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"Rock and Roll" follows, a straight-laced, up-tempo boogie inspired by Little Richard. Bonham deepens the groove with propulsive drumming that alternates between 4/4 and 7/8 time, providing the backbone to the call-and-response interplay between vocals and guitar. "Black Dog" opens the album with an explosive pentatonic blues-based riff in the tradition of Page's classic "Heartbreaker" and a shrieking vocal performance from Plant. The eight songs that made the cut, though, were stone-cold classics.
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The live-in rehearsal and recording situation at Headley Grange yielded more than enough music for their upcoming album, leaving them with extra songs that appeared on 1975's Physical Graffiti. The band hired engineer Andy Johns, who had just worked in the studio while tracking the Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers, and as a result, the record's production values leapfrogged their previous albums, which were mostly recorded in various towns while on tour. Not long after that September 1971 run, the quartet returned to Headley Grange, where they had recorded part of III, armed with a batch of new songs that would change their lives.īy the time the band parked the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio outside the eighteenth-century retreat in rural southwestern England, its four members were locked in like a machine. before releasing IV, building from opening for groups like Vanilla Fudge and Iron Butterfly in 1968 to headlining a two-night stand at the 20,000-capacity Madison Square Garden in New York City in under two years. They crossed the Atlantic Ocean seven times to tour the U.S. Led by former session and Yardbirds guitarist Page, fronted by a then-unknown Plant, and anchored by bassist Jones and drum-basher Bonham, the band built its fanbase by bringing its bombastic live show to concert halls across the U.K., Europe and North America.īreaking in America was central to the band's strategy. The packaging was intentionally mysterious, without any words or insignias on the cover, only a peeling wall with a framed picture depicting a graying man hauling sticks on his back.Ĭolloquially known as Led Zeppelin IV, IV, or sometimes Runes in reference to the four runic symbols chosen by band members Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham to represent themselves, the officially untitled affair is a massive wallop of sound, the 1971 rock classic standing as a quintessential expression of the band's lyrical mysticism, folk leanings and bruising hard rock.įor the first three years of Led Zeppelin's existence, stretching from their formation in the summer of 1968 to the release of IV, the band was in constant motion, releasing three albums in a span of just 22 months. That's true in part because the record sleeve itself didn't give them much else to go on. That's all millions of fans have needed to know when picking up Led Zeppelin's best-selling fourth album, which was released 50 years ago this month.