Yes, listening to the one band people will not stop listening to, and talking about, because they know no other music. It’s just one of the things that drives me nuts. YES, we’ve heard of Led Zeppelin. We know they’re [insert superlatives.] Fine. So what. Tell me anything about them that is new, that has any meaning. Anything at all.
Sorry. It wears me out.
Houses Of The Holy is their fifth album, and the last Led Zeppelin album I ever bought. I haven’t listened to it closely in at least 35 years— in spite of which it’s extremely familiar to me— but I’ll spend some time with it now and write what I can. This is just what hits my ears, it doesn’t mean anything other than that. I’m not sitting here in my bathrobe telling you what Led Zeppelin should have done to be good.
Here, you can put on the record… again… and read my commentary:
The Song Remains The Same
Big opening number telling us we’re here and we’re going to be great, we’re going to show you all kinds of things! Including a lot of stupid lyrics. It’s an arrangement, this isn’t playing to me, it’s show music. You could have an announcer saying: And ladies and gentlemen, Jimmy Page! And John Bonham on the drums! And here’s Robert Plant! And the rest!
And I see now, on Wikipedia, that the original title was The Overture, which makes sense. It’s a very polished arrangement. Compared to similar things from The Who, it’s very clear Page was a studio professional, and Pete Townshend was more self taught, clearly figuring it out as he did the work— as an artist, I like Townshend better.
The Rain Song
Extended opus of Robert Plant narcissism, would have been a strong vehicle for a singer with emotional depth. With Plant it’s all very surface. Jimmy Page is a really skilled arranger, that aspect is very well handled with the various guitars, and piano, and Mellotron. An actual string arrangement would have improved on the Mellotron, that instrument isn’t needed for itself. John Bonham handles the dynamics well, especially as begins leaning on them a little bit. On the big part, where the drums that come in big, there’s a familiar kind of churchy feeling figure, with drum fills in the second measure, with that rolling syncopated kind of feel. That’s a stock rock & roll type of thing everyone should have in their ears and be able to have fun with.
The overall weepy feel of the thing is a native rock & roll feeling— whatever you think that music is, this maudlin feeling is a part of it. Especially in the 70s. There was a lot of partying going on, and a lot people who were basically lost souls. You feel like this has probably been played at a lot of funerals for teenagers. I find it to be a real drag.
Over The Hills And Far Away
More trash Plant lyrics. I actually love the guy, I just hate what he does. This eager beaver jumpy kind of funky feel is very Zeppelin, and I really don’t want any part of it. I wish they’d calm that a little bit. I don’t know if it’s just Bonham funking it up that bothers me. They give him lots of things to play with, and he jumps on them all.
The song does go someplace. There is a lot to hear on these records, they do a lot of stuff, that can be musically valid; there are a lot of playing and arranging ideas here. You listen to this a lot, and you know the terrain for the kinds of things that can be done in this music.
The Crunge
Another one I don’t want to hear. This is what James Brown sounds like after passing through Zeppelin’s big honking distorting English barnyard filter. This is what they hear when listening to him, and this is the way they’re capable of expressing it. They are really skilled with the arranged use of rhythm though, damn it. I’m not talking about the mixed meter here, but these little incidental tweaks to the obvious thing, that mostly don’t sound contrived.
Dancing Days
Throwaway hard rock number. Well arranged, again, except for some strange use of the keyboards on the second verse, and a slightly odd bridge. The vocal-sounding guitar “ohh” on the main riff makes the whole song— like the slide guitar on Whole Lotta Love. It’s a pure gimmick, and a critical item.
D’yer Make’r
Clearly they’re listening to some Reggae, again with the filter— it really does tell you a lot about what kind of musicians they are. Plant’s terrible lyrics are in full effect, with the imbecilic mad/mad/mad/glad/glad/glad etc nonsense. A lot of stuff happening here, they’re really beating this up, it would have been nice to hear a lighter approach. They’re forcing it, this doesn’t make it for me. Still a lot to learn from it, even as the basic thing is annoying.
No Quarter
Episodic thing, with the druggy intro and verse— like you dropped some reds and drank a lot of Gallo wine— and some proggy arranged figures. They probably get a good 15 minutes out of the solo section playing live. During the main heavy riff there’s a little groove construction of note, with the drums— the last half of the riff the backbeat is double timed. Throughout all of this I’m noting all the little rhythm tweaks they do to normal things— on the heavy riff shifting the downbeat to the e, for example. I like it well enough, though it kind of reminds me just how f—ed up a lot of kids were getting at this point in time. As a child in the 70s, these very f—ed up teenagers were like sad, scary apes to me.
