In Monday’s NP Platformed newsletter, Colby Cosh helps a lot of “late Boomers” and Gen X’ers to feel even older:
This very day, friends, marks the 50th anniversary of the release of Led Zeppelin’s fourth studio album, whose title is technically a series of glyphs representing the band’s four members. Frustrated writers and editors usually just call it Led Zeppelin IV, and will have to go on doing so until the Unicode Consortium comes to its senses.
Zep IV is generally considered the band’s strongest LP, and it contains the song “Stairway to Heaven”, which has been played so often over 50 years of life that it is now somewhat divisive. It’s possible the species can be split into people who are sick of “Stairway” and those of us who still have to let it play all the way through, every time, even though it has nothing left to disclose and no remaining power to surprise. (How could it? We all know every note, every overtone of every chord, every syllable of incomprehensible Robert Plant doggerel.) NP Platformed is cheered by the thought that there are babies being born every day who will, at some time or other, get to hear “Stairway” for the first time. It’s not like they’ll get very far without hearing it.
“Stairway” makes for a hell of a cleanup hitter, but on Zep IV the lineup is immense from top to bottom. There are those who would argue that other Zeppelin studio LPs are stronger on the whole. If you like the heavy-blues side of the group, you might be tempted to vote for Zeppelin II (1969); folkies appreciate Zeppelin III (1970).
The fifth record, Houses of the Holy (1973), was once called “Zeppelin’s best record” by Chuck Klosterman, an undoubted authority in such matters … but please note that Klosterman wrote this in a listicle about the greatest metal albums that had Zeppelin IV No. 2 overall, with Houses of the Holy altogether omitted. Later, when trendsetting music-review site Pitchfork.com did a listicle of the top 100 albums of the 1970s, they ranked Zep IV seventh and spent a couple hundred words apologizing for not putting it first. (“We must be lying to ourselves …”) Zep IV: too big to ignore.
“every syllable of incomprehensible Robert Plant doggerel” lol. Every line of “Stairway to Heaven” makes perfect sense. It is like a vast, personal, Jungian, concrete epic. And I mean concrete here in terms of imagery, this song has no symbolism, everything is spelled out as real-world things.
Also, a shout-out to the too-often unsung John Paul Jones. I’m amazed he didn’t end up in King Crimson at some point, in any role he normally excelled at: multi-instrumentalist, composer, producer. One of his solo albums was released on Discipline Global Mobile.
Comment by somercet — November 9, 2021 @ 17:53
I learned long ago to stay out of discussions on music, as I am fantastically unqualified to form opinions of my own. (And didn’t everyone have to be in King Crimson at one point or another? I thought it was a hard-and-fast rule …)
Comment by Nicholas — November 9, 2021 @ 18:20