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Description

Formed in late August 1968, the group of Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham had no other name than The New Yardbirds when their manager Peter Grant sent them on a Scandinavian tour. One evening in Denmark, Plant's microphone broke down. Despite this, he still managed to make himself heard amidst the instruments! At the end of these concerts, the musicians grew to appreciate each other despite their differences (Page and Jones were two old pros, studio sharks, while Plant and Bonham were less educated and experienced but talented provincials). They also found a name: Led Zeppelin. Back in London for three weeks, they occupied Olympic Studios, rented at Jimmy Page's expense, and tackled a cover of Muddy Waters' "You Shook Me," composed by Willie Dixon, copying the arrangement from the Jeff Beck Group (which caused a rift between Page and the guitarist). Plant's voice was so high-pitched that it blended with the sound of the guitar. It was alongside another Dixon song (duly credited), a cover of Otis Rush's "I Can't Quit You Baby," which always went down a storm live. Then Plant and Page tackled the folk ballad "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You," discovered on a Joan Baez record, rearranged by the guitarist who years later would eventually credit Anne Briggs. Trying to sing it with a shrill voice, Plant realized it was better to whisper it (on headphones, between two verses, you can hear him catching his breath and opening his mouth, a rare and privileged moment). The alternation of softness and violence in this same song is one of the originalities that Led Zeppelin brought, with John Paul Jones' bounding bass and Bonham's drum patterns transcending the material. Lovers of The Band's first album, they considered covering "Chest Fever," then preferred to compose a song in its spirit, "Your Time Is Gonna Come" (a bit of an ancestor to "Thank You") where John Paul Jones again excelled on the organ and where Plant sang very harsh lyrics towards women—for contractual reasons, he was not credited on the record for his contributions, even though they were not negligible. Rather than record the Yardbirds' live workhorse, "Train Kept-a-Rollin'," they chose "I'm Confused," borrowed by Jimmy Page from folk singer Jake Holmes, to which he restored its original title, "Dazed and Confused," and made it an anthology piece where Jones' terrifying bass line, Plant's banshee voice, and Bonham's thundering drumming mingled in a high-class sonic orgy. Eager to showcase his solo talents, Page then copied note for note "Black Water Side," a track by guitarist Bert Jansch (The Pentangle), and, in the style of "White Summer" which he had written during his Yardbirds days, created an Indian-inspired fantasy called "Black Mountain Side," featuring tabla player Viram Jasani as a guest. It directly precedes the formidable "Communication Breakdown," two minutes and twenty-seven seconds of pure rage that slightly derives from Eddie Cochran's "Nervous Breakdown" and has since been nicknamed the "My Generation" of the seventies, although the song was composed in 1968. It was later released as a single on the B-side of "Good Times, Bad Times," the album's most pop composition (with Bonham's astounding triplets), which did not upset the charts and was never played in its entirety at concerts, only the intro being reused. Finally, Led Zeppelin's other live medley, the fantastic "How Many More Times" (built on a single chord) is placed at the end, once again a brilliant idea as no other track could be imagined to close the album. On the sleeve, Page carefully avoided mentioning the true authors of the track, in this case, Howlin' Wolf, whose "How Many More Years" was cheerfully plundered, as was Booker T. Jones' composition "The Hunter," already covered by Free on "Tons of Sobs." During the bridge, always eager to experiment, he rubbed a violin bow on his guitar strings, an idea borrowed from Eddie Phillips of The Creation and which he had already applied within the Yardbirds. He even slipped in a bolero rhythm reminiscent of a passage from Jimi Hendrix's Electric Ladyland, which would become a kind of required figure for all hard rock bands. During the final sessions, Page learned that the Rolling Stones were looking for a new band to feature on the television show Rock'n'Roll Circus, which they wanted to film in December. He then sent a demo to Mick Jagger who, ever insightful, rejected Led Zeppelin ("too many guitars!") and chose Jethro Tull instead... Page and Peter Grant didn't care and, once the multi-track master tape of the album was completed, they went to New York and presented the fruit of their labor to Ahmet Ertegün, director of Atlantic Records. Enthusiastic, Ertegün immediately pulled out his checkbook and had a contract drawn up which his two visitors eagerly signed. The rest, as they say, is history. Remastered, Led Zeppelin I was re-released in June 2014 in a double volume including the concert of October 10, 1969, at the Olympia in Paris. Frédéric Régent - Copyright 2017 Music Story