Led Zeppelin IV, one of the top selling albums of all time, was certainly a groundbreaker to heavy metal, a door opened by Led Zeppelin II, but the band's debut album is perhaps the most listenable of all in the Zeppelin collection, suitable for a variety of moods and clearly superior to Zeppelin III, the band's other blues rooted work. It is also the sound of a four talents coming together, fresh, raw and confident in what they were venturing into.

Aspiring bands should take note -- according to studio invoices, the album was recorded in just 36 hours, a testament to rehearsal, preproduction and, most of all, chemistry. It is as close to their live sound as they would get in the studio but it still had outstanding and lasting production values.

BACKGROUND

To truly understand the impact of Led Zeppelin's debut album, one should listen to The Jeff Beck Group's Truth, which came out just months earlier. Heavy blues was the trend at the time and the Jeff Beck Group was seen as being at the forefront of a new era of the heavy blues group. In fact, upon the release of Led Zeppelin I, the more tone deaf of critics, including Rolling Stone magazine, felt the album a tired rerun of what Beck had already done.

The Jeff Beck Group seemingly had talent equal to Zeppelin with Rod Stewart on vocals, future Rolling Stone Ron Wood on bass, the Who's Keith Moon drumming on one song and even John Paul Jones on piano. Beck himself also is every bit Page's equal. The band was even was going to be called Led Zeppelin at one point, the Who's John Entwistle, upon considering joining, being the one to come up with the name. On Truth, Jimmy Page is even credited as the songwriter for the instrumental "Beck's Bolero," the bolero idea morphing into "How Many More Times" on Zeppelin I.

Spins of both albums, however, clearly reveal how much more powerful, innovative and grandiose Zeppelin were. Beck, a combination of being incensed at his idea being stolen and in awe of how well Zeppelin had done it, even disbanded his group afterward in search of a new approach.

If the feel of Zeppelin I had to be summed up in one word it would be bold. There was a confidence and volume among all four musicians unheard previously. Hendrix had it musically to be sure but, despite a solid backup band, he was a solo act in terms of innovation. In Cream, the other heavy supergroup that preceded Zeppelin, the members fought each other to be louder while in Zeppelin, each member had a distinct place.

BONHAM'S INFLUENCE

"Loose but Tight" was the name of one of Zeppelin's fan groups and its apparent contradiction explained how rare the band's chemistry was. Jimmy Page's guitar style was free and spontaneous, John Paul Jones' bass at times took the lead role and wandered intentionally while Robert Plant frequently improvised his vocal parts, but the band always locked firmly. There may have been psychedelic moments but none of the meandering nature that permeated so many 1960s bands. That was a result of John Bonham's impeccable timekeeping and his force at ensuring everyone heard and felt what was usually a relatively basic beat. Bonham is said to have hit his drums with more force than anyone. That he aligned his 28-inch kick drum with aluminum foil certainly helped the volume but mostly it came from him being a powerfully built man to begin with.

"He had this bricklayer's ability to bang the drum immensely hard," engineer Eddie Kramer once noted, also adding "yet he had a very light touch," which suggests a pretty wide dynamic.

Bonham's beats were simple but he had a full repertoire of creative patterns he could draw from as evidenced by his fills throughout Zeppelin I. And through the next few Zeppelin albums he would also demonstrate an uncanny ability to at times make the music stand still and at other times push it forward.

Bonham and Plant were teenagers at the time Zeppelin I was recorded, Page and Jones already having established careers. Reportedly the band sent the phone-less Bonham 48 telegrams to get him to join and when he finally agreed one can only imagine the first rehearsal; Page and Jones probably glancing at each other and realizing even in those first moments how much they would be able to open up their own playing.

On the album, Bonham's drums drop in and out frequently and when they come in, they do not glide in, they come in full force, with a swagger usually accompanied by a crash symbol. Even in moments where he is just playing the hi-hat, he hits it so aggressively he still drives the band rather than simply laying back and keeping time. There is nothing subtle about it. If Zeppelin's aura and reputation, both on stage or off, was that of marauding Vikings, then it started with Bonham.

