It was here before you, and it will be here after you.
Robert Plant: vocals, harmonica
Jimmy Page: guitars
John Paul Jones: bass, keys, synths, some guitar
John Bonham: drums
Special guest: Ian Stewart; piano on “Boogie With Stu”
Produced by Jimmy Page; engineered by Andy Johns, Eddie Kramer, George Chkiantz, Keith Harwood, and Ron Nevison
art by Peter Corriston, Mike Doud
The hype was practically the fifth member of Led Zeppelin.
Rest assured, he was still in the band for Physical Graffiti. As far as the public knew, Led Zeppelin had been radio silent for over a year.
Fans had reason to wait with baited breath. This wasn’t the 1960s anymore. Everyone who’s anyone has done a double album. The last few years of the Stones and The Who’s respective outputs dealt steep competition to Zeppelin. The former set the high water mark with Exile on Main St. The latter released two double albums in five years, to varying degrees of success. If your double album was anything less than excellence of the highest caliber, it was a failure. Yes were eaten alive for Tales of Topographic Oceans. Genesis’s bloated rock opera The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway just might have been the straw that broke prog’s back.
In a world where excess was falling out of fashion, a double album could make or break your career. Delaying said double album by three months because of its packaging wasn’t exactly the best look. And this wasn’t just any double album: it was an album-and-a-half of new material from the fabled Headley Grange, plus outtakes from Led Zeppelin III, IV, and Houses of the Holy; an informal “best-of” capturing Zeppelin’s rise to rock-and-roll Mount Olympus. There was a lot riding on Physical Graffiti.
When it finally did arrive, it predictably debuted at number three on the Billboard charts; it hit number one soon after. It didn’t hit number one in the UK until well into March, though. That spot was firmly held by Dylan’s comeback, Blood on the Tracks. (Coincidentally, also delayed from a late 1974 release. I'll have to see if there were any retrogrades going on...)
According to a February 1975 issue of Billboard, Zeppelin’s 10th US tour was projected to make $5 million – about $29 million today. This is pocket change for Taylor Swift, but massive for rock-and-roll in the ‘70s. Led Zeppelin at the height of their fame wasn’t just a band. It was a living, breathing ecosystem, with a record label, a concert film in production hell, multi-million-dollar tours, and a whole-ass private jet. Call it cynicism, but I see Zeppelin more as a business than a band, especially in this era. They found their niche, perfected it, then capitalized on it so hard that the guys are living in castles surrounded by priceless art in their old age. There’s nothing more commercial than putting out a double album at the height of your career; it’s rock-and-roll cliché at this point.
I wouldn’t say my feelings have cooled since last evaluating Physical Graffiti, but they’ve definitely matured. Being two more years removed from my Zeppelin phase, I look at their stuff with a more critical eye...or listen with a more critical ear.
Physical Graffiti does have its quirks. It’s far from the standard model hot off the assembly line. You can tell which cuts came from when just by listening to Robert Plant. He sounds full and rich on Led Zeppelin IV-era cuts Night Flight, Boogie With Stu, and Down By the Seaside. He’s been wacky varispeed-ed on Houses of the Holy outtakes The Rover, Houses of the Holy, and Black Country Woman; a futile effort to hide repeated strain and illness. Feats of vocal performance as “How Many More Times,” “Whole Lotta Love,” and “Black Dog” are, pushing that hard for two hours a night, six nights a week, six months of the year will do irreparable damage. Upon concluding another grueling round of tour in July 1973, Plant got surgery to remove nodes on his vocal cords. Zeppelin were forced into the longest break they’d taken in their careers thus far as Plant recouperated; he still sounds thin post-surgery. While Plantiewasn’t in top form, I am very impressed with him pulling some of these performances less than six months post-op.
Though the Custard Pie riff does start at its beginning, it doesn’t feel like it does. We start with the tight ball of yarn instead of the short, straight tail at the end. JPJ’s grimy organ follows. You’ll notice Jones and Bonzo rarely do the same thing. Instead, it’s Jimmy and Jones linking up. That’s unusual for a rock band, where the rhythm section is thought of as...well...a rhythm section.
