LAMONT’S MUSIC NOTES-NOV 8, 2019…FORTY EIGHT YEARS AGO LED ZEPPELIN RELEASED THE ALBUM IV (ZOSO) IN AMERICA. HERE ARE SOME LITTLE KNOWN FACTS SURROUNDING THE ALBUM:
-The album is actually untitled. Page made the decision because he was tired of criticism from music critics: “It was designed as our response to the music critics who maintained that the success of our first three albums was driven by hype and not talent. … So, we stripped everything away, and let the music do the talking.”
-Along with missing a title, the album cover also does not feature the band’s name. The group chose to do this to have some anonymity and keep from being pigeonholed by the press
-There is no printing anywhere on the front or back covers. There isn’t even a catalog number on the spine of the original LP
– to identify the album, many people called it Led Zeppelin IV, but it has also been referred to as Four Symbols, The Fourth Album, Untitled, Runes, The Hermit and ZoSo
– Jimmy wanted just one symbol on the album but decided to have each member design their own symbol
– symbols the band chose for themselves on the album art don’t mean as much as you might think.
“They were put together pretty hastily, people have read so much into them over the years. When you get down to it, it sounds like John Paul Jones and John Bonham just said, ‘Oh, we’ll pick these, you know, sure, whatever,’ they weren’t that interested. Robert Plant picked the feather in the circle from some mystical account of some lost civilization that probably never existed. It was one of those hippie things that they thought was out there. Page’s “Zoso,” goes way back to the renaissance, really, but basically it’s a representation of Capricorn from a document dating back to the 1500s. In those days, the way people drew astrological symbols was a lot more elaborate than just scales or fish, but it does derive from a symbol for Saturn, or for Capricorn. It’s nothing satanic or anything like that.”
-Some of the instruments John Paul Jones plays on the album are bass, electric piano, mellotron, mandolin, recorders and acoustic guitar.
– ‘Rock and Roll’ came from a spontaneous jam session when the guys were trying to complete the song ‘Four Sticks’
– ‘Rock and Roll’ had the working title ‘It’s Been a Long Time’
– There could have been more than eight songs on IV. Zep was always known to hold material back for other albums. Both ‘Boogie with Stu’ and ‘Black Country Woman’ from Physical Graffiti originally came from the IV sessions
-Robert Plant recorded the vocals for ‘Black Dog’ in two takes
-Contrary to rumors, there are no backwards messages on ‘Stairway to Heaven’
-The band started to record the album at Basing Street Studios in London. Jethro Tull was recording Aqualung there at the same time so they needed to find another studio
-At the suggestion of Fleetwood Mac, the band recorded most of the album at Headley Grange, a remote Victorian estate, where they used Ronnie Lane’s Mobile Studio outside
-Robert Plant is the only one moving at real speed on ‘When the Levee Breaks.’ Zeppelin slowed down the mix so the drums really sounded booming and had this huge reverb to it from recording the drum sound in the stairway of the castle. According to Jimmy Page “the only sound on ‘When the Levee Breaks’ that’s recorded in natural time is Plant’s voice”
-While big parts of the record were recorded at Headley Grange hey did use a lot of other studios, including Island Studios and Sunset Sound
-Robert Plant once explained that the lyrics to ‘Stairway to Heaven’ were about a woman who always got what she wanted and never gave back
-The lyrics of ‘Misty Mountain Hop’ are based on a “Legalize Pot Rally” in London in 1968 where police arrested people for marijuana possession
-‘Four Sticks’ got its title because Bonham played with four drumsticks on it. He decided to do that after getting frustrated over the song not sounding right with just two sticks. He grabbed another set and hit the drums as hard as he could, recording the perfect take
-‘Going to California’ is rumored to be about singer Joni Mitchell. Plant was said to be infatuated with her and can be heard saying “Joni” in live performances after singing the lines “To find a queen without a king, they say she plays guitar and cries and sings. Plant once said that the lyrics for the song can be a little embarrassing but accurately depict his life in his early 20s, when he was struggling to find himself in the craziness of California
-Accounting for streaming, downloads, singles, total sales for Led Zeppelin IV stands at a staggering 57 million copies
HERE’S ZEPPELIN PERFORMING ‘MISTY MOUNTAIN HOP’ FROM IV