A BLUES ALBUM?

Led Zeppelin I is known primarily as a blues album particularly because of more traditional numbers like "You Shook Me" and "I Can't Quit You Baby" and to a slighter degree the foundations of "Dazed and Confused" and "How Many More Times." But if blues is a dance on fire, Led Zeppelin I is a fast-moving, relentless burn. A closer listen reveals arrangements that are almost classical in influence. The music builds to crescendos throughout and some of the songs having distinct movements, evidenced by the breaks on "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" and "Dazed and Confused"; additionally complex in that the four musicians rarely double each others parts.  If ever there were an album where a symphony played blues, it is hard to imagine it sounding fuller thematically; more subtle in places perhaps, but not fuller.

PRODUCTION

Part of that has to do with the production of course. The recording is not complex so much as well done. The studio trickery is there but much more subtle than say, the Beatles or Hendrix.

It helped that, along with engineer Glyn Johns, Page and Jones already knew what they were doing. They were veterans in the studio, being two of the most sought after session men in London. Sessions in London often included either Big Jim Sullivan or little Jimmy Page on guitar, a drummer and Jones on bass. Page, in addition to being the last standing member of the Yardbirds at the time, also had appeared on Who, Kinks and Van Morrison records and had additional credits as a producer. Jones, the only one in Zeppelin who could read music well, was a sought after arranger.  During the two years he was an arranger for Herman's Hermits, they sold 12 million singles. He could conduct an orchestra and he arranged the strings on the Stones' "She's a Rainbow." He also had a jazz background, having previously played in a band with John McLaughlin and his organ parts on "You Shook Me" and "Your Time is Going to Come" blended seamlessly into Zeppelin's music. (Legendary engineer Eddie Kramer, who, during a session I saw him run one time, was asked who the best musician he ever worked with, a cast that included Hendrix, and without hesitation he replied, John Paul Jones).

While Jones' arranging background had to have played a role in the way the four men blended, it is Page who is credited as the producer on the Zeppelin albums. He is said to have been a big fan of the use of ambient microphones to capture room sounds, believing that distance equals depth -- the first album having plenty of the latter. He also is widely credited for having invented the use of backwards echo, most notably on "You Shook Me" where one can hear the reverb of Plant's vocal before the vocal itself.

However, there have been discrepancies over the years as to just how much Page molded the sound of the Zeppelin recordings, which was a key factor in their success, from the largeness of Zeppelin I to the psychedelic sections of Zeppelin II to the heavily-sampled "When the Levee Breaks" drum sound on Zeppelin IV.

“I consciously kept changing engineers because I didn’t want people to think that they were responsible for our sound. I wanted people to know it was me,” Page was quoted in the band's heyday.

In fact, Johns was dropped from the rotation after the completion of Led Zeppelin I for asking for a producer credit. His younger brother Andy, who worked on "When the Levee Breaks" also would claim Page occasionally took credit for his ideas. However, Kramer, who would engineer five Zeppelin albums, has always stuck to the gentleman's code for any producer and engineer to never knock a client publicly, although that perhaps lends credence for the Johns brothers speaking out.

It is likely that the answer is somewhere in the middle and the credits of engineer and producer are apt ones. Undoubtedly Page provided the vision and it is clear his studio experience and insight rivaled that of the engineers of the day. Plus it is hard to overlook his use of different engineers, although each was at the top of their field. If anything, he knew which ones to hire. Bonham's drum sound on the fabled "When the Levee Breaks" was recorded with just two microphones three stories up a stairwell from his kit. Certainly Page's love of room sounds must have led to the idea. Johns added compression and an echo unit to the sound but the echo unit belonged to Page. Likewise, the psychedelic panning and guitar sounds on Zeppelin II, Kramer has indicated was his doing but only in meeting Page's conceptual descriptions of what he wanted.