It leaves our ears wide open to follow the broken loop of the riff. Circular motion has been used by rock music since we were wearing loincloths dancing around a fire. It works for a reason, it triggers our deepest human instincts. But starting with “Well my mama allow me to fool around all night long,” the guys add this crazy syncopation. It skids the loop to a stop. Throws an elbow and an angle in. It squares the circle. This repeats on the third line of every verse, and the fourth has a quick key change. It perks our ear up, refreshing the broken circle. Combine that with Bonzo constantly changing which beat gets the emphasis on each measure and this is the least 4/4 song in 4/4 I’ve ever heard. Zeppelin were all about crazy time signatures, as we’ll see later. They weren’t afraid to throw the standards all out of whack. Jimmy plays such an indulgent, DGAF solo. It cranks itself out until it bothers to get to a melody. It’s perfect for such an unabashedly sexual song.
As far as lyrics go...there are few things less sexy than chewing. On anything.
In Led Zeppelin: The Biography, Bob Spitz erroneously attributed “Custard Pie”’s lyrics solely to Sleepy John Estes’s “Drop Down Mama.” While the “drop down” phrase is used a lot, “Custard Pie” is just as much “Drop Down” as it is Blind Boy Fuller’s “I Want Some of Your Pie.” But there’s a third parent. It seems the mailman dropped by...“Put on your night shirt mama and your morning gown, you know by night I’m gonna shake em on down.”
Now, where have we heard that before? Hats Off to Goddamn Roy Harper. With lyrics heavily lifted from Bukka White’s “Shake Em On Down.” Not only are Zeppelin referencing the blues, they’re referencing themselves!
“The Rover” introduces Zeppelin’s other honorary band member. If their fifth is the ever-present hype, the sixth, and special guest just for this album: that fucking Eventide phaser.
Zeppelin were obsessed with it, I don’t know how to feel. To a modern ear, this sound dates the record. In his review for Rolling Stone, Jim Miller pointed out that Plant sounds thin on Houses of the Holy cuts, especially “The Rover.” The heavy effects on his vocal track hindered this issue rather than helped. Thankfully, Zeppelin is a dual star system. Where Plant wavers, Page stands his ground. He was the riff king in this era of the band. There’s so many iconic Zeppelin riffs on Physical Graffiti alone, it’s honestly stupid. “The Rover”’s is played with brightness, bravado, and attitude.
Rounding out side one is Zeppelin’s rendition of In My Time of Dying. My feelings have cooled significantly on this cut since my last evaluation of Physical Graffiti. “Time of Dying” is the longest Zeppelin song, and I’m not sure it had to be. “Achilles’ Last Stand” – the best Zeppelin song – is a minute shorter and uses its run time to much greater effect. The languid guitar at the start of “Time of Dying” is intriguing, but this recording loses its way a few times. It fumbles the momentum I know this band could hold so well; it seems all my favorite songs of theirs are over five minutes long.
Side two kicks off with Houses of the Holy’s title track and a searing-hot, metallic guitar tone; unusual for its era. After the snoozefest that was “Time of Dying,” it jolts you back to live. “Houses of the Holy” is also unusual within the Zeppelin canon for its use of cowbell; the one and only time Bonzo used one a Zeppelin LP. This might age me, but cowbell is the most delightful percussion instrument. It makes me laugh every time.
Even if you recorded “The Rover” and “Houses of the Holy” with a fully-recovered Plant in 1974, you’d still know they were Houses of the Holy-era cuts for their writing. Plant was still in that IV phase of using lots of pastoral images together. “Bluesy innuendo...but make it hippie.” Wandering gardens with a sword of goldand the like. Killer as it is in sound, having read the lyrics over, I understand why it didn’t make the cut for its album. (But don’t think the dove line was lost on me!)
Trampled Under Foot, a nod to Robert Johnson’s “Terraplane Blues,” is a lot beefier than I remembered it being. Plant taps into his lower register, probably out of necessity, but to no less great effect. I can’t count how many guitar tracks are in the mix. There’s at least two playing the main motif, a third playing the harmony, a rhythm track akin to welding sparks. Including solos, that’s at least five tracks. Not to be too on-the-nose, but it’s solme high-octane stuff. I’ve seen a lot of publications likening “Trampled Under Foot” to funk. I see where they’re coming from; Bonzo puts a strong emphasis on the downbeat.
