The Vinyl Project - Led Zeppelin II by Led Zeppelin (1969)
A Trip Thru Your Grooves - Episode 17
Release Date: 22-October-1969
Genre: Blues/Hard Rock/AOR/Heavy Metal
Producer: Jimmy Page
Label: Atlantic
Time: 41m 38s
Review Date: 16-December-2018
Format: LP
Side One
A Deep Cut You'll Love: Bring it on Home
An interesting note about Led Zeppelin II: Critical reaction at the time of the album release was not originally positive. John Mendelsohn wrote a negative review of the record for Rolling Stone, in which he mocked the group's heavy sound and white blues, while writing that "until you've listened to the album eight hundred times, as I have, it seems as if it's just one especially heavy song extended over the space of two whole sides." In The Village Voice, Robert Christgau jokingly referred to the band as "the best of the wah-wah mannerist groups, so dirty they drool on demand," while complaining that "all the songs sound alike," before assigning the album a "B" grade. He nonetheless conceded in 1970 that "Led Zeppelin simply out-heavied everyone" the previous year, "pitting Jimmy Page's repeated low-register fuzz riffs against the untiring freak intensity of Robert Plant's vocal. This trademark has only emerged clearly on the second album, and more and more I am coming to understand it as an artistic triumph."
Release Date: 22-October-1969
Genre: Blues/Hard Rock/AOR/Heavy Metal
Producer: Jimmy Page
Label: Atlantic
Time: 41m 38s
Review Date: 16-December-2018
Format: LP
Side One
- Whole Lotta Love
- What Is and What Should Never Be
- The Lemon Song
- Thank You
- Heartbreaker
- Living Loving Maid (She's Just a Woman)
- Ramble On
- Moby Dick
- Bring it on Home
Review: This is one of the first albums I ordered with the first of many subscriptions I had with the Columbia House Record Club. The deal was you'd get 11 albums for a penny - plus shipping which was about $3.99 at the time - and then you'd have to buy 9 albums at their regular club prices, anywhere from $5.99 to $15.99 each. Of course most people never honored the commitment, and since this was in the days before electronic databases, some just kept resubscribing under fake names. Not me, of course, though my memories from 1980 aren't as clear as they used to be.
I used to wonder how Columbia House ever made money, but now that I know the history of record labels and how they cooked their books, worked around merchant return policies, and the few pennies they paid their artists, I know exactly how labels could afford to let mail order services peddle their wares at an obvious loss.
"Now you sign a deal with a label, paid you a big chunk of change to cut an album, so you’re feeling like the man, but they gonna hit that pile of cash, pull out a stack to pay for the studio, the guy pushing the button and the cover art and the poster and the launch party. That’s called recoupment. Cut the record, it sells in stores, shop gets half. Take out a buck for the manufacturing. Buck and a half for the distribution. A buck for marketing. Not a whole lot left for you. But even if there is, you don’t get to see a dime of it till they pay off your production costs. Probably need to sell 100,000 records to do that. 100,000 is more people than you’ll ever meet in your life." - Richie Finestra, American Century CEO, HBO Vinyl
Recoupment isn't even the scariest of record label contractual requirements. Recovery practices could leave a band actually owing the label money, because recover means, well, recover. But I digress.
Led Zeppelin's debut album, which was released just a few months before Led Zeppelin II, is a great album. But Led Zeppelin II is where the band actually defined its sound. In essence, Led Zeppelin became Led Zeppelin with this LP. Sorry for coming across as a Lester Bangs facsimile, but there's no better way to describe it. Led Zeppelin II is the birth of heavy metal, and represents the quintessence of the genre. It's heavy and loud, merciless and direct.
Stereo separation is something cool I discovered with this LP: The song What Is and What Should Never Be makes liberal use of stereo capability as guitars pan back and forth between channels. The song represents the first use of Jimmy Page's soon-to-be-trademarked Les Paul. Robert Plant's vocals were subsequently phased in and out during the verses. It's a truly sublime use of stereo effects.
