Album Reviews

“Bloated Blimp”. That’s what I called the band after hearing this album for the first time. I also thought the Hindenburg disaster album cover in bad taste. But then I was in law school in 1969 and trying the straight and narrow after “widening” in college.

“Jeff Beck’s Truth album did this better” I thought, including Page’s reprise of “Beck’s Bolero”. Some of Plant’s shrieking was too much for me, though of course Page's guitars mesmerized. The question was: could the great studio musician and sideman front a band?

Old timers who grew up on a young Joan Baez’s crystalline, haunting version of “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” from her Joan Baez In Concert (VSD 2122 black label “Stereolab”) album couldn’t help but hear this version as “shtick”—along with much of the rest of the album—especially if you were predisposed to not liking the record.

And can any Traffic fan not hear “Dear Mr. Fantasy” in “Your Time Is Gonna Come”? Even the song’s production sounds Jimmy Miller-y.

Interestingly, if you look at the songwriting credits on the original Led Zeppelin album, “Babe…” was listed as “traditional”. On Baez’s album the “scholarly” annotation so popular at the time makes it seem so as well, crediting one Janet Smith as having taught the song to Baez at Oberlin college.

On this Led Zeppelin reissue you’ll see “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” credited to “Bredon-Page-Plant”. A little web searching around and you get the story: Page heard the Baez version on the LP with no proper credit and carried on the “tradition.” Later copies of the Baez album credited Bredon and eventually so did later copies of Led Zeppelin. Bredon later received “substantial” royalty payments (can you imagine?). I also discovered the “Dazed and Confused” backstory involving the folk singer Jake Holmes. Look it up. These guys were definitely “folkies”: Plant quotes from The Weavers’ “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine” on “How Many More Times.” Maybe you knew all of this?

Cut to forty five years later and the album’s hyper-bombast seems tame compared to the outburst of heavy metal, Guns and Roses, Van Halen and the rest of Led Zeppelin’s spawn. The album’s mix of folk and blues seems like downright musical scholarship compared to much of what it inspired and “Communication Breakdown” has lost none of its swagger.

So yes, sitting down and comparing to this new reissue a George Piros cut Atlantic original pressed at Presswell (PR) in Ancora, New Jersey (PR) with a somewhat later one mastered at Atlantic by the mysterious “W” and pressed at Monarch (MO) with a later orange/green UK WEA pressing and with Classic’s Bernie Grundman mastered 200g version with the wrong label (a corporate “W” instead of “1841 Broadway”) was hardly painful.

If you have the Piros master you are all set, less so the “W” cut, which seemed bass shy and less than fully expressed dynamically (my “W” copy jacket has the RIAA gold record award label). In this case the later WEA UK pressing—at least the one I have—is weak on all counts—weaker than the “W” pressing.

The Classic is very much like the Classic Led Zeppelin II: definitely brighter than the original but so much information (not bright information, real information) and spectacular three-dimensional staging and full bore dynamics (such that the recording has—it’s not Glyn Johns’ best). If you have the Classic you too are done.

This reissue from 96/24 files is more successful than the Led Zeppelin II reissue. The drums are more explosive and the somewhat bright tonal balance is actually very similar to the Classic reissue. However, when Bonham pounds the snare it loses some of the “pop” found on both the Classic and the original. It’s really obvious on “Communication Breakdown.” Consider the tape’s age when this reissue was cut compared to even the Classic.

The perspective is definitely flatter than either the original or the Classic and there’s some loss of transparency but more than that, there’s something about the digits that seems to filter out a portion of the emotional content. Can’t measure that (yet!) but play “Communication Breakdown” on an AAA version and then here and your toes will tell you (I know, “stop talking to your toes!”).

Do you need the live 1969 recording at Paris’s Olympia October 10th 1969 (first broadcast on French radio and in mono)? If you’re a hardcore fan, probably otherwise it’s doubtful you’ll play it more than once.

The packaging and artwork reproduction are fine and the German pressings generally quiet, though the studio album on my sample had more occasional “crunchies” than I would have liked to hear.

Looking at the center gatefold photo, the guys look so young and so clean cut—J.P. Jones in a crew neck sweater, Bonham looking regal in a leather jacket, Plant in a big-buttoned cardigan. They all seem so innocent—except for Page: he’s got a look on his face that tells you he knows to where all of this is heading!