Immigrant Song

Led Zeppelin wasn’t talking about any actual immigrants. They were, as the British are wont to do, appropriating a foreign culture, in this case Norse mythology. It’s badassness revealed, upon closer inspection, as nerdery. Jimmy Page and Robert Plant were, of course, two of rockdom’s greatest nerds. They thought ancient mythology was just the coolest and, through the powers of their own cool, made everyone else believe it too. Who, upon hearing this, doesn’t immediately visualize the sheer awesomeness of an invading horde of vaguely Vikinglike supernatural warriors with guitars? Today we prize our pop stars for their glazed, mouth-breathing ‘fresh off the assembly line’ demeanor, and it’s kind of shocking and saddening to realize that back in the day the global rock gods were book-hoarding mega-brains like Page and Plant or Jim Morrison. OMG, sexy and intelligent rock stars? With, like, their very own personalities and things to say and ideas they cared passionately about. Le sigh. That’s totally not how I aimed to write this song up. I was gonna go all fangirl and gushy about how toweringly stupendous Led Zeppelin used to be. But I got all caught up on the used to be. Because there’s no more Led Zeppelin, and although Page and Plant do still exist and even tolerate each other, they will never be the same Led Zeppelin they used to, and there’s just nothing to compare it to. And that’s depressing as all fuck. Sorry.

Hats Off to (Roy) Harper

I’ve always found this song a bit creepy, with the vocal distortion and whatall. Page and Plant both sound like they’re playing from the bottom of an accursed well. Which kind of makes me think of how much scarier The Ring would be if it were Jimmy Page crawling out of that well like a demon. For all the haunted sounding effects, this one shouldn’t be taken too seriously. It’s just a jam of tossed off blues and trad lines. Also has nothing to do with Roy Harper, except that he was such a good buddy and the guys though it’d be nice to tip their hats. One of their less cosmic numbers, but still creepy as fuck.

Going to California

Let’s raise a glass to all the guys out there who grew out their hair in emulation of Robert Plant and ended up looking like soggy poodles. Flowing golden locks are wonderful for the few who can pull them off, and those who can’t just look stupid. That same goes for emulating other things about Robert Plant, such as his singing and his lifestyle. I think Led Zeppelin’s famous logo of Icarus burning represents the fate of fools who dare copy them too closely. Leave it to the true golden gods.

Gallows Pole

Led Zeppelin for you, doing their job to spread the Western canon. This song is hundreds of years old and has roots and variations from Finland to Wales. There are countless versions, in which a condemned thief or adulterer or kidnappee bargains for his or her life, offering gold or silver or animals or sexual favors from his or her father or mother or sister or brother or fiancee, to either be set free or get hanged anyway. In the most common European iterations the condemned is a maiden whose family members arrive one by one to watch her hang, until her fiancee saves the day in the last verse. Americans have favored it with a male narrator, presumably because we don’t hold much truck with hanging women, unless they be witches. Though a folk song is open to infinite interpretations, Led Zeppelin’s has come to the forefront as definitive (for now). They, most likely were drawing inspiration from blues forebear Leadbelly, and where he picked it up no one knows. Those most familiar covers make it seem like part of the blues tradition, but it’s much older than that, which doesn’t make it not blues, either.

 

Friends

Do you maybe have a friend who might be a musician and won’t stop talking about Led Zeppelin? Or maybe you like to read, like magazines or books or whatever about music and there’s always an article or a section or a chapter about Led Zeppelin. And you want to be like “Shut up about Led Zeppelin!” But then you hear Led Zeppelin and it blows your socks off all over again, and there’s nothing you can say or do about it except admit that your friend is right and those books are right and those guys just rocked the earth. And speaking of Led Zeppelin, I just got a bulletin from a coworker about a confirmed Robert Plant sighting at an Austin record store. Rumor’s been having it Planty has bought a house in the hills and sounds like it’s true. If that’s the case, stalking might be in order.

Four Sticks

Little-known tidbit: Page and Plant wrote this song in tribute to the standard unit of butter packaging – four sticks of, per pack. Yep. No, I just made that up. In actuality the title refers to how many drumsticks John Bonham used to beat his drums on the recording.  Then the article went into in-depth detail about unusual time signatures and I clocked out. I think my interpretation’s more exciting anyway. I mean, you know they totally meant four sticks of butter in a Last Tango kind of way. And isn’t that the greatest mental image? Ok, I’ll shut up now…

D’yer Mak’er

That’s Jamaica in pidgin, if you must know. Led Zeppelin did a pretty nifty facsimile of a reggae song, straying for a moment away from their head-hammering comfort zone. Good on them. D’yer Mak’er has become one of their classics, though no one would ever mistake it for authentic Jamacanese Irie music. It’s come full circle, though – from English tribute to Jamaican music to Jamaican tribute to English music. Thanks to Eek-A-Mouse’s idiosyncratic cover. Mouse’s version is conceivably even more fun than the real thing. Mouse makes everything fun. For novelty value, I’m adding a bonus video – just some girl named Germanotta, singing her little heart out.

 

Dancing Days

The cover art of Houses of the Holy. It is in no way creepy. Putting a horde of naked children on your album cover is not skeevy at all, oh no. All I can say is that standards must have been very different in 1973. I don’t know of any controversy this cover image caused upon release. I would imagine anyone today wanting to release a cover featuring children’s behinds would be taken through the wringer by the moral media. It is, of course, very artistic and beautiful, and it’s a clever reference to a novel by Arthur C. Clarke. The surreal quality of the color and the setting (Giant’s Causeway) effectively eliminates any scent of perversion from the image. In the past I’ve wondered if the children were supposed to be boys or girls; they are very androgynous. As it turns out, the child models were a boy and a girl, and their pictures were superimposed to create the illusion of multitudes. The boy half of the duo grew up to be a food presenter for the BBC. Interesting.

The Crunge

Where’s that confounded bridge?

Does anyone else suspect that the boys didn’t sweat too hard writing this song?

Celebration Day

This is a bad thought but that double headed dragon Jimmy Page is playing here just screams Cheap Trick. Does Jimmy Page want us to look at him and be reminded of Rick Nielsen, or as we know him, “that Cheap Trick guy with the funny guitar?” Rick Nielsen would probably like the association. Not to disparage the joys of Cheap Trick, and I’m sure playing a doubleneck is in no way silly. And probably someone’s gonna write in telling me that OMFG Page totally invented the very concept of cramming in as many extra strings as one guitar body can hold, and he so OWNS IT!!!1!! I still say, a guitar with more than one neck looks silly, and unless like Rick Nielsen you make the inherent silliness a part of your schtick, you should not fuck around with multinecks or risk looking silly. On the brighter side, Robert Plant’s hair is extra bouncy today!