The album's masterpiece is Whole Lotta Love. Use of a theremin and Plant's white hot moaning on the very sexual bridge really separated the song from anything the band had done prior. It's as if the band used the album's opening song to announce to the world 'This is who we are.' Page added to the psychedelic effect of the elongated bridge by detuning his guitar and pulling on its strings. John Bonham 's drumming was beyond nuclear. You can accuse Led Zeppelin of being unoriginal - a lot of their music is borrowed ostensibly from the Atlantic blues catalog - but the band certainly had the uncanny ability to make everything they borrowed sound original, so the byproduct is originality, regardless if it was or *wasn't* borrowed. There I go sounding like Lester Bangs again.
In reality, Bangs loathed Zeppelin: "Well I hate Rock’n’Roll stars, I have for a long time, I really have been against it. I really think the star system was good in the 60’s I guess. You know, with The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and that, and even then it was probably pretty sick. But really the end of the star system of Rock’n’Roll I think you could see from about the late 60’s & early 70’s. When you then have people who didn’t have personality that were set up like stars like say Joe Cocker or Eric Clapton, Cream and that, or Robert Plant and Led Zeppelin. I mean, these aren’t tremendously strong personalities like John Lennon or Mick Jagger or Bob Dylan. They just aren’t. And since then it’s just been getting worse and worse, I mean for every Bruce Springsteen or Patti Smith who really does deserve to be called a star, you’ve got a dozen Styx’s."
"The last time I saw them they just sort of stood up there with this attitude, they barely moved, I mean any of them, the expression on their faces, the whole way the carried themselves was like ‘You people are so lucky to even get to look at us, so why should we do anything?’ They didn’t play that well, they were just very indifferent and they just didn’t give to their audience as opposed to The Clash that just give and give and give, and then give some more, and are really concerned about their audience."
Of course Bangs died listening to the Human League, so there's that. I digress.
Vocal bleed-through is something cool I discovered with this LP: At the point where Whole Lotta Love breaks and Plant longingly wails, "Way down inside . . . woman . . . you need, yeah . . . love," you can hear a faint voice singing the lyric ahead of Robert up through the closing sustain. Apparently Plant had done two different vocals, recording them on two different tracks. Even when the volume was turned down all the way on the track that the band didn't want, Plant's powerful voice was bleeding through the console and onto the master recording. The faint voice was not a purposeful, pre-echo effect. It was, rather, a wonderful accident.
I used to like this girl...: When I was younger - and a woman caught my attention - I'd pen something poetic on paper and back it with a mixtape. The first mixtape I ever made was for this girl named Bonnie who looked an awful lot like a 1970s version of Linda Ronstadt, bronze-skinned but with long, straight Crystal Gayle hair. I don't remember how I met her - we didn't go to the same school or have any mutual friends - but she lived a block from me. She was at one of my baseball games when I was 16 and I walked her home. She kissed me by surprise, and I swear my feet left the floor. The mixtape I made her kicked off with Thank You, followed by Peaceful Easy Feeling by the Eagles, and Feels So Good by Chuck Mangione. I only saw her a few times after that before her family moved about 65 miles away to Lake Zurich.
The song Thank You, I believe, was the first song Plant wrote without the help of any of his bandmates. It's wonderfully delicate in both lyrical structure and arrangement. Featuring chiming guitars, subdued percussion and a hypnotic organ, it's one of the few love songs ever played by Led Zeppelin. It pairs beautifully with Going to California from Zeppelin's fourth album if you're in the mood for a more mystical side of the band.
Most people don't know that Ramble On was influenced by J.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. The song is hilly and brisk and feels Tolkein-like in arrangement. With a little imagination its not hard to interpret it as Frodo's journey to Mordor. "Leaves are falling all around, its time I was on my way. But still I'm much obliged, such a pleasant stay." Plant was a big fan of the novel set and had a keen interest in myth and magic. He even named his dog Strider.
