How years ago in days of old When magic filled the air 'Twas in the darkest depths of Mordor I met a girl so fair But Gollum and the evil one Crept up and slipped away with her
It’s the oldest tale in the book isn’t it? boy meets girl, boy likes girl, quasi warped hobbitoid creature and gigantic flaming eye whisk her away to parts unknown. Such a cliché!
Daft though it is, ‘Ramble On’ works as a perfect microcosm of Led Zeppelin II because it gives us some subtler folk moments and silly lyrics before Zep dial up the manly blitzkrieg to brilliant overriding affect.
Okay objectivity check time: I, 1537 The Magnificent, unabashedly, unreservedly and uninhibitedly love every second of Led Zeppelin II and have done since the day it came through the post from Britannia Music Club 12,240 days ago*; record #13 in the 1537. And I have my mum to thank for it.
There I was, one teenage night playing Fly On The Wall, minding my own business when said uptight reactionary parent came into my room and said that if I liked the heavy stuff then I would really like Led Zeppelin. Can you believe the fascist parenting I lived through?! Still, I showed her – I didn’t order it until a whole month later! Ha, I won!
I can remember the thrill of opening the gatefold for the first time and seeing that golden zeppelin spot lit above a glittering classical temple with the names of the golden gods of rock carved on plinths below. Wow.
The music was everything in the whole world I could possibly want at the age of 15, it was loud, sexy and bombastic, with a side order of sensitivity and Middle-earth wittering. It is still pretty much everything in the whole world I could possibly want.
The way Zep upped the ante from their debut LP, released a whole 9 months previously, was astonishing. The band superheated the British blues rock sound and taped the amplified explosion that resulted, the supernova that created heavy metal; sure other chaps had perfectly valid claims to have been in the room when metal was invented, but nobody ever sounded as complete and as cocksure as Led Zeppelin II.
Just look at the way ‘Whole Lotta Love’ swaggered out the gate, there had never been anything like it**, the way everything just locked into place menacing and prowling. Okay so I find the ‘sexy’ moaning funnier than hell these days but I still can’t hear the bit where Page’s guitar comes back in without leaping out of my seat.
I have a real thing for ‘What Is And What Should Never Be’, always have had it’s the dynamics of the thing, from Plant being all smoochy at the beginning to the stereo panning of the guitars. I’ve always been a sucker for the whole quiet/LOUD/quiet thing. ‘The Lemon Song’, which was great when Howlin’ Wolf did it first 5 years before, is chiefly great for the whole lemon squeezing lyrics^, it’s a lesser track in this exalted company, a little overlong even.
Mrs 1537’s favourite track ‘Thank You’ is one I truly love now; 12,240 days ago I just wanted more guitar crunch and yodelling about women working their way through the whole damn fruit bowl. Now I see it as a dusky post-coital glory and I, umm, can’t get enough of that organ.
Enough romance! Flip Led Zeppelin II over and we’re back on the prowl again with ‘Heartbreaker’, which I love for just how in your face it is, the guitar sound is incredible and it gets 1537 bonus points for being the only rock song I can think of to use the word ‘clarify‘.
The thrills just keep on coming with ‘Living Loving Maid (She’s Just A Woman)’, the way the band hit that opening is perfection, as are the ironic appallingly sexist lyrics. Wait, no, they must be ironic! Surely? Okay, okay, I won’t call you that. 1969 was very different terrain indeed.
We’ve done Mordor already, so let’s hop aboard the Pequod and go hunting the ultimate big beastly beastie, John Bonham. ‘Moby Dick’ is pure magic, although I blame it solely for the gigabillion interminable drum solos I’ve sat through over the years in various venues as lesser rock drummers than Bonham^^ take a solo, thus kindly allowing gig goers to go for a piss without missing any good bits. I digress, ‘Moby Dick’ is a beast of a track and I love it when the band all kick back in at the end.
