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Led zeppelin presence6/25/2023 There is, inside of this late-career gift, much to love - not least of which is one of the most wicked harmonica solos in all of rock, on “Nobody’s Fault But Mine.” I was zipping along at 45 in a 30 before I knew it, this morning, thinking: I sure miss this guy. They circle back around to the tune’s original chugging, marrow-deep groove. “Achilles” takes an abrupt turn and we ride with Bonham up to Page’s thundering solo like the clack-clack-clack of a roller coaster … you know, you feel, that something big is going to happen.ĭoes it ever. He begins by powering an absolutely monstrous template, then delves into jazzy asides - deftly coloring the beat. Even Jimmy Page’s patented “army of guitars” sound is no match for Bonham’s charging fills. He now has the ability to quietly improvise on the heaviest of those heavy Led moans - including “blooze” throwbacks like “For Your Life” and “Tea for One.”Ī favorite is “Achilles Last Stand”: Bonham, and this is special, works as the lead instrument over roughly the first half of this song. But even in what should have been safe nostalgia, Bonham unleashes newfound, and surprisingly subtle, polyrhythms. Perhaps predictably, they were introspective. But this album belongs to Plant’s doomed drummer John Bonham, and that gives it a slow-rolling menace very familiar to fans of the band’s earliest work.īy 1976, Zeppelin had begun its slow descent, and Plant was recovering from a serious auto accident. They never sounded bluesier during a late ’70s period defined by debauchery - when, as Rolling Stone’s Stephen Davis famously wrote in his review of this album, you could “give an Englishman 50,000 watts, a chartered jet, a little cocaine and some groupies and he thinks he’s a god.”ĭavis is talking about singer Robert Plant, of course. What to make, then, of “Presence” - Led Zeppelin’s underrated seventh release? After all, this unpolished gem from that second period is actually best described as a moment when the band stopped for a longing look back. No, by then, Led Zep was a completely new synthesis. They weren’t sounding anything like the blues musicians they’d once blatantly emulated. traditionalists which it so rightly admired - the bulk of which appears from 1970 on.īy “III,” the Zeps had shed their then-growing reputation as blues cheats by presenting a sweetly cool-rocking set of mostly acoustic-based tunes - coupled with one of their best album-openers ever, “Immigrant Song.” From there on out, as the band rounded into its best creative period, Zeppelin displayed a newfound versatility and a refreshing willingness to dabble in various musical forms. And there’s little doubt that Led Zep found its true inspiration when the band stopped aping the early U.S. Further, “Bring It On Home” is just Sonny Boy Williamson, though perfectly amped up. Tolkien’s Lord Of The Rings.īut how’s this for un-revolutionary?: Led Zep was successfully sued for stealing Chicago blues legend Howlin’ Wolf’s “Killing Floor,” without giving any credit, on an “original” called “The Lemon Song” from the second CD. Parts of Zeppelin’s second album approached their more celebrated late-period brilliance - namely “Whole Lotta Love,” (the much better) “What Is and What Should Never Be” and “Ramble On,” which was lyrically linked to J.R.R. It wasn’t, however, all that interesting. They were, as much as anything, another British referendum on the brilliance of American blues music. Recorded over just 30 hours, these songs were presented in the same way Zeppelin would have done them on stage at the time - half rendition, half sweaty tribute. The band’s first album had, on its surface, only a copycat kind of appeal. Led Zeppelin wasn’t always this thundering, then nimble, amalgamation.
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