the cover there was absolutely no handle for it there was no

Band name there wasn’t even a catalogue number people at the record company called it commercial suicide i knew that we were getting a lot of hammerings from different people the critics they were saying oh it’s a hype it’s a hype it’s a hype that is a reason why on the fourth

Album there’s no title on it she said you know might just as well what if they say it’s a hype well then this is a good way of saying it isn’t a height by untitling it and saying well here we are you know it’s not being sold by the name of the

Bend it’s the content of the material i’m sure peter grant probably worried a bit about it their manager they’re all all-powerful manager but he would go along with anything that jimmy page suggested got to give him his due he stuck out for the band he you know he

Dug his heels in and that was it it got to a standoff where they were withholding the master tapes they would not deliver the master tapes until the record company relented and then the record company saw that there was a clause in the contract giving zepp complete creative control over their

Sleeves uh and everything else i remember being in the in the atlantic office there with a lawyer for two hours while he kept bringing out all these books saying you’ve got to have that i said all right then if that’s what you want to do then

Re-run it on the inside bag here on the inside of the uh print print your vintage rockefeller plaza whatever it is down there of course they didn’t want to do a re-run on it so it went out like this and so the record company had to go along with

It and i think the the thought was that the group was then so powerful so famous and successful that you didn’t need to put the name of the uh the band on the cover people would just go to this shop and say i want the new led zeppelin album and they they’d know

Which one it was because it’s the album without any name on the cover so only a few bands could possibly ever get away with that this was they were said professional suicide uh to release an album with with no nothing on it whatsoever um apart from the symbols

And what do those symbols mean there’s been a lot written about the four signs uh paige said to the others okay what i want you to do is go away and come up with a sign that represents you and supposedly they were going to go to kochi’s book of signs others went elsewhere

But the basic interpretation as i say of the signs is is this what has been called zozo which is jimmy page’s sign a lot of people have called it zozo apparently it’s according to page it doesn’t say zozo the zed with the convoluted line at the bottom which

Is an alchemic sign for mercury um signifies page’s star sign he’s a capricorn ruled by saturn um the o and the s and the o that an o with a dot in is said to represent six so of course so a lot of people have seized on

This that the s is a convoluted six that it’s 666 but basically it’s based around his star sign The sign for bonham is a lovely one the three interlocking circles which apparently is the man woman child trilogy all life man woman child the fact that it was used as the valentine’s beer logo is an interesting one because uh but bonzo’s love of the booze is is well

Documented and uh i think he might have seen the valentine’s beer logo john paul jones three ellipsoids with bound by a circle the trinity bound by the circle signifies confidence and confidence and competence which is probably all about john paul jones great arranger great musician very very confident very at one

Very happy with his life The sign for robert plant is a very interesting one which is the circle of life and inside is a feather which signifies the egyptian goddess mayat who was a goddess of truth and justice which is that apparently plant wasn’t a very good liar at any time so he chose that and of

Course the feather is the sign of the writer they are the most popular versions of it uh as to zozo’s uh meaning probably the real inner depth of it only jimmy page knows he was into his occult he was into mysterious science folklore alistair crowley is obviously uh he he actually

Bought boleskin house up in um on the shores of loch ness because it was owned by the great magician alistair crowley very strange very very strange it was just all part of the zeppelin mystique and i think they played it so well and what was good about it is that their

Audience went with it and even now you walk down any high street and there’s a zozo t-shirt you know it obviously worked because whatever it was whatever those four symbols were and they were pretty you know ambiguous you know i don’t think there was a game plan

You know it was just another typical zeppelin mystique you know and great fun and all part of building you know the image but the image wasn’t through multimedia it wasn’t for the internet you know none of those things existed it was an album cover and it was led

Zeppelin and if you knew that you were in the club if you didn’t know it you’re out of the club and it seemed to be more people wanted to be in the club so there was that was the idea i think fortunately we were in a position there

