In 1975, the question was whether Led Zeppelin was really the best rock band in the world, or whether Physical Graffiti, which sits on the charts remains one of the best rock albums of all time. Making Of.
Physical Graffiti only confirms Led Zeppelin’s pre-eminence among hard rockers and provides an impressive insight into the band’s skills. The winning recipe? The perfect match between Plant’s words and Page’s rich, dense, astonishing and virtuoso playing. However, there is no chance that this album will be able to convince the skeptics, the reluctant and those allergic to the group’s enormous sound.
Robert Plant’s postures are very present and the lead rhythms of John Bonham continue to hammer the eardrums to the delight of millions of unconditional English fans: yes Led Zeppelin has its signature sound and no, that will not change, because that is how they see their work. Better yet, this album is emblematic because by carrying out a quick flashback in the history of the group, Physical Graffiti presents itself as a synthesis of already five years of a career led with beating drums, and it is really the case to say it. There we find blues (“In My Time of Dying”), a cosmic ballad (“In the Light”), an acoustic interlude (“Bron-Y-Aur”) and hard rock, real, hairy, huge guitars. and a lead rhythm, the group’s trademark (“Houses of the Holy”, “The Wanton Song”); but we also find less strong nods than in the past to the heroes of the Twelve Bars, in particular to Bo Diddley (“Custard Pie”) a real tour de force.
What explains this? Nothing special apart from the fact that the recording of this album took place over four years and even presents covers of songs left out of previous opuses. Hence its variety, its richness and a songwriting far above anything that was being done at the time in rock: don’t sign “Kashmir”, the most powerful rock song in history, whoever wants.
On paper and in reality, Led Zeppelin is undoubtedly the most popular rock band in the world.
Excessive ambitions
However, Houses of the Holy almost became Led Zeppelin’s last album. At the end of 1973, after a year of long and rewarding American touring, Jones was tired of traveling. He wants to spend more time with his family and announces to the group that he is leaving them to become a choir director, which is more or less the exact opposite of “member of Led Zeppelin”. Everything stops, it is announced that Jones is ill (what other plausible reason for wanting to leave such a group?). And then Jones changes his mind, and “we never spoke about it again”, tells their manager Peter Grant.
The past is already starting to take its toll, the group has started riots at almost every concert, particularly in Milan and Boston, and has given sold-out concerts in Hong Kong and Hamburg. Each of their previous five albums sold millions of copies. Better yet, they set new concert attendance records, notably attracting nearly 60,000 people for their single concert in Tampa, Florida, in 1973 and 120,000 people for six concerts in New York in 1975. On paper as in fact, Led Zeppelin is undoubtedly the most popular rock band in the world. And bootlegs are multiplying like hot cakes, we want them everywhere and pirates are exchanged by the hundreds of thousands.
“We’re talking about creating something as eminent as Beethoven’s Fifth. »
And, with the release of this new opus, their sixth, the question arises. This two-disc set will be their Tommytheir Beggar’s Banquet even their Sgt Pepper. In early 1974, the quartet returned to Headley Grange. They are the most popular rock band in the world, and they need an act to definitively establish their weight: they choose a double album, which has since become the yardstick of rock splendor. “There’s talk of creating something as eminent as Beethoven’s Fifth,” Plant boldly explained at the time, imagining an album “so colossal that it would last forever. »
The big favorite
It took them eighteen months to finalize what is a bit like the Mont Saint-Michel of rock, a meticulous and immortal monument to the glory of grandeur and myth. The album cover, a photo of a building in New York’s East Village, is just as elaborate: when the album insert is removed, the windows reveal images of the group and their cohort . For rock fans, it’s a huge body of work that can be read and reread endlessly. Physical Graffiti is the first album that the singer owned Jeff Buckley. Jim James of My Morning Jacket cites it as his favorite album. THE Foo Fighters aspired to make In Your Honor their own Physical Graffiti. (But the music’s appeal extends beyond the circle of macho male rockers dreaming of emulating Plant’s roaring glory: even Christina Aguilera cites it as one of her favorite records.)
An often idealistic album, just like its central song, the one that goes the furthest and that the group will later cite as the pinnacle of their career: “Kashmir”
Led Zeppelin had enough songs for an album and a half, so it was an opportunity to add a few never-before-released tracks: “Bron-Yr-Aur,” a brief piece of acoustic guitar fingerpicking that finds its roots without the sessions of Led Zeppelin III in 1970, as well as the eco-friendly “Down by the Seaside” (one of the first “green” rocks). “Night Flight” and “Boogie With Stu” are two tracks left out of the fourth album. Despite their diverse origins, the fifteen songs of Physical Graffiti have a unit. The album is sprawling, gruff, rowdy, confident, dense, quiet.
Stylistically, the range is wide. “Trampled Under Foot” begins with a funky Clavinet intro by Jones, similar to what Stevie Wonder did recently on “Superstition”. “Boogie With Stu,” firmly rooted in the 1950s and recorded with Rolling Stones pianist Ian Stewart (who played on “Rock and Roll”), mixes a country mandolin with a heavy, echoing rock song that evokes the hero of the group, Elvis Presley. And Page spits riffs like a volcano. We understand better how the album sold 16 million copies: “Ten Years Gone”, “Houses of the Holy”, “Wanton Song” and “Custard Pie”, among others, are recognizable after two guitar measures.
Plant was still widely caricatured as a sex god, in part because of his penchant for skinny jeans and floaty feminine blouses, but the double album demonstrates some of his less widely recognized traits, such as his hippie idealism. , especially in the chorus “If we could just join hands” from “The Rover”. Physical Graffiti is an often idealistic album, just like its central song, the one that goes the furthest and that the group will later cite as the pinnacle of their career: “Kashmir”.
“I wish we were remembered for ‘Kashmir’ more than ‘Stairway to Heaven'”