As for backwards echo which appears through Zeppelin's albums, it had been used previously by Hendrix, although far more over the top, and Kramer had been the engineer on those sessions. Terry Manning, the co-engineer for Led Zeppelin III, provided some additional insight. In one interview he indicated that Page had told him Andy Johns had a secret technique to getting doubling delayed effects but he had not remembered how the engineer had done it. Manning called Johns who revealed the technique as adding delay to a backwards tape and the turning it back over and using vari-speed to "undelay" to fit the music.

Zeppelin I also would not be the same without the use of expensive compressors. The compression is transparent, not squashed like most of today's recordings, and contributes to making each band member sound larger as well as holding them in place in the mix. It is an approach that often sounds better on a sparse album, which Zeppelin I was, it having been recorded quickly. That allowed for each to have equal billing, particularly unusual at the time in Jones' case as a bassist. A layman can hear the compression best perhaps on Plant's harmonica, his breath and playing varying little, if at all, in volume as well as on Page's guitar solos.

What also is refreshing about the album, however, is the naturalness of the playing, most strikingly the tempo shifts that would be unheard of in today's cookie-cutter age of production. That Jones' descending bass line on "Dazed and Confused" is faster coming out of the guitar solo than it is in the beginning of the song is a natural development of momentum; more in line with a conductor's own intuition rather than a click track in Pro Tools.

JIMMY PAGE

Page's own guitar playing also is a throwback to another era. For Page it was never about hitting the "right" notes as it was creating a larger feel, such as reaching an intense climax at moments when Plant yells "push."  Page's solos were shot from the hip but spontaneity can often have a lasting sound. He also had a soft pick touch, more brushstroke than the even technique which has permeated rock guitar playing since the 1980s.

That is not to say Page did not possess an academic knowledge of music. This was a man who would go on to write perhaps the most impressive start compositionally to a rock album on Houses of the Holy with the overture-styled "The Song Remains the Same" followed by the softer but equally lush "Rain Song," not to mention the masterful build up and layering on "Stairway to Heaven." Looking at his chord sequences and guitar arrangements throughout Zeppelin's heyday, it is clear he was well versed in music theory, albeit morphed with a deep blues repertoire. He has a strong command of 6th and 7th chords and his lead, although based in major and minor pentatonic scales, frequently drifts into the Lydian, Dorian and Mixolydian modes in a way that is more musical in approach than just a blues guy adding filler notes.

He also was a smooth performer (Zeppelin playing three-plus hour shows most of their career is something that lends itself to that) as evidenced by his deceptively simple and fluid acoustic playing on "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You." Although the feel is mellow, it is no lazy Sunday afternoon pick and strum at 135 beats-per-minute. In the intro, for example, he could have repeated the first four bars as many of his 1970s contemporaries would have. Instead, when he switches to an Am7 in the fifth bar in place of the Am and adds the high G and E notes in the sixth bar, he is not only taking it a step further musically but, by adding the brighter notes even briefly, is keeping with his concept of light and shade that he forever claimed was his main approach to playing. By the time he reaches the bridge and flushes out the F6th chord, it is clear just how further he took the song from the more monotonous Joan Baez version that had initially inspired him.

Of course, his choosing of Plant as a singer is another stroke of insight that should not be overlooked. Plant, by many evaluations, was raw at the time. He even had been turned down for a couple club bands because they felt he could not sing. And reviews of his Janis Joplin-esque squealing on Zeppelin I received mixed reviews initially. However, by the third song of Zeppelin I, "You Shook Me," his presence clearly takes over - the harmonica also not to be overlooked - and of course, as time went on he would become the star of the band. Plant felt the music, could lose himself in it and had the power in his voice to not be overshadowed by his equally boisterous and more experienced bandmates.

In all, Led Zeppelin I captures the band at is bare essence. It is the one album you can hear their true talents before the more elaborate studio albums and subsequent songwriting would change their sound. The later albums would be groundbreaking in other ways, particularly into influencing new subgenres of rock, but it is the first one that explains more than any other why they were big in the first place.