Today in Music (1969): Led Zeppelin released first album

Led Zeppelin I Led Zeppelin

Released: January 12, 1969 Peak: 7 US, 6 UK, 11 CN, 9 AU Sales (in millions): 10.5 US, -- UK, 14.0 world (includes US and UK), 24.65 EAS Genre: classic rock/metal

Tracks: Song Title (Writers) [time] (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to charts. Good Times, Bad Times (Bonham/ Jones/ Page) [2:47] (3/29/69, 80 BB, 66 CB, 66 HR, 2 CL, 64 CN, 13 DF) Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You (Bennett/ Bredon/ Darling) [6:41] (4 CL, 4 DF) You Shook Me (Dixon/ Lenoir) [6:27] (10 CL, 21 DF) Dazed and Confused (Page) [6:26] (1 CL, 11 DF) Your Time Is Gonna Come (Jones/ Page) [4:34] (11 CL, 24 DF) Black Mountain Side (Page) [2:12] (26 CL) Communication Breakdown (Bonham/ Jones/ Page) [2:29] (4 CL, 13 DF) I Can’t Quit You Baby (Dixon) [4:42] (13 CL, 24 DF) How Many More Times (Bonham/ Jones/ Page) [8:28] (10 CL, 27 DF) Total Running Time: 44:17 The Players: Robert Plant (vocals) Jimmy Page (guitar) John Paul Jones (bass, keyboards) John Bonham (drums)

Rating: 4.444 out of 5.00 (average of 27 ratings) Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

