• AllMyVinyl #145
• Band: Led Zeppelin
• Album Title: IV
• Release Date: 8 Nov 1971
• Date purchased: Unknown
• Location purchased: Unknown, but probably Sam Goody
• Color of vinyl: black
• Number of discs: 1
• Links: [ Wikipedia | Discogs | Band Website | Complete album on Youtube | Album history series ]

If you’ve been following my vinyl series, you should know by now that writing isn’t an issue for me.  I can easily crank out 2,000 words about albums I don’t care for a whole lot, and 5,000 or more for ones I really do.  But this one – today’s album is one that when I saw it was next up on my spreadsheet I dreaded.  Not because I don’t like it – I adore it.  But that’s the problem.  Led Zeppelin IV is one of those foundational albums (like Dark Side, or Sgt Peppers) that is definitely one of those ones up on a pedestal.  So much has been said about this album in the bloody 54 years it’s been out that my words – genuine that they might be…  would feel feeble “on paper”.  I’ve developed a formula with these releases.  Write about some memories I have of it, break down the songs, offer a wrap-up.  Throw in some pictures or videos, and I’ve got one of my entries. But this one, I dreaded writing about it.  It’s Zep IV – I mean Stairway – one of the most recognized hard rock songs of all time.  There’s nothing on this album isn’t legitimately called a banger.  When something is that good, I struggle with what to write.  Because I just want to go “OK, there’s eight tracks here – this is f’in awesome – just listen to it!”.  That doesn’t make for a very good article, but I can’t lie – it wouldn’t be WRONG either.  The songs are all epic.  There’s nothing on this album that sucks, and that’s the struggle.  I mean just in setting this up I put on Stairway from finding the Youtube links, and I just sat there and listened to it.  I didn’t want to write about it.  I just wanted to listen to it. However, I won’t do that – I just was overwhelmed by the album and didn’t know to start.

Jumping into the past, the vinyl copy I have of Zep IV is one of the survivors of my mom’s basement.  Have no memory as to exactly when I got it, but the first rock album I got was in late 1980, so if I had to guess I probably bought this copy in 81 or 82.  It’s still in amazing condition.  I always wondered when I realized it was still in good shape if that had anything to do with the fact that the album was SO overplayed on rock radio that you almost didn’t have to play the album intentionally, you’d hear it all the time anyway without trying.  I have a vague memory of buying it on cassette tape as well, but if I did, I don’t have that anymore – I do still have a handful of old Zep cassettes in 2025, but not IV.  The vinyl is still in amazing shape, and will be today’s listen.  Not a ton to the backstory here.  Was always one of the greatest rock albums – period, so it was an easy pickup for me, even in the early 80’s when there wasn’t a lot of money.

There’s one other issue I wanted to bring up.  I know the technically/officially the album is untitled.  Original prints don’t say Led Zeppelin anywhere – not on the front, back, inside, or even the spine.  It doesn’t say “Led Zeppelin IV” or even have a catalog number from the record company.  However, given their prior three albums were all called Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin II, & Led Zeppelin III, most people (myself included) call it “Led Zeppelin IV”.  In fact, the current iteration of Zep’s website called it “Led Zeppelin IV” right on the front page of the site.  However, I know over the years, I’ve seen people call it “Runes”, “ZoSo”, “Four Symbols”, “The Fourth Album”, and the occasional simple “Untitled”.  However, “IV” is generally the moniker most people tend to use and will be the one I use here.

There’s no need to talk about lineup changes, because Zep was always Page / Plant / Jones / Bonham until Bonzo’s death later in the decade.  So this is the Zep that we know.  :)

Black Dog – If there’s one negative thing I can say about Zep IV, is that I always felt the running order of Black Dog & Rock and Roll shold have been reversed.  In no way do I think Black Dog is bad.  It’s a banger like everything else on this album.  I just don’t feel it has that “opening track” vibe.  Ignoring that, I do love the shrieking vocals delivered by Plant during the parts where there’s no other band playing, it’s a nice musical cue, letting Plant’s voice shine on its own there.   I do like the guitar solo that plays at the same time as the general beat of the song which goes through the whole thing.  It’s kind of interesting that when I read about this album Page said the idea of stopping and starting the music to feature the vocalist was inspired by the classic track “Oh Well” by Fleetwood Mac.  That’s also a banger of a track, but something I didnt’ know till today – busted out “Oh Well” and definitely can hear it.   It’s also interesting that the song was named after a literal dog that used to hang out in the area around the studio.  There’s some good rhythm changes in this track, something I always enjoy.  As I said, it’s a great track with some killer guitars (no shock there, it’s Page), just felt it would have worked better as second on the album.