To be able to say this is what we want because you know we had actually you know attained the status whereby that album was going to sell a lot of albums obviously not as many as we didn’t think it was as many as what it did but we

Knew it was going to sell a lot you know because of the because of the whole sort of vibe of the band and you know everything else Well what was the uh in days of final the second side of let’s opening four some people thought it was a slight disappointment i suppose there was a lot to live up to after the power of stairway to heaven i mean that could have been as i said it could

Have been an album track in itself just a you know a whole 12-inch old p could have been stairway to heaven but the second side of led zeppelin iv had certain delights which have kind of matured over the years i think i’ve grown to appreciate them more now [Applause] Just Actually parts of misty mountain hop are a little bit cheesy the first half time thing section to me feels almost a little bit twee in the melody but this was plants lyric about supposedly about a gathering with hippies or a meeting with dippies in a park some say san francisco some say

Hyde park uh when they were busted by police for smoking dope indeed robert plant was a strong campaigner for pro-marijuana and this may have been his stance against the anti-marijuana laws at the time A lot of people tend to think that they’re it’s one of the tracks to skip when listening to the album but actually the leaning on the seventh with the harmonies those ascending harmony parts and following the aeg to e-riff are actually quite meaty and i think the harmonies are pretty

Clever which is probably where john paul jones stepped in to direct them as to how they would move um it’s a solid song probably the only overt drug song on the whole album and i don’t think it’s any deeper than that really and and on on three you had sort of you know

Mandolins and dulcimers you know have you done anything different on your new album um there’s about desserts two two tracks with acoustic yeah going to california that’s mandolin again acoustic guitar yeah you know it’s just sort of um songs that were you know that we write

And do at the particular time that an album you know can we say right there we’re going to put them in an album ad and we you know we do the songs that we were whether we were right in that particular time so the next one will probably be different still

Made up my mind making you start for me foreign in my heart someone told me there’s a girl out there with loving her eyes and flowers in her going to california was actually recorded outside sitting on the lawn you know the mandolin there it’s a great vibe yeah i think you

Can actually hear a plane going over at one particular point that lovely droning d sound it’s it’s a beautiful song it’s the the melody is absolutely lovely and by their admission it was written as an homage to joni mitchell the lady of the canyon um

The lady they seek uh it’s all about jo robert plant has said that he was in love with joni mitchell well obviously he means in the artistic sense but she captivated people like that Going to california was something that all bands did anyway in the 70s and still do you know it’s great when you are a new young band you want to get away from all the the dark cold of europe the wet weather and the climate so going to california sort

Of represents uh nirvana or the uh you know sort of paradise in a way but oddly enough i believe the lyrics were actually inspired by slightly more doomy thoughts about the possibilities of earthquakes Throw me I think they were thinking originally about the possibility of an earthquake in california going to california but it kind of transpired or transmogrified into a piece more in tune with the hippie west coast joni mitchell vibe that relaxed laid-back romantic music which was yet another facet of what led zeppelin were all about

The sunshine the women the whole culture um the laid-back attitude it it seduced young english rock musicians and let’s be honest they they really do owe it to their success in america they were gods in america long before they became gods over here they owe pretty much all of their success to how

How how they built this relationship with the american audiences from the constant touring and the epicenter of their love of america was california Led zeppelin were an english band who america took to their heart and what what are you going to do you know two-month tour in america or a 15-day in england at sheffield city hall or you know but whatever there was nothing big that a bank could could go on to whereas

You go to america and you’re talking about twenty thousand twelve thousand they beat the beatles record at shea stadium which i think was about 58 000. you know these these are these are numbers of people that paying cash on the night is going to result in a very nice dinner afterwards are you

A smash over here as well as everybody as much out well there’s more people here that’s so therefore you know it’s a proportional difference really it’s probably the same but on a different scale here did you expect this kind of um appreciation of your of what you do