The Ocean
My Christ, Plant’s narcissism is just all over this record, like if you drenched the vinyl itself in treacle— corn syrup to you and me. Typical kind of heavy Zeppelin boogie riff here, partly in an odd meter, and who cares. It does show some possibilities for where to go with a song that is basically just a riff. All the other stuff happening is just to make a working vehicle out of the hip-to-them riff.
The album cover
Actually Zeppelin’s best album cover— classic Robert Plantian golden haired mythic nonsense. The commercial artists who made it do that better even than Plant does it himself, and, as commercial art, it’s as good as anything Zeppelin did with their music. These child Apollos they put on it, with the blonde hair reminiscent of Plants’s, are a really pure expression of a certain hippie concept of humanity, with a slight dark edge. I guess you could call the imagery on the inside fold, suggestive of child sacrifice, slightly dark. Maybe it’s all closer in spirit to what we hear on Led Zeppelin III than this album.
For some reason, some people who only know the word apocalyptic have decided this is “apocalyptic” imagery, which… come on. Let’s make some microbial effort to expand our concept, people.
Conclusion
It’s a real text book on rock & roll studio arrangement, with plenty of musical interest, just not a lot of real listening pleasure, for me. I don’t care for the way John Bonham handles every single thing here, but he is a musician, there is an actual melodic sensibility behind what he does. I think he has a better real feel for percussion than Bam Bam, that Ginger Baker fellow. Still he’s got a real heavy hand in the way does the funk and reggae influenced songs. Robert Plant is in his peak golden god mode here and so this record has always been difficult for me to take, even as I was virtually memorizing it the year I got it.
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Musically, Plant’s vocals and persona were the thing that aged by far the worst for me when I returned to review a lot of my old ”60s and ’70s rock collection over the past few years. He’s fine for this sort of music, but ultimate a poor man’s copyist of Steve Marriott, who was not entirely a favourite in the first place. Live his whole schtick with the fake orgasms and push, push, oooh woman ad-libs can be insufferable.
I can appreciate the perspective of Zeppelin being thoroughly worn out, though I never really noticed that until the internet era. over here they were more of an extremely successful relic of the ’70s, and of little influence after that for young drummers (none of the other ’60s or ’70s guys were by the 90s either) but it seems like in the States, they have an enduring fanaticism about their fanbase. I personally find the ardent Bonham fanatic to often be among the most obnoxious in the drumming community, maybe only equalled by the Peart die-hards.
This album for me was mostly split between the very good ( Rain, Over The Hills, No Quarter, The Ocean) and the very worst the band put out on their original run (Crunge, D’yer Maker, Dancing Days). No Quarter has some of his best grooving on it to me.
To be fair to them, I don’t think the Crunge was meant to be a serious take on James Brown/’70s funk, nor D’yer on Reggae…at least I would hope not. The approach is more in line with the intentional kitsch/pastiche of glam rock adoptions to my ears. The sort of thing a band like Queen or Roxy Music did with various styles, or Bowie. Both are awful songs.
I do like The Rain Song, though. That’s Zep’s take on what was going on within the progressive (sometimes anyway) folk-rock scene in the UK at the time. Bands like Incredible String Band, Trees, Mellow Candle, Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span, Comus, Gryphon, Jan Dukes de Grey. Plant loved that stuff. It’s more bombastic than most of those bands, but I like the arrangement and vibe. I can’t agree with the mellotron comment, that’s an instrument that might have been intended as a primitive sampler, but ended up having a worthwile voice of its own…good keyboardists could coax out a lot of distinctive, interesting tones from the clunky thing that you simply couldn’t get by using real strings, brass or whatever, though JPJ’s use is pretty generic.
I don’t think Bonham was all that suited to the light handed (and more linear) sort of funk playing that developed throughout the ’70s, or that was employed by Brown’s drummers by then. He was better at a heavier, more soul influenced groove, which is basically what his whole style was built around…”toughening” up soul drumming to fit heavy rock. For funk players, he would be closer to the Funkadelic/Parliament drummers than any of Brown’s. You obviously don’t like Baker, but I found he assimilated funk influences into his ’70s playing in a more interactive and original way than Bonham on solo albums like Stratavarious/Baker and Friends, or a bunch of the Baker/Gurvitz stuff.
Listen to his playing on a track like this. Not that I would call it a great track, it’s a bit unfinished and was used as a purely live “get the crowd going” thing, never recorded, but it’s a good example of the sort of grooves I mean.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO5friabIXk&list=RDkO5friabIXk&start_radio=1