Rock and Roll – The song that I thought should be first on the album.  It’s got that high energy album opener vibe to me.  It’s probably my favorite track on the album outside of Stairway.  It’s not the most complex Page riff, but it doesn’t have to be to be effective (see Smoke on the Water).  It’s a 3:41 fast track with a really solid beat, and catchy vocals – even if I don’t know what the actual lyrics are.  It also stops and starts the music like Black Dog did, but not as much.  I mean there’s a point about 2/3 of the way through the track where Page is left alone, the guitar work there was very simple, but very effective.  It also starts with a drum intro, and has more of that towards the end of the song – get a drum intro and a solo (almost outro) in the same track.  It starts fast, and never lets up.  One of my favorite kind of tracks.  This is also the only song written by all four members for the album as a new track.  Levee is also credited to all four, but is a cover, so that’s different.

The Battle of Evermore – The opening guitar lick before any other part of the band kind of reminds me of the opening guitar work by the Kinks on “Supersonic Rocket Ship” – just a little bit at the start.  I don’t think one is ripping off the other, just the choice of guitar work in both is similar sounding. Both songs quickly go off in different directions.  Evermore has a background vocalist – one Sandy Denny. Denny sadly died young 5 years after the album at age 31.  She was so important to the song, that she actually got her own rune to go with the four for the Zep members.  Lyrically the song alludes to Lord of the Rings.  It’s mandolin heavy and doesn’t progress much beyond that sound – there’s no speed change here when the whole band kicks in.  It’s a slower paced song, but it’s helped by the vocals of Denny.  It’s a nice sound – but I have to admit, when I was younger, I didn’t like this track, because this follows the fast rocker of Rock & Roll and the majesty that is Stairway after it, that I’m like “Can we skip over this and get back to the good shit?”  I of course got over that, but it was a skip back when I first bought it.  It isn’t now.  :)

Stairway to Heaven – I mean WTF can you write about this track that you haven’t heard somewhere.   I hesitate to use songs like legendary, but if you were to use it I can’t think of many tracks that would fill the definition of the word than Stairway to Heaven does.

When I wrote about the Stones I mentioned a scene from the movie Jumping Jack Flash where Whoopi Goldberg’s character tries to decipher Mick’s lyrics with the words “These are some fucked up lyrics, Mick!” I feel the exact same way about the lyrics to Stairway.  I mean.. “If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow, don’t be alarmed now / It’s just a spring clean for the May queen”.  As I’ve said about some of Geezer Butler’s lyrics (“Bog blast all of you”)..  People on pure air don’t write words like that.  :)

(Edit: I’ve been informed by a friend of mine who doesn’t live in the US that the hedgerow thing is a common phrase over where he is, and that is is just some US wanker not knowing what’s going on)

It’s got two distinct parts to me – the slower part where Bonzo can just sit there and swing from his bottle waiting to play, and the much faster part that kicks in around 6 minutes…  I mean there’s so many different parts to this with different vibes, speeds, and musical ideas, you could probably write 5,000 words on a breakdown of JUST Stairway.

This is also one of those songs where I preferred the live version more – I quite like the version from the Song Remains the Same album.  So much so that when I listen to the studio version now and get to the part where the lyrics are “and the forest will echo with laughter” I hear in my head Plant saying “Does anyone remember laughter” from that live version.  It almost feels like it’s missing from the studio version.

Page’s guitar solo/riffing once the fast part of the song starts towards the end is the kind of stuff I wanted to learn how to play when I was a kid and too young to realize I didn’t have talent to play the guitar.  It might be the most overplayed song on rock radio of all time, but dammit the power of this song is STILL there despite overplay.  It works.  In fact, as I write this song, it’s honestly on as a I type, and it’s actually the third time I’ve listened to the song in the last hour, so I’m overplaying even within the confines of writing my article.  And on this third listen I still do some air drumming to Bonzo when he really kicks in big time towards the back end of the song.

Stairway doesn’t care how much it’s been played.  It’s that fucking good.  It transcends all that radio overplay, and the place in your head that you file “Yeah, that’s good, but I’ve heard it too much”, still demands your attention.  It grabs you by the balls like nothing else has in the 54 years sine it was released and the thousands of times you personally have probably listened to it yourself.