We bring it on home with, umm, ‘Bring It On Home’ and it is great, of course, especially when the authentic bluesy bit shatters under the volume and bombast of the band about half way through. I love the way Zeppelin warped and reshaped the blues into something of their very own and give notice that this was now their thing.
Led Zeppelin II is not their best LP but it is by far my favourite of theirs. That big supercharged louder-than-life splurge is an amazing thing, for a 15 year-old it was both a humbling and an enabling sound. Yes, I have to wilfully suspend my sexual politics to enjoy it all today and there are a couple of cuts that rock me less than they did way back when, but Led Zeppelin II is still the absolute dog’s bollocks when it comes to real rock swagger. The sound of a band this good firing on all cylinders, in love with their own creation and having a huge amount of fun with it all, is nearly unbeatable.
All hail!
1067 Down.
PS: What does rankle with me with Led Zeppelin and will always stop them being my favourite band is the way they took credit for a lot of music and ideas they borrowed from older, black musicians. I will tackle it in full when I eventually deal with their debut LP, but it just doesn’t sit right. Contrast their approach to the Rolling Stones, who were always very assiduous to credit their influences.
**which you will all have calculated back as 19 September 1987 without missing a single beat.
**well if you don’t count Willie Dixon’s ‘You Need Love’, lyrically.
^which is the source of that irritatingly trite ‘If life gives you lemons’ saying. The original aphorism was ‘If life gives you lemons, squeeze them ’til the juice runs down your leg’; but folks didn’t seem to want that on motivational posters for some reason. True story.
^^which is all of them.
Great album! I love early Zep Blues and this is it, right here.
Thoroughly enjoyed this. Though I don’t get all that excited about this one. I guess I don’t get particularly excited about Led Zep. They listen to way much Greta Van Fleet for my liking.
True, they ripped those poor young Canadians off wholesale.
Don’t you play air guitar to Whole Lotta Love?
Whole Lotta Love is proper boss level good, aye.
And Jimmy Page had a castle on Loch Ness, that sort of makes him Glaswegian, ay?
Haha. That was him scouring Scotland for music to claim as his own.
To be fair, the version of Donald, Where’s your troosers? On Physical Graffiti is frocking awesome.
Sometimes liking a comment just isn’t enough.
Can you imagine how great Plant would be on that though?
“Donald where’s your troosers, baby”?
I, for one, welcome our 1537 overlord and accept his musings and writings as greatness. Also, this album.
“boy meets girl, boy likes girl, quasi warped hobbitoid creature and gigantic flaming eye whisk her away to parts unknown.”
Happened to me every damn time. But here in Canada, there was a moose, too. Don’t ask.
Ed: remove ‘this’ from line 3. Replace ‘Enjoyed’ with ‘Appreciated’ at para 4. Ta.
That you can muster such enthusiasm for both LZII and your 15-year-old self’s response warms the cockles like a burning airship.
As you probably know, I’m avoid “Best” claims like the plague, but this neither of the first two would be in my Fave Five. Having said that, II is a monster. No, it’s a MONSTER. Or perhaps, a
M O N S T E R !
(Which won’t come across at all if the line breaks don’t appear).
Enjoyed your acknowledgement of the rampant sexism and embedded misogyny in much of Zepp’s lyrical content. Thank heavens they distracted us introverted RPG-playing types with the epic nonsense (which I love).
Finally, just to make sure no descents from tall equine animals are involved here, I’ll reveal that back in the early 90s, I track-listed a LZ comp called “Zepp For Chicks” which opened (or closed, or both) with “Thank you”.
Thank you.
Bruce! Your comment is wonderfully Springsteen-like in length – thank you so much!
When you’re an introverted RPG player of 15 I think the sexism can be a hook too, wretchedly so. Somebody else has got the measure of these scary creatures you are in awe of/are mean to you.
Zepp For Chicks is just perfect – I assume you played it to poultry in order to increase the egg yield? did it work?
Did it work? Just taste this omelet!