And not to begin with because not from this extent no we knew we were appreciated by the fact that people were coming along to see us in such great vast numbers all over the place england and the continent from wherever but no one expected this

I think when led zeppelin 4 burst on the scene and it was reviewed by critics and the public and accepted by the public i don’t think they or the band thought of this as kind of a pointer necessarily to some new future this is representing all the best

They could do at that point in time it hinted that there were more grandiose things to come when you listen to when the levee breaks it hints at tracks that were to come later like cashmere physical graffiti which remains my favorite ever zeppelin track led zeppelin were nearing their their peak

Really they were sort of they’d been in the game for a few albums now and they’d kind of grown into a style of their own and i don’t think we could really see where it was gonna go next but um it was certainly a progression and something that sounded very led zeppelin

This was the halfway mark maybe the high water mark in some respects because although they did great albums later houses of the holy had some terrific moments and people talk now about physical graffiti the big double album as a milestone but really physical graffiti only had two or

Three real standout tracks as a double album a lot of it was kind of filling really um it wasn’t uh nearly as coherent as zeppelin iv it wasn’t a concept album but the emotions you’ve gone through from black dog onwards and then you’ve suddenly got this spiraling track at the end this this

Huge outpouring of blues emotion what a way to end an album and it ends with an echo there’s an echo that says i want to hear that again the secret of a lot of this is the fact of where it was recorded you cannot talk about when the levy

Breaks without talking about that drum sound which is one of the most sampled sounds in history everybody from ice tea to puff daddy chemical brothers the beastie boys got into trouble over sampling it it is monumental there is no drummer can play that groove like john bonham did No one hit the snare drum harder and nowhere do you hear a snare drum being hit as hard as that opening salvo to that track [Applause] and what happened is while the rest of the band were at the pub one night at hedley grange andy johnson himself took delivery of a new drum kit that had just arrived and with headley grange being on three stories they set the kit up in the massive ground floor hallway and the

Microphone the stairway is leading up all the way around you know the stairwell so to speak and the microphone is one stereo mic coming out sort of one and a half floors up above the kit and the results were fed through um jimmy page’s echoplex echo unit with

The result that you get that huge drum sound the the thing of the ambience you know we’d start starting now to go the whole hog you know plants in his absolute element you know he wants to be robert johnson well on that track he was you know the whole

Chemistry of zeppelin as a blues band is all there on that track that menacing slow plodding groove it’s it just works works wonderfully A blues band on their own terms not retro you know they took the blues and put it into the 70s and it still sounds great you know in the naughties you know it just does it’s got it’s got a kitchen sink in there and it levy

And when the levee breaks that was a riff that you know that uh that i that i had written around the the original breaks so to speak and but as far as the recording of it goes the idea was to bring in something new on each verse every time it’s something new

Zeppelin were good at using influence and the influence of the blues was paramount from z1 i think with levy it matured again to a point where they could use an old blues track which it was the knicks memphis minis version um which was recorded in 27 i believe

And made it very much their own this is this is zeppelin blues absolutely at its best strap on their own sound to it and again that sound was built out of bottoms drumming and paige’s guitar now on that track is just unbelievable it zips across the speakers

You know and really jumps out of here and obviously the bottom drum sound at the beginning but apparently it’s just used everywhere you know great harmonica great song great break in the middle and great great end there’s also a very spooky kind of feeling about when the levee breaks and of course at

The time in england people didn’t really know what a levy was it didn’t have any great significance what is a levy you know unless you live in new orleans you wouldn’t know and now of course when the levee breaks takes on new significance certainly for the the city of new orleans but uh

Obviously uh these levees had been breaking a lot of times back in the past if they were writing about it back in the 1920s it had this uh apocryphal feel about it you know the big flood was coming when the levee breaks and i suppose really uh that kind of sums up

Zeppelin’s uh future in a way there was this uh feeling of power building up behind a dam and something about to break so let’s having four ends on this rather menacing hypnotic note [Applause] hey [Applause] You