The most stunning thing about
Good Times Bad Times (and it's subtle if you're not listening for it - and obvious if you are), is Bonzo's amazing kick drum. It's superhuman when you realize he was not playing with double kick. That's one kick drum! Bonham's repeated use of a series of two sixteenth-note triplets on a single bass drum, is an effect many subsequent rock drummers have imitated, and as well as keeping the hi-hat playing eighth notes throughout almost the entire song with his left foot. Bonham had reportedly developed this technique after listening to Vanilla Fudge, yet he was unaware that drummer Carmine Appice was actually playing on a double bass set! And of course, this is the original song with MORE COWBELL!
Babe I'm Gonna Leave You is where we hear Plant take front and center stage for Zeppelin. Plant ad-libbed and creatively expanded on many of the lyrics of this cover (though they did not immediately give the credit - and hence the start of their legal troubles Greg referenced). Rather than "never leave", he will "never never never never gonna leave you babe". In fact, he sings 'babe' or 'baby' 34 times, as opposed to the Joan Baez version, where it's repeated just 4 times. Plant doesn't as much sing, as he weaves a tale with his voice, often forsaking words for a series of screams, wails and yelps - and it all works. In fact, references to babe, girl, woman etc... show up over 60 times on the album (over half on this track) - pointing out the central theme... da bitches.
You Shook Me is actually a 1962 blues song recorded by Chicago blues artist Muddy Waters. Jeff Beck recorded "You Shook Me" with the first Jeff Beck Group line-up during the sessions for the Truth album in May 1968 (with John Paul Jones contributing the organ). At nearly six and a half minutes, it is considerably longer than the Muddy Waters or Jeff Beck recordings. This is a slow, plodding, trodding blues track, and my least favorite track on the album. I find Plant's vocals and Page's slides to sound like they are both whining, and not in a nice way. Jones' organ solo picks it up a little, but not enough for me to really enjoy this one.
Dazed and Confused is without a doubt the centerpiece of the album. It was a song originally written and performed by Jake Holmes, and also covered by the Yardbirds. For the release on Zeppelin I, Page used the title, penned a new set of lyrics, and modified the melody, and as such they hold a separate copyright on the song. It was a staple of The Yardbirds' live performance during the last year of their act, although the song was never officially recorded by the band. With an unmistakable base line, it garners your attention instantly. Although for me, it is the instrumental chorus that is the most provoking and fully displays Zeppelin's initial grandeur. The first of many instrumental wankfests, and the outro from it gives me chills. Every. Single. Time. This is where Plant opens the flood gates and truly wails and you get the sense that he has a voice that is in another league from other rock vocalists in 1968. What Bonham can do with and 8 piece drum kit is truly astounding. It's amazing that it only clocks in at 6:26 - there are three songs on the album longer than it!
Jones' musical talent is on display in the keyboard heavy track,
Your Time Is Gonna Come, where he only uses the pedal for the bass line. This sounds more like the rock music of the late 60s. Incredibly, Page said he only learned how to play the steel guitar during the sessions for the first album. The lyric "One of these days and it won't be long / You'll look for me but baby I'll be gone" is lifted from the Ray Charles song "I Believe to My Soul", reinforcing Plant's affinity for rhythm and blues.
Black Mountain Side was inspired by a traditional Irish folk music, the unique part about this is that Page would tune his guitar in a very unique D-A-D-G-A-D (not like that means anything to me). Yet outside of a few English folk acts, this was a tuning very seldomly used - though Page would claim he tuned it in C-I-A ... Celtic, Indian and Arabian. To enhance that eastern sound, Page hired drummer and sitarist Viram Jasani to play tabla (an Indian percussion instrument) on the track.
In my opinion,
Communication Breakdown is to 1969 Led Zeppelin what black Paranoid (the track) was to 1970 Black Sabbath. This was frantic rock/metal like had seldom been made or heard before, and wow'd the fuck out of you from a debut album. And also clocking in at under 3 minutes like Paranoid, it's over and done with in a flash. This is one of the few songs that Page sang background vocals on.
I Can't Quit You Baby, along with the final track, really showed how much influence the blues played with Page. The first of many heavily inspired blues songs in the Zeppelin catalogue, it was originally written by Willie Dixon and first recorded by Otis Rush in 1956 . The recent remaster really cleans up the guitar solo magnificently.
How Many More Times. Magnificent. Simply magnificent, with what's categorized as a 'bolero' (Latin) beat from Bonham and Jones pushing the rest of the song along. Though not originally given credit, it was a loose cover (in arrangement) of a 1951 track by Chester Burnett called "How Many More Years". And that's all I got, since Gord stole my thunder about the time listed on the album sleeve.
Jingle.boy's ranking:
How Many More Times
Dazed And Confused
Babe I'm Gonna Leave You
Good Times Bad Times
Communication Breakdown
I Can't Quit You Baby
Your Time Is Gonna Come/Black Mountain Side (with the cross-fade, it's hard to separate these two)
You Shook Me
Poll
Topic: The Led Zeppelin Discography Discussion: v. Everything still turns to gold (Read 55933 times)