About “Time of Dying,” Jimmy said, “When you’re playing like that, why would you want to stop?” This phrase might apply more to “Trampled Under Foot.” It goes on for over five minutes. Not because it’s particularly complex, it’s lots of car metaphors (which this Motor City-loving girlie can absolutely excuse,) “ooh”s and “baby”s, with the same unrelenting riff and a Jones-driven B-section. It’s the feel that matters.
The tempo loses its funk rigidity through Jimmy’s elastic, very phased, backwards-echo solo. Fuck a metronome! All are swept away by the feel. JPJ was Zeppelin’s secret weapon. He shines on “Trampled Under Foot,” he injects it with that feel. His minimalistic bass is the firm anchor, while his keys play the role the bass “should.”
You do not see “Kashmir” coming. There is no indication that “Kashmir” is coming. That’s exactly how I want it; like some ancient civilization invading foreign land.
All of Zeppelin knew this one was special as soon as they recorded it. Even before their recorded it, if Jimmy’s account in Spitz’s book is to be believed. Plant’s said it’s his favorite in interview. I read several accounts of Bonzo calling Peter Grant after they’d recorded “Kashmir” and dragging him out to Headley Grange so he could hear it ASAP.
Lyrically, it’s a triumph. It fills the listener’s head with translucent, swirling images of traversing the East. “Oh let the sun beat down upon my face, stars to fill my dreams/I am a traveler of both time and space to be where I have been.”In his weakened state, Plant sounds like an elderly traveler praying to the gods to protect him so he may one day return: “My Shangri-La beneath the summer moon, I will return again/Sure as the dust that blows high in June when moving through Kashmir.” Played in D-A-D-G-A-D tuning – the same used on “White Mountain”/”Black Mountainside” – “Kashmir” sounds huge. Dave Lewis likened the sound of this tuning to a sitar in Led Zeppelin: A Celebration. You have to go hard or go home with something like this. Horns and strings, yes please!
“Kashmir” was a smooshing together of cultures. In 1970, Page and Plant went to India in an attempt to record “Friends.” When JPJ wrote this orchestra part, he recruited a Pakistani ensemble because he knew they’d get this time sig and key right. While the music is inspired by India and the Middle East, its lyrics and performance are connected in sound to Zeppelin’s trips to Morocco; note Plant’s Middle Eastern vocal runs.
And then there’s the question of the polyrhythm. Bonzo plays in 4/4. You stack everyone else in ¾ on top, and they only meet up once every 12 measures. It gives a startling, exotic effect. The drums are huge, and they’d better be. “Kashmir” was born of the same location and mic setup as IV. It still feels like the march of a thousand men.
I maintain the best Kashmir is from Zeppelin’s reunion in 2007. We may be down Bonzo, but an aging Plantlost no ferocity, and it sounds like Page attended a seminar by the school of Tony Iommi.
Though "Kashmir" is nothing short of an epic, it’s In The Light that captures me. It calls on gods much older. When you hear Jimmy’s Lucifer Rising score, you’ll know exactly where this song came from. He’s incorporated the esoteric feel and the more ambient, whacked-out elements into a rock song. He brought back the bowed guitar from the Yardbirds days for an Indian drone effect. This earthy base is given a retro-futurism tinge with JPJ’s synths. The chorus effect on Plant’s voice, thanks to Benji LeFevre’s equipment, makes him sound like the oracle. He might as well be a vessel for the voices of gods.
Though I find it superior to “Bron-y-Aur,” I’m glad Bron-Yr-Aur gets to shine on Physical Graffiti. It’s not much more than two tracks of Jimmy playing with gold-spun finery. I miss the intricacy his playing he had in the III era. I suspect “Bron-Yr-Aur” was remixed for Physical Graffiti. There’s no way this sound could be achieved in 1970 unless Zeppelin got ahold of that phaser before we think they did. It’s got a gorgeous waves-on-the-water effect. Speaking of waves, “Down By the Seaside” has never been my favorite. But I suppose on an album centered around travel it makes sense to have a beach song. This is very of-its-time, the steel guitar and watery effect on the lead is very California in 1970/71. Its guitars, lazy river feel, tender delivery, and falsetto “ooooh”s remind me of something known Zeppelin muse Joni Mitchell might’ve done; or perhaps Neil Young.
