Not every rock song is supposed to hold up to the test of time. Even though plenty of artists have been able to write staggering lyrics that can resonate with anyone from any generation, a few numbers always have a timestamp on when they came out, either through dated production or the artist using vernacular indicative of the period. While most of Led Zeppelin’s catalogue falls into timeless rock music, Robert Plant thought one effort wasn’t his proudest performance.
When looking through the band’s first four albums, there is hardly a filler track. Storming onto the scene right after Jimmy Page left The Yardbirds, the band’s debut became the ultimate example of rock and roll getting pushed to its limits, with Page creating one classic riff after the next on ‘Communication Breakdown’ and ‘Dazed and Confused’.
Page’s precision behind the fretboard was only matched by Plant, who would wail like a banshee throughout the group’s first handful of records. While the band were proud to wear their blues influences on their sleeve most of the time, their self-titled album saga showed them reaching for new influences all the time as well, with Page penning the Eastern-tinged ‘Friends’ and working on acoustic material on tracks like ‘Thank You’.
Even though the press wanted nothing to do with Zeppelin in their early days, the band figured they would call their bluff by releasing their fourth album with as little fanfare as possible. Not even giving the album a proper name, what would commonly become known as Led Zeppelin IV remains one of the crowning achievements of 1970s rock, containing songs that would become the foundation of the next generation of musicians like ‘Stairway to Heaven’ and ‘Black Dog’.
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