“Not their best but by far my favorite”. WEll I would say it’s their best then. I used to torture (not really ) my sis’s dog and crank up ‘Whole Lotta Love’. When Page played that certain lick we all know. “Jo Jo” (Foo foo dog. Sis was a Beatles fan) would howl like a Banshee. Feeling his roots
Can I point out that by liking this comment 1537 in no way endorses rock/dog animal cruelty.
You can but the little bastard pissed on my foot. He won whatever game we were playing.
Cool I love Kingdom Come too
Yup. I just don’t know how those Zeppelin bastards got away with copying them for so long.
You’d think somebody would have sued Zeppelin by now for copying other artists, eh?
Especially Dread Zeppelin, they took those guys to the cleaners.
Fuckin’ loved Dread Zeppelin man. And they got ripped off both ways, because of course Elvis did rip off his schtick from Tortelvis, we all know that.
True Mike, true. And them reggae dudes, they owe them a damn big debt too.
Man, I regret never buying the DZ album.
I just checked, there’s a picture disc of Un-Led-Ed … and it’s pay day in 2 hours time …
[switching to serious chatter for a moment] do you like the sound of a picture disc? I find it usually disappointing to play.
[back to normal talk] yeah and don’t forget John Paul Jones literally ripped his name off of Jah Paul Jo.
Whoa there’s two of you!
Pic discs are better than they used to be when first introduced. Tbh I’m not a high fidelity guy at all, I’ve just always accepted what I got – if I have to EQ it a bit, or turn it up, so be it. Pic discs still excite me the way they did when I was 15.
Poor Jah, I just looked him up he passed away in 2014. It was his concept too.
A moderate improvement on LZ1 but still not attaining the high standards of The Firm.
You’re just a big log!
Led Zep were basically just the run up to Big Log.
Don’t you just hate it when you are minding your own business and listening to “Fly On The Wall” and some one interrupts! Wait til after “Playing With Girls” is finished would ya!
I knew people would be shocked by my tales of my oppressive parents. I should write one of those grim survivors autobiographies about everything I had to put up with DeKE. Force fed Hendrix and the Stones!
hahaha….poor kid abused at the alter of all things Rock!
Hahaha! I’m taking on that ‘if life gives you lemons’ thing with all sorts Zep references. Hey Hey Marmoset… as they say. It’s Led Zeppelin Weeeeeeeekkkk! Everywhere!
It could be 2021s ‘Keep Calm & Carry On’
That transition from Heartbreaker to Living Loving Maid really is magical.
Ain’t it though? Oof
It’s sometimes my favourite few seconds on the LP.
I thought it was everyone’s favourite moment.
I finally understood a post title. I knew what you were reviewing immediately based on that alone. And I have this album. Two for two there. Anyway, great review and it is one of my favorites as well. I didn’t realize the band stole so many ideas and claimed them as their own until the last few years. Doesn’t make me like then any less though.
All scientific advances are built on the works of forebears and peers. Heavy Metal is no exception
True, but they tried to pass it off as own when some of that music was not even written by them. Ozzy was really good about that as well getting writing credits for his songs that he didn’t even write. Just kind of crappy is all.
Yeah. I know but Daw Naw Dawww Dee Nin Awww!
😂
Welcome! A contrast of the current credits on LZ1 to the original is shocking. A lot of musicians waited a long time for their royalties, I suspect a good few got them posthumously too. It leaves a bad taste for me.
Which doesn’t detract from the fact I belted out a note perfect version of Heartbreaker in the shower this morning!
The shower…the original auto tune.
Brilliant!
Led Zeppelin recorded on this album their live atmosphere; rough, powerful and loud. “Whole Lotta Love”, “Heartbreaker” and “Bring It Home” are good examples. But also “Ramble On” (Gollum and Mordor from “The Lord Of The Rings” say hello) and the ballad for Plant’s wife at the time “Thank You” are brilliant and beautiful. In addition, my first self-bought LP.
That’s a really cool first LP, mine was Jazz by Queen.