I'd be remiss if I didn't mention bassist John Paul Jones and drummer John Bonham. Both were at the top of their games on LZII. On Moby Dick, Page and Jones play the tune's Drop-D blues-based riff with Bonham's drums—as a power trio—at the very beginning and the very end of the tune, leaving the remainder open for Bonham alone. When played live, Bonham would sometimes extend his drum solo for thirty minutes or more. Jones handled the organ on Thank You, and was responsible for the classic bass lines of Ramble On and The Lemon Song.
Best Songs: Whole Lotta Love, Thank You, What is and What Should Never Be, Ramble On, Heartbreaker/Living Love Maid (She's Just a Woman)I used to wonder how Columbia House ever made money, but now that I know the history of record labels and how they cooked their books, worked around merchant return policies, and the few pennies they paid their artists, I know exactly how labels could afford to let mail order services peddle their wares at an obvious loss.
"Now you sign a deal with a label, paid you a big chunk of change to cut an album, so you’re feeling like the man, but they gonna hit that pile of cash, pull out a stack to pay for the studio, the guy pushing the button and the cover art and the poster and the launch party. That’s called recoupment. Cut the record, it sells in stores, shop gets half. Take out a buck for the manufacturing. Buck and a half for the distribution. A buck for marketing. Not a whole lot left for you. But even if there is, you don’t get to see a dime of it till they pay off your production costs. Probably need to sell 100,000 records to do that. 100,000 is more people than you’ll ever meet in your life." - Richie Finestra, American Century CEO, HBO Vinyl
Recoupment isn't even the scariest of record label contractual requirements. Recovery practices could leave a band actually owing the label money, because recover means, well, recover. But I digress.
Led Zeppelin's debut album, which was released just a few months before Led Zeppelin II, is a great album. But Led Zeppelin II is where the band actually defined its sound. In essence, Led Zeppelin became Led Zeppelin with this LP. Sorry for coming across as a Lester Bangs facsimile, but there's no better way to describe it. Led Zeppelin II is the birth of heavy metal, and represents the quintessence of the genre. It's heavy and loud, merciless and direct.
Stereo separation is something cool I discovered with this LP: The song What Is and What Should Never Be makes liberal use of stereo capability as guitars pan back and forth between channels. The song represents the first use of Jimmy Page's soon-to-be-trademarked Les Paul. Robert Plant's vocals were subsequently phased in and out during the verses. It's a truly sublime use of stereo effects.
The album's masterpiece is Whole Lotta Love. Use of a theremin and Plant's white hot moaning on the very sexual bridge really separated the song from anything the band had done prior. It's as if the band used the album's opening song to announce to the world 'This is who we are.' Page added to the psychedelic effect of the elongated bridge by detuning his guitar and pulling on its strings. John Bonham 's drumming was beyond nuclear. You can accuse Led Zeppelin of being unoriginal - a lot of their music is borrowed ostensibly from the Atlantic blues catalog - but the band certainly had the uncanny ability to make everything they borrowed sound original, so the byproduct is originality, regardless if it was or *wasn't* borrowed. There I go sounding like Lester Bangs again.
In reality, Bangs loathed Zeppelin: "Well I hate Rock’n’Roll stars, I have for a long time, I really have been against it. I really think the star system was good in the 60’s I guess. You know, with The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and that, and even then it was probably pretty sick. But really the end of the star system of Rock’n’Roll I think you could see from about the late 60’s & early 70’s. When you then have people who didn’t have personality that were set up like stars like say Joe Cocker or Eric Clapton, Cream and that, or Robert Plant and Led Zeppelin. I mean, these aren’t tremendously strong personalities like John Lennon or Mick Jagger or Bob Dylan. They just aren’t. And since then it’s just been getting worse and worse, I mean for every Bruce Springsteen or Patti Smith who really does deserve to be called a star, you’ve got a dozen Styx’s."