Misty Mountain Hop – As I start listening to this, all I can think of is that this song harkens back to their foundational sound as a blues band that plays really hard.  It’s not straight up blues, and am I wrong in even calling it that?  I dunno, but that’s what I think of when I hear this song.  It’s got a bit of a slightly heavier sound – not that Zep is ever NOT heavy, but not all their basic song structures sound like this (at least to my hears) sounds like this.  It’s a hard driving steady beat that runs through it.  I also love what they do with Robert’s vocals here.  There’s like a background or echo effect applied to him, and then there’s a higher sound to other lines.  It’s a nice tradeoff, so his vocals don’t sound the same through the entire track.  Given the basic beat runs through the whole thing you can get into it.  I know sometimes that works against a song, it’s a great base to hang the rest of the song off of.  From reading around, the lyrics are about Plant’s view of a better world, but I’m not sure about that.  But honestly, lyrics aren’t USUALLY the reason I listen to Zep, it’s the music. There’s some nice musical accents that play over the long fadeout which bring a nice flavor to the end of the song that wasn’t there before.

Four Sticks – This songs has a fatter low end – can hear more of JPJ on bass here.  Not that he’s not an integral part of the overall Zep sound, but I can hear him more here, as he’s more up front in the mix.   When I was a teenager, I always thought the title was a reference to the power of John Bonham making drum sounds that sounded like he had four arms – and by extension – “four sticks”.  I later found out that’s what it is about sorta – Bonzo would hold two sticks in each hand.  Wikipedia calls this song “raga rock” – which they define as having a pronounced “Indian influence”.  Not quite sure I get that, but I do like the tune.  The lower end sound from the start is gone after awhile – so subtly I didn’t even notice it fading out until I was like “Hey – that sounds different”.  It does come back for the final verse of the song.  I quite like this track – one of the more underrated songs – most people think of other tracks when they think of Zep, but I like the rather unusual time signatures in this song.  Not much in the way of a guitar solo here, as Page’s wizard isn’t the real focus.

Going to California – This is what one would mostly call a ballad – an acoustic guitar piece.  It shows very well how well Page’s guitar and Plant’s vocals go together.  This is one of those songs that I just take in.  I am not ALWAYS the biggest fan of hard rock bands doing acoustic pieces, but this works really well.  I don’t have a ton to write, as the acoustic guitar doesn’t change much.  Plant’s vocals go to a few places.  Most just match the guitar, but some get some echo effects applied to them, and other things, so his vocals are a bit more interesting.  I do like the track, just not a ton of words for it.

When the Levee Breaks – This is a country blues song written by “Memphis Minnie” and “Kansas Joe McCoy” in 1929.  Having watched through Ken Burns’ documentary on Country Music, I can definitely hear that era of old blues music in the Led Zeppelin version for sure.  If you check out the 1929 original, it doesn’t sound quite the same. The original is also only about 3 and a half minutes, and the Zep version is 7:09, so it’s definitely an “inspired cover” vs a “straight cover”.   Quite a large percentage of this is what you could just call a Zeppelin jam.  The actual lyrical part of the song is minimal.  While I know this is a cover, it doesn’t feel like it.  It just feels like a recorded jam session that’s rather loosely based around what is now a near 100 year old blues song.  However you want to look at it, there’s a good beat here, so you can definitely get into it.   Interesting that the actual last note of the song is a louder guitar sound that would sound like it works in one of the harder tracks on the album.  It’s an interesting choice it sounds almost totally out of place as the album closer, much like “Shazzbot – Nanu Nanu” does at the end of Highway to Hell.   However you want to end it, it’s another great song on an album stuffed with them.

Despite hitting nearly 3,000 words here, I still feel that what I wrote about this album isn’t the best I could do.  I probably really could spend 5,000 words breaking down Stairway musically.  I’ve been told I’ve gotten adept at writing about these things, but my words feel feeble for Led Zeppelin IV.  Still, they’re here, and I hope you enjoyed reading it.

P.S.  I struggled to figure out a way to work my wife into this one as Zep is not one of her favorite bands.  The Wayne’s World image is there, because every time we do hear Stairway when we’re together, she’ll say out loud “No Stairway – DENIED!”.  That image is for her.