Led Zeppelin (album): Difference between revisions

Led Zeppelin is the first album by the

"Dazed and Confused" is arguably the album's centrepiece: a foreboding arrangement featuring a walking bass line from Jones, heavy drumming from Bonham and some powerful guitar riffs from Jimmy Page. The middle section of the song also featured Page playing the guitar strings with a violin bow, a technique adapted by him during his years as a studio guitarist, and later in his performances of this song during the latter days of The Yardbirds.

However, Led Zeppelin also demonstrated a wide range of textures and shades other than just loud, amplified electric riffs. A

The album was recorded on an analog 4 track machine which helped to give the record a warm sound. Page is reported to have used natural room ambiance to enhance the reverb and recording texture of this record, demonstrating the innovations in sound recording he brought to the studio. Up until the late 1960s, most music producers placed microphones directly in front of the amplifiers. For the recording of the band's debut album, Page developed the idea of placing an additional microphone some distance from the amplifier (as much as twenty feet) and then recording the balance between the two - a method he called 'distance in depth'. By adopting this technique, Page became one of the first producers to record a band's "ambient sound" - the distance of a note's time-lag from one end of the room to the other.

Another notable feature of the album was the 'leakage' on the recordings of Robert Plant's vocals. In an interview Page gave with Guitar World magazine in 1998, Page stated that "Robert's voice was extremely powerful and, as a result, would get on some of the other tracks. But oddly, the leakage sounds intentional."^[1]

Despite Page's most favoured and most often-used guitar on later albums being a 1958 Gibson Les Paul, this album was recorded with a Fender Telecaster, painted with a psychedelic colour scheme. He only received the aforementioned Les Paul from fellow guitarist Joe Walsh a few months after the first album was recorded, and it went on to become his principal guitar throughout his career.

The album cover features an artfully manipulated version of the most famous photograph (originally from

In an interview for the

1. "
   Good Times, Bad Times" (Bonham/Jones/Page
   ) – 2:46
2. "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" (Bredon/Page & Plant)– 6:41
3. "
   Lenoir
   ) – 6:28
4. "Dazed and Confused" (Holmes) – 6:26

Side Two:

1. "Your Time Is Gonna Come" (Jones/Page) – 4:34
2. "Black Mountain Side" (Page) – 2:14
3. "Communication Breakdown" (Bonham/Jones/Page) – 2:27
4. "I Can't Quit You Baby" (Dixon) – 4:42
5. "How Many More Times" (Bonham/Jones/Page) – 8:28 (listed as 3:30 on record sleeve deliberately by Jimmy Page in order to trick radio stations into playing the song.)

Robert Plant participated in songwriting, but wasn't given credit due to unexpired contractual obligations.

Some cassette versions of the album reversed the order of the sides. For these versions, side one began and ended with "Your Time Is Gonna Come" and "How Many More Times," while side two began and ended with "Good Times, Bad Times" and "Dazed and Confused."

Credits

• Led Zeppelin:
  • Jimmy Page - Acoustic, electric, and pedal steel guitar, backing vocals, producer
  • Robert Plant - Vocals, harmonica
  • John Paul Jones - Bass guitar, organ, keyboards, backing vocals
  • tympani
    , backing vocals
• Viram Jasani - Tabla
• Chris Dreja - Back liner photo
• George Hardie - Cover design
• Glyn Johns - Engineer, mixing
• Peter Grant - Executive producer

Charts

Album - Billboard magazine (North America)

Singles - Billboard (North America)

References

See also

• The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time

External links

• Led Zeppelin ⚠ "mbid" is missing! at MusicBrainz