"The last time I saw them they just sort of stood up there with this attitude, they barely moved, I mean any of them, the expression on their faces, the whole way the carried themselves was like ‘You people are so lucky to even get to look at us, so why should we do anything?’ They didn’t play that well, they were just very indifferent and they just didn’t give to their audience as opposed to The Clash that just give and give and give, and then give some more, and are really concerned about their audience."
Of course Bangs died listening to the Human League, so there's that. I digress.
Vocal bleed-through is something cool I discovered with this LP: At the point where Whole Lotta Love breaks and Plant longingly wails, "Way down inside . . . woman . . . you need, yeah . . . love," you can hear a faint voice singing the lyric ahead of Robert up through the closing sustain. Apparently Plant had done two different vocals, recording them on two different tracks. Even when the volume was turned down all the way on the track that the band didn't want, Plant's powerful voice was bleeding through the console and onto the master recording. The faint voice was not a purposeful, pre-echo effect. It was, rather, a wonderful accident.
I used to like this girl...: When I was younger - and a woman caught my attention - I'd pen something poetic on paper and back it with a mixtape. The first mixtape I ever made was for this girl named Bonnie who looked an awful lot like a 1970s version of Linda Ronstadt, bronze-skinned but with long, straight Crystal Gayle hair. I don't remember how I met her - we didn't go to the same school or have any mutual friends - but she lived a block from me. She was at one of my baseball games when I was 16 and I walked her home. She kissed me by surprise, and I swear my feet left the floor. The mixtape I made her kicked off with Thank You, followed by Peaceful Easy Feeling by the Eagles, and Feels So Good by Chuck Mangione. I only saw her a few times after that before her family moved about 65 miles away to Lake Zurich.
The song Thank You, I believe, was the first song Plant wrote without the help of any of his bandmates. It's wonderfully delicate in both lyrical structure and arrangement. Featuring chiming guitars, subdued percussion and a hypnotic organ, it's one of the few love songs ever played by Led Zeppelin. It pairs beautifully with Going to California from Zeppelin's fourth album if you're in the mood for a more mystical side of the band.
Most people don't know that Ramble On was influenced by J.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. The song is hilly and brisk and feels Tolkein-like in arrangement. With a little imagination its not hard to interpret it as Frodo's journey to Mordor. "Leaves are falling all around, its time I was on my way. But still I'm much obliged, such a pleasant stay." Plant was a big fan of the novel set and had a keen interest in myth and magic. He even named his dog Strider.
I'd be remiss if I didn't mention bassist John Paul Jones and drummer John Bonham. Both were at the top of their games on LZII. On Moby Dick, Page and Jones play the tune's Drop-D blues-based riff with Bonham's drums—as a power trio—at the very beginning and the very end of the tune, leaving the remainder open for Bonham alone. When played live, Bonham would sometimes extend his drum solo for thirty minutes or more. Jones handled the organ on Thank You, and was responsible for the classic bass lines of Ramble On and The Lemon Song.
A Deep Cut You'll Love: Bring it on Home
An interesting note about Led Zeppelin II: Critical reaction at the time of the album release was not originally positive. John Mendelsohn wrote a negative review of the record for Rolling Stone, in which he mocked the group's heavy sound and white blues, while writing that "until you've listened to the album eight hundred times, as I have, it seems as if it's just one especially heavy song extended over the space of two whole sides." In The Village Voice, Robert Christgau jokingly referred to the band as "the best of the wah-wah mannerist groups, so dirty they drool on demand," while complaining that "all the songs sound alike," before assigning the album a "B" grade. He nonetheless conceded in 1970 that "Led Zeppelin simply out-heavied everyone" the previous year, "pitting Jimmy Page's repeated low-register fuzz riffs against the untiring freak intensity of Robert Plant's vocal. This trademark has only emerged clearly on the second album, and more and more I am coming to understand it as an artistic triumph."
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