Physical Graffiti has two apexes; fitting for an album split across two discs. Whereas “Kashmir” ambushes you, “In The Light,” “Bron-Yr-Aur,” and “Seaside” build in anticipation to “Ten Years Gone.”
Along with “Tangerine,” “The Rain Song,” “No Quarter,” and “Achilles,” “Ten Years Gone” is one of the few Zeppelin songs I find myself revisiting in my casual listening these days. It’s one of the most mature Zeppelin songs, as Plant ditches the innuendos to reminisce on lost love. Though this girl haunts him, “Vixen in my dreams, to great surprise to me/I never thought I’d see your face the way it used to be,” and he wonders about her all the time, he’s at peace with losing her. If she comes back someday, she comes back. If not, oh well. “...as the eagle leaves its nest, it’s got so far to go/Changes fill my time, baby that’s alright with me/In the midst I think of you and how it used to be.”
The care Jimmy poured into the instrumental is quite romantic as well. It makes “Ten Years Gone” feel even more like a handwritten letter, or a grand gesture a la “Layla.” Jimmy used just about every tool in his box, every effect at his disposal. There’s clean guitar, there’s pedals, there’s effects in post. The bridge section never fails to sweep me off my feet. Our narrator asks rhetorical questions as if it’s the only way to address this woman without breaking down, while Jimmy plays this fuzzed-out riff with shimmering bursts.
The third side of Physical Graffiti is more than the sum of its parts. As a unit, it’s one of my favorite sides a double album ever; right up there with side one of Eat A Peach and side four of Layla. If only the last quarter of Physical Graffiti could compare to this one.
It all feels like something of an identity crisis. I recognize the irony in me saying this about a band that regularly appropriated the blues, but I digress. Shimmery, optimistic, and empowering as “Night Flight” is, it doesn’t feel like Zeppelin. It doesn’t feel like one of the bluesmen in their roster either. It feels like Who’s Next.Furthermore, “Boogie With Stu” and “Black Country Woman” feel like Exile. Hell, the former has a Rolling Stone auxiliary man on it! Sure, since the Stones released Exile, other bands could get away with releasing similarly undone, unpretentious efforts. And I do appreciate this window into Zeppelin’s inner world. It’s cool to see Zeppelin in this casual environment of Headley Grange the first time around; when they didn’t know they were making one of the greatest rock records of all time. The Ritchie Valens reference (“ooh, my head!”) is endearing. But these cuts feel disjointed from the sheer power we’ve heard on the other threesides.
And then there’s Sick Again. Oh dear.
For as long as I’ve been writing on this blog, I’ve been engaged in the conversation about groupies. What is a groupie? What do groupies do? Who is a groupie, and who isn’t? Is it even possible to be a groupie in this day and age? (Speaking from experience: yes, but it’s very hard! You can’t just go waltzing in the stage door like you used to!) At some point between the GTOs and 1975, the term “groupie” and groupie culture in California changed. “Sick Again” is evidence of this, as is the Stones’s “Starfucker.”
In the ’60s, groupies were young women – around college-age – who loved music so much they wanted to bepart of that world. They hung out with the groups, hence the name “groupie.” They helped out however they could; making costumes, rolling joints, helping load up gear, providing a floor for the guys to crash on.Sometimes a bed. Sex was a side effect; if it happened it happened. They had a very ’60s free love attitude. The GTOs were groupies.
The infamous “groupies” orbiting Zeppelin in the mid-’70s were, in fact, children.
There were no shortage of young women to go after at the height of Zeppelin’s fame, so there really was no excuse for them to have pursued underage girls. In doing that, they enabled a shift in the definition of“groupie” to “child.” “Groupie” became an even more negative term through the ’80s, when starfuckers entered the fray and bands actively emulated this ugly side of Zeppelin’s excess. Groupies today, what few of us there are left, are still trying to reverse that damage. Shame on Zeppelin for going after teenagers, and setting a terrible example for decades of rock-and-roll to come. That’s all I have to say about “Sick Again.”
