58. Led Zeppelin, "Led Zeppelin IV"

 

This album, maybe the Rosetta Stone of 70s hard rock, is one of those that was so completely mined by FM radio that every song is somehow familiar.  I bought this on vinyl back when vinyl or cassette were your two choices and played it endlessly on my Technics turntable, like many, many of my peers.  Listening back to it now I'm like "You know what?  This album still goes hard as fuck."

This is the album, of course, with "Stairway to Heaven," one of the 20 or so Most Important Songs in rock, at least in my estimation.  When I was a kid, my local FM powerhouse used to do a countdown of the Top 500 songs on Memorial Day weekend every year (because of the Indianapolis 500, get it?) and you better know that motherfucking "Stairway to Heaven" was number 1 almost every year.  It's also the prime example of English pastoral mysticism, a movement that swept through English rock at the time (and was no doubt helped along by the fact that the bulk of this album was recorded at Headley Grange, a country house in Hampshire, where Robert Plant and company probably were convinced they were seeing faeries after sufficient doses of LSD.  As he sings:

If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now
It's just a spring clean for the May Queen
Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run
And there's still time to change the road you're on

The bustle in the hedgerow was probably a skunk small forest creature that lives in England, but let him run with it.  The same sort of gauzy storytelling shows up in "The Battle of Evermore," an intricate, mandolin-driven song that features Sandy Denny, a member of Fairport Convention and the only guest singer on a Zeppelin song, believe it or not.  They weave their vocals together throughout, spinning out this vaguely Tolkeinesque tale:

The Queen of Light took her bow
And then she turned to go
The Prince of Peace embraced the gloom
And walked the night alone
Oh, dance in the dark of night
Sing to the morning light
The dark Lord rides in force tonight
And time will tell us all
Oh, throw down your plow and hoe
Rest not to lock your homes
Side by side we wait the might of the darkest of them all

(I just realized when I was a kid I thought he was saying "The Queen of Light took her plow," like she was a farmer or something, guess I was just going with the pastoral theme.)

Not everything on the album is elves & spells, there's also plenty of just straight up rock.  Like the song "Rock and Roll," one of the finest songs in Led Zeppelin's catalog and maybe also one of the best rock songs of all time, a rollicking, propulsive 170 beats-per-minute jam driven by John Bonham's drumming and Jimmy Page's filthy guitar work.  I also can't sell short John Paul Jones' bass work on this song which, while not extraordinary, is perfect for the song.  Even Rolling Stones keyboardist Ian Stewart gets in, playing a Jerry Lee Lewis-style piano.  Just a great song.

Bonham shows up huge again in "Misty Mountain Hop," just an absolutely brilliant drum performance, while Plant puts down a great vocal.  I wasn't sure how to interpret this song as a kid - something about hippies in a park, I was guessing - but it actually refers to a real life incident when Plant was detained by police for loitering after dark in Hyde Park.  

The only song on here that I never really loved was "When the Levee Breaks," a pretty much straight ahead blues song that doesn't hold my interest as much.  The booming drums at the beginning, recorded in the entry hallway of the country house, have later showed up in dozens of hip hop songs, like the Beastie Boys' "Rhymin' and Stealin'" and "Lyrical Gangbang" by Dr. Dre.

An all-time classic album.

Is this album in my personal Top 100? Yes!  Absolutely!