The Birth of Heavy Metal “Over the years, several acts have attempted to lay claim (or have had the claim laid upon them) to the title ‘the definitive heavy-metal band’ – including AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Metallica, and Van Halen, each of whom occupy their own corner…But in terms of pedigree, talent, sales, influence, showmanship, and let’s face it, just plain volume, Led Zeppelin arguably dwarfs them all.” CS “Jimmy Page had worked extensively as an in-demand session guitarist all through the Sixties, playing on countless pop and rock recordings, learning about studio techniques and record making as he went along.” AD He finally started to make a name for himself as a guitarist with a group when he became the third (following Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck) legendary guitarist of the Yardbirds. When that group broke up, Page and manager Peter Grant found “themselves with concert dates to fulfill, so set about forming a new Yardbirds line-up. Enter Robert Plant, session bassist John Paul Jones and drummer John Bonham.” AD “Early shows saw the soon to be christened Led Zeppelin billed as The Yardbirds but certain supporters were apparently disappointed that it wasn’t really The Yardbirds.” AD “When The Who drummer Keith Moon heard about Jimmy Page’s idea for a bluesy hard-rock band, he said he thought it would go over like a lead zeppelin. He couldn’t have been farther from the truth.” RV They “emerged victorious with one of rock’s most thunderous debuts.” RV “Led Zeppelin had a fully formed, distinctive sound from the outset…Taking the heavy, distorted electric blues of Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, and Cream to an extreme, Zeppelin created a majestic, powerful brand of guitar rock constructed around simple, memorable riffs and lumbering rhythms.” AM Robert Plant with his furious, all out, sexual roar of a voice” AD and “a rhythm section with an almost telepathic understanding” AD left space “to allow Jimmy to fully express himself.” AD Their Players “Unlike many of their later imitators, Zeppelin benefited from the wide-ranging musical tastes of its members. Bonham and Plant had played blues and R&B; Plant had recorded pop material for CBS on a couple of singles that sounded not unlike Long John Baldry; and both liked the West Coast rock scene of Moby Grape, Love, and Buffalo Springfield. Jones enjoyed jazz and classical, and shared Bonham’s fondness for Motown and Stax, which would have a significant effect on the Zeppelin groove. The fact that Page and Jones were experienced sessioneers-arrangers gave them an ear for detail that made Led Zeppelin remarkably polished for a debut. Zeppelin were a band of virtuosos who knew how to be a team.” TB “The drive and forcefulness of each virtuoso’s performance – Robert Plant’s banshee screams, Page’s imaginative fretwork, John Paul Jones’ thundering bass, and John Bonham’s relentless drumming – was captured on every album, and with their debut, Page made it clear that he was not only one of rock’s top guitarists, but an extremely competent producer.” CS Their First Album Their “debut is a record where many aspects of 1960s music cross-pollinated and bloomed. The immediate sources are late Yardbirds (courtesy of Page), blues (from Cream, Hendrix, British blues), a little touch of art rock, and a real understanding of the greater possibilities the album format offered over the 45rpm single.” TB “The album announced to the world that there was a new sound in rock and roll.” CS “’The statement of our first two weeks together is our first album,’ Page told the English magazine Zig Zag. ‘We recorded them almost exactly as we’d been doing them live.’ Before Zeppelin, a thick line separated studio tracks from live tracks on albums…But for Page and the band, live was the only way to go…and none of the group’s members toned down their sound whether they were facing a studio engineer or a crowd of 50,000.” CS “’I’ve never been so turned on in my life,’ said Plant of the thirty-hour session that produced the album. ‘Although we were all steeped in blues and R&B, we found out in the first hour and a half that we had our own identity.’ That identity, a combination of their American blues and rock influences (Chuck Berry, Willie Dixon, B.B. King, Scotty Moore) and the heavier sounds coming out of their native London (the Yardbirds, the Who, Cream) would fuel Led Zeppelin with a raw energy and explosiveness that was initially derided by the more influential critics, but propelled the band to the top of the rock world.” CS “But while Zeppelin largely had predecessors like the Who and the Rolling Stones to thank for their initial reception in the United States…the group brought a subtlety and variation to hard blues and heavy metal that has never been matched.” CS “Led Zeppelin was but a taste of what the band could do, and provided the momentum to allow them to do it with their follow-up albums, and more importantly, with their live performances.” CS Criticism The original 1969 review from Rolling Stone makes for an interesting in-the-moment perspective. Critic John Mendelsohn accuses the band of being unoriginal in its British blues-rock blueprint method of forming a band: “add, to an excellent guitarist who, since leaving the Yardbirds and/or Mayall, has become a minor musical deity, a competent rhythm section and pretty soul-belter who can do a good spade imitation.” RS He goes on to say that Led Zeppelin “offers little that its twin, the Jeff Beck Group, didn't say as well or better three months ago.” RS While Mendelsohn admits that Page is “an extraordinarily proficient blues guitarist and explorer of his instrument's electronic capabilities,” RS he also calls him “a very limited producer and a writer