Wanton Song is the clear standout of side four. Though chipmunk Plant drags it down, it possesses the same driving power “Custard Pie” and “Trampled Under Foot” did. The energy’s a little more frantic, the guitar solos are straight-up ugly. This is the undone that fits Zeppelin. And that’s how you use a phaser.
Physical Graffiti’s underwhelming side four makes me question if Physical Graffiti had to be a double album at all. I see where critics came from. This is half old material. If “Time Of Dying” were dropped, it would’ve been a positively brutal single album. But we wouldn’t have had these “lost” tracks either. So it’s kind of a double-edged sword.
It also occurred to me that 1975 was the last year Zeppelin could’ve made Physical Graffiti. It was the year of big, lavish sounds dealt by the likes of Wings, Chicago, and Bruce Springsteen. It’s not lost on me that Swan Song’s logo was Icarus, falling from the sky. This is exactly what would happen to Zeppelin after this record.They would predictably become tax exiles, taken out of commission by injury and addictions. In theirabsence, rock-and-roll Babylon was raided by the drug-addled, delightfully bitchy alliance of Bowie, Lou Reed, and Iggy Pop. Zeppelin’s gross excess pushed punk’s trigger finger.
This album at this time was a risk to Zeppelin’s reputation. Blemishes considered, it paid off. Should the group that practically invented rock-and-roll excess not make the excessive rock-and-roll record? It stands today as IV’s unofficial sister album: these unassailable rock triumphs.
Though Nick Kent’s review for the NME is paywalled to shit (not even my trusty 12ft can get around it,) and its issue is...conspicuously missing from the World Radio History Archive...you probably already know this quote:
“One thing’s for sure – for sheer sustained aural ferocity, Physical Graffiti can eat Houses of the Holy for breakfast.”
quoted from: Nick Kent, “Physical Graffiti.” NME, 12/7/1974.
Physical Graffiti serves as a historical document. It’s a picture of Zeppelin in the ’70s when, truth be told, their only real competition was themselves. Did it really matter if it was half an album of old material? Did it really matter if it captured Zeppelin’s strongest asset, Robert Plant’s voice, in various states of decay?
50 years later, it still doesn’t matter to Zeppelin fans. It doesn’t matter to Jimmy Page either. But he thinks of Physical Graffiti quite clinically, “...as a document of the band in a working environment. Some people have said that parts of it are sloppy, but I think that this album is really honest. It is a more personal album, and I think it allowed the listener to enter our world. You know, ‘Here’s the door. I’m in.’” (quoted from: Brad Tolinski, Light and Shade: Conversations with Jimmy Page. 2012.)
This album is like visiting a Romanesque church, or otherwise the hulking building on the front cover. Like that church, Physical Graffiti has been here before you, and it will be here after you.
Personal favorites: “Custard Pie,” “The Rover,” “Trampled Under Foot,” “Kashmir,” “In The Light,” “Ten Years Gone,” “Wanton Song”
– AD ☆
Watch the full episode above!
Hoskyns, Barney. Trampled Under Foot: The Power and Excess of Led Zeppelin. Bloomsbury, London, 2012.
Kent, Nick. “Physical Graffiti.” NME, 12/7/1974.
Kent, Nick. “The Graffiti of the Physical...and the Exploration of the Metaphysical.” NME, 12/7/1974. https://geirmykl.wordpress.com/2015/05/23/article-about-led-zeppelin-from-new-musical-express-december-7-1974/
Lewis, Dave. Led Zeppelin: A Celebration. Omnibus Press, New York, 1990.
Miller, Jim. “Physical Graffiti.” Rolling Stone, 3/27/1975.
Rees, Paul. Robert Plant: A Life. Harper Collins, London, 2013.
Schulps, Dave. “Interview with Jimmy Page.” Trouser Press, 10/1977.
Spitz, Bob. Led Zeppelin: A Biography. Penguin Press, 2021.
Tolinksi, Brad. Light and Shade: Conversations with Jimmy Page. Broadway Books, New York, 2012.
“Hits of the Week.” Record Mirror, 3/8/1975.
“Special Tribute: Ahmet Ertegun” Billboard, 2/24/2007.