Led Zeppelin just won a major court case recently regarding alleged plagiarism recently. Their most well known and over played song Stairway to Heaven was accused of being a rip-off of a song called Taurus by the band Spirit. To celebrate this victory, I'm going to do this week's Throwback Thursday about this 1971 monster of a classic album which not only had Stairway on it, but quite a few other well known classics as well.
Led Zeppelin IV has even less of the straight up loud proud outer space blues sound that Led Zeppelin had started with in their first couple of albums. This continues the more straight up rock with moments of folk music interspersed throughout it that Led Zeppelin III had begun to bring on previously. Classic songs like Black Dog, Misty Mountain Hop, Stairway to Heaven, Going to California, When the Levee Breaks, Rock and Roll, etc. still get TONS of radio airplay all the time. That much of an album being broadcast after four decades is definitely a testament to how fantastic and big it truly was.
Stairway to Heaven. It's that one song that always gets requested at a bar band's gig (aside from Free Bird) or people always muck up horribly when dicking around in a guitar shop. People have also over-analyzed the lyrics to death for four decades as well. Over played though it may most certainly be, it has earned it. It's definitely Led Zeppelin's maximum opus. Jimmy Page probably did some of his best writing and guitar work in this song. It seamlessly blends soft acoustic folk with harder hitting electrifying rock n' roll. The beauty part about it is that it starts off with minimal layers, but gradually builds up more and more to the point where it becomes this epic breakdown that carries on until the very end.
Black Dog in my opinion is one of the greatest straight up rock songs Led Zeppelin ever created. From the moment Robert Plant sings that opening line, you know that something awesome is about to happen. The band needless to say does not disappoint. This is rock at its most raw. It's just a few guys going absolutely balls to the wall on their instruments/vocals while keeping things simple in all the best ways; focusing on volume, simplicity, and passion rather than technicality or composition. For the more hard rocking person, this is the tune to go to.
Led Zeppelin IV was where I started when I first started listening to Zeppelin way back in the day. Honestly, I still would have to say that this definitely isn't the worst place to do so. It has tons of their best songs and shows just how versatile they could be during their best years. Whether you like hard rock, folk, or something in between you're bound to find something on this record that suits your fancy. Kind of hard to go wrong with an album where at one point there is a straight up Lord of the Rings reference.
Led Zeppelin IV, by Led Zeppelin receives 4.5 out of 5 stars.
Track List:
1. Black Dog
2. Rock and Roll
3. The Battle of Evermore
4. Stairway to Heaven
5. Misty Mountain Hop
6. Four Sticks
7. Going to California
8. When the Levee Breaks
Buy the album on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Led-Zeppelin-IV/dp/B0011Z5IVE/ref=tmm_msc_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1466758109&sr=8-1
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