of weak, unimaginative songs.” RS Elsewhere, Mendelsohn rips on “prissy Robert Plant’s howled vocals” RS and attacks Led Zep as being “perfectly willing to make themselves a two- (or, more accurately, one[-and]-a-half) man show” RS that “will have to find a producer (and editor) and some material worthy of their collective attention” RS if they intend to “help fill the void created by the demise of Cream.” RS While even the album’s supporters may concede that the band’s debut “isn’t as varied as some of their later efforts, it nevertheless marked a significant turning point in the evolution of hard rock and heavy metal.” AM Even bigger than that is the general consensus that Led Zeppelin “receive the credit for inventing heavy metal” AD and it all started here. The Songs Here’s insights into individual songs. “Good Times Bad Times” “Good Times Bad Times gets the introductions out of the way…Bonham wails on the kick-drum pedal in the opener with an astounding fury, starting his charge to become the greatest drummer in rock history.” RV “But the key to the group’s attack was subtlety: it wasn’t just an onslaught of guitar noise, it was shaded and textured, filled with alternating dynamics and tempos.” AM “You can hear each and every instrument clearly and separately from each other instrument. You can clearly make out every drum roll…every nuance of the bass parts.” AD “How Many More Times” That song and How Many More Times sport “groovy, bluesy shuffles;” AM This also serves as a great example of Plant’s “habit of improvising and unwittingly including fragments of blues songs in the lyrics as he went along.” AD It fuses Albert King’s “How Many More Years’” TB as covered by Howlin’ Wolf, AD and “’The Hunter’ – the latter written by members of Booker T. and the MGs – it boasts the hardest riff on the album.” TB “Black Mountain Side” Throughout the album, Zeppelin showcases their capacity at “multi-layered music” AM with Black Mountain Side, a traditional tune based on “Black Waterside,” an instrumental by Bert Jansch. TB It “is pure English folk.” AM “You Shook Me” and “I Can’t Quit You Baby” “Two ‘correct’ writing credits arrive on the album sleeve courtesy of Willie Dixon,” AD via “two heavily amplified…covers” CS as Led Zeppelin produce versions of his You Shook Me and I Can't Quit You Babe. When the album was released, “eyebrows were raised by the fact that the earlier Jeff Beck album Truth – which featured Rod Stewart on vocals – also had a version” TB of “You Shook Me.” “It was said Page and Plant had stolen their thunder – but, evidently their thunder wasn’t loud enough. And, as Plant had pointed out, there were hundreds of bands in the U.K. at the time covering the song. In the Zeppelin version everyone except Bonham gets a solo – Plant on harmonica, Jones on the organ, and finally Page on backward-reverb guitar that allows him to pile up chiming lead over Bonham’s drum barrage. Other bands may have played this song but not with Zeppelin’s dramatic sense – which made them immediately successful live.” TB “Similarly, ‘I Can’t Quit You Baby’…had been covered by John Mayall, whose version is at once more authentic but anemic by comparison.” TB “Dazed and Confused” Those two Dixon covers and Dazed and Confused showcase Led Zep’s talent at “extended psychedelic blues” AM “Dazed” “a six-minute-long scary sounding epic full of astonishing playing and sounds, not least the ‘walking bass’ sound that introduces it. Robert Plant…sets a template for vocalists that followed.” AD It was originally a folk ballad by Jake Holmes CS that Page and the Yardbirds had developed into the song “I’m Confused.” TB “In the middle section Jones and Bonham play call-and-answer, while Page conjures eerie sounds from the guitar with a violin bow and a wah-wah. The whole track is an artful orchestration of dynamic and ensemble playing.” TB “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” While these “often gather the most attention, the remainder of the album is a better indication of what would come later. Babe I’m Gonna Leave You shifts from folky verses to pummeling choruses.” AM “The descending finger-picking could be the intro to something by Simon & Garfunkel, but there’s no mistaking the band on the crashing choruses.” TB This “traditional song also recorded by Joan Baez is played powerfully.” TB The song came from “an arrangement Jimmy had been working on back in the final days of The Yardbirds. Perhaps no better single example of the sheer glorious dynamics, the quiet to loud, of Led Zeppelin exists.” AD “Your Time Is Gonna Come” and “Communication Breakdown” Elsewhere “Your Time Is Gonna Come is an anthemic hard rocker” AD while the “two-and-a-half minute riff monster” AD “Communication Breakdown is a frenzied rocker with a nearly punkish attack.” AM The latter “evoked the energy of the Who’s ‘I Can’t Explain’ an the Kinks ‘All Day and All of the Night.’ It is impeccably played garage rock, a sonic onslaught punctuated by another mad Page solo careering off the splash of Bonham’s cymbal white-noise.” TB Notes: A 2014 reissue include a second disc of a live performance at the Olympia in Paris, France on October 10, 1969.

Resources: AM AllMusic.com review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine AD Adrian Denning’s Album Reviews RV The Review (Oct./Nov. 2001). “The 100 Greatest Albums of All Time” by Clarke Speicher RS RollingStone.com review by John Mendelsohn (originally in print issue from 3/16/69) CS Chris Smith (2009). 101 Albums That Changed Popular Music. Oxford University Press. Pages 64-6. TB Thunder Bay (2005). Albums: The Stories Behind 50 Years of Great Recordings. Thunder Bay Press; San Diego, CA. Page 117. WK Wikipedia Other Related DMDB Pages: First posted 3/21/2008; last updated 12/7/2024.