Led Zeppelin has few peers on record in their fiery but brief career. Born from the crowded blues-rock wave, post-British Invasion 1960s, the band expertly and cleverly guess the tastes and whims of the growing music world and capitalized on them. Long gestated in Jimmy Page’s brain as a way to create his own band with a distinct identity that could touch many music bases, but not be commercial and weak. Page created Led Zeppelin and the album Led Zeppelin I (Atlantic) on the back of years of writing, planning, and plotting. The marriage of Jimmy Page’s writing and Robert Plant’s voice, in particular, is the secret sauce of the album and the early era of the band and what makes their debut one of the all-time greats.

This album has been poured over and revisited over and over as the textbook debut album of all time. In addition to being a top musician who had experience touring and recording for years, Page was a master a seeing the big picture. He made Zep an amalgam of everything at the time that was hot in music and took it further than anyone else had. American roots Blues influences, cover songs, and soloing? Check. Impossibly great vocals and hooky melodies? Check. Folk music sensibilities and loud-soft dynamics? Check. Pre-heavy metal tube amp guitar sound and riffs that cut to your soul? Totally. Not too mention his own flair for the guitar experimentation and dramatics. Obviously, you had to have songs and execute these tracks well, and produce an album too just to get out there in the late 1960s, which they did. It helps to have master musicians, which we now know they did. Page and bassist John Paul Jones were known commodities in the scene, studio masters, and well-paid sidemen too. Plant and John Bonham were a bit more unknowns at the time, which made them exciting to see and hear them gain mass popularity. 

The secret weapon of LZ I is the production. Page had spent years recording and producing studio sessions for other bands, and he used this to learn every trick in the book. Without a record deal, and because Page wanted total creative autonomy, the band recorded their debut in 1968 by themselves. They would deliver the complete recorded and mastered album to Atlantic upon signing their deal at the end of 1968. As the story goes, their infamous manager Peter Grant and Page paid for the sessions which were said to cost £1,782, or roughly over £16,000 today, adjusted for inflation. Along with engineer Glyn Johns, they pulled out all the stops creating the classic template for Zeppelin’s sound they used on the first few albums and was copied by tons of other bands. Distance miking, ambient sound, backward masking, delay and reverb, techniques, double tracking vocals, and doubled lead guitar solos, all on top of a tight album that was recorded live in a room too! The album was also one of the first ever stereo only releases, being well ahead on that trend as well.

Then you have the songs. The band spent their time writing, honing, and performing these songs live for a year as the New Yardbirds. So when they went in to record, the band ready to go in as few takes as possible. From the sunny and atypical lead song/single ‘Good Times, Bad Times’, slow Blues of ‘Dazed And Confused’, the proto-Metal of Communication Breakdown’, and the epic jam of ‘How Many More Times’ are all mind-blowing original classics and ragers. Willie Dixon, a well-known hero to Page, gets two blazing covers with ‘You Shook Me’ and ‘I Can’t Quit You Baby’, even though their other musical nods and quotes to him on this album and Led Zeppelin II got them sued for lack of credit. Lots of words have been incorrectly written about the ‘Babe I’m Gonna Leave You’. Suffice to say their take is brilliant and presages the band influencing itself later on Led Zeppelin III and ‘Stairway To Heaven’ stylistically. ‘Your Time Is Gonna Come’and its churchy organ and choir singing is a nice change of pace. Meanwhile, the instrumental ‘Black Mountain Side’ was piece Page had worked on for some time and hints at late-era Zep’s experimentation with World Music and experimentalism. Fans of tabla music should take note of Viram Jasani’s stellar performance here.

Of course, the critics hated the album. Derided by every major press outlet at the time (similar to Sabbath), Zep’s popularity at rock radio was unmatched at the time from the get-go. Without a true single, not pandering to the press, and the general mystique building of not playing the record industry game (with a lot of help from Peter Grant), the band built an organic fanbase on the strength of this album. While The Beatles and Cream were dissolving, rock stars started dying, and “the Summer Of Love” and Woodstock were on the horizon as the decade wore down, they were rising to fill the void. This was just the first chapter in their story, but for an album that is half-covers and some cleverly lifted riffs, this album is a beast and still stands the test of time.

KEITH CHACHKES