Sometimes, life feels like a random intersection of others lives. In 1969, there was just over three and a half billion people on the planet. And somehow, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Bonham, and John Paul Jones found one another and formed one of the most important bands in the whole scope of pop music history.
And they released this record, which would become one of the most influential albums of all time.
As long as I’ve been listening to Led Zeppelin (around eighteen years now), I haven’t spent very much time with their debut. In my head, I had constructed the narrative that they had started out just playing blues rock as loud as possible before honing their rock and roll fury into their trademark sound.
But as soon as this record opens, it tears that theory apart.
“Good Times, Bad Times” introduces the god-tier quartet with a crash, with Jimmy Page trading bars of one of his most iconic riffs with John Bonham’s thunderous drum fills. When Robert Plant starts singing (with some Beatlesy harmonies!) and John Paul Jones adds the low end, it bursts into an introduction befitting their legacy.
A couple cover songs follow: a massive reinterpretation of Anne Bredon’s “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” (which strayed so far from the original that Page and Plant got a writing credit) and Willie Dixon’s “You Shook Me,” which showcases the band’s traditionalist chops.
“You Shook Me” fades into “Dazed and Confused,” a druggy shapeshifting epic. Even in the potsmoke filled landscape of the late sixties with bands like Pink Floyd, King Crimson, The Doors, and the Beatles offering their own psychedelia, “Dazed and Confused” was a new branch of out there. After a few moments of calm groove, it explodes into a violent riff. After a couple cycles of verses and choruses, it moves into an extended instrumental passage. Page’s guitars, rife with effects and studio trickery (and is that a violin bow?), float thickly above the groove of Jones and Bonham. After a few minutes, they burst into all out rock and roll fury before returning to the main riff. It’s a Mars Volta track about thirty-five years too soon, forecasting Meddle as much as Paranoid.
After the blistering, relentless attack of the first four songs, side B almost feels unnecessary, but it’s just as strong. “Your Time Is Gonna Come” opens the side with a thick organ solo before introducing a simple drum rhythm and folksy acoustic guitar part. It fades into “Black Mountain Slide,” an acoustic instrumental with a tambla (played by guest Viram Jisani, the only other musician to appear on the record).
The quiet is brief, as it is abruptly broken by “Communication Breakdown,” one of the fastest songs in the group’s catalog with Plant nearly screaming at the top of his range. After showing off Jimmy’s blues chops with another Willie Dixon cover, the band closes with “How Many More Times.”
Like “Dazed and Confused,” “How Many More Times” takes its time, shifting through sections and exploring unexplored sonic territory several times through its eight-and-a-half minute run time, Jimmy making copious use of the studio’s overdub capabilities (and that violin bow again).
It’s common for influential records to sound dated in comparison to the throngs of music they influenced. Jesus and Mary Chain sounds thin and harsh compared to the shoegaze scene. Black Flag sounds almost cheerful in comparison to modern hardcore. But Led Zeppelin still sounds just as ferocious and imposing as it must have sounded to audiences in 1969. Like Meet the Beatles in the mid-sixties, this record sets the tone for where rock and roll would go for through the seventies. And for the most part, that’s a good thing.