Inventive arrangements were Zeppelin's hallmark on their early albums and this song - third track, side 2 on the original vinyl of Led Zeppelin II or track 7 on the CD - stands up with the best of them. There might only be two chords but they're handled with a restraint and purpose that keeps them interesting right to the fade.
The song opens with Jimmy Page on acoustic strumming an obligato riff accompanied by John Bonham playing 16s on, of all things, a plastic waste bin. It could sound like a fast metronome save for the faint but unmistakably musical accents in the sticking. And then comes the star of the show, John Paul Jones, caressing rather than plucking one of the most lyrical basslines in all rock music, while Robert Plant, uncharacteristically, picks a low enough register for the vocals to blend with rather than dominate the backing.
There's a lilting pulse to the music, but a dynamic too across the four bar phrase - Jones plays just root and a syncopated 5 in bar 1, fleshes out bar 2 a bit more, and just when you think he's going to repeat the motif he plays a syncopated figure right across bars three and four with a delicate 16th note turnaround at the end to bring him back onto the beat. To be honest, I'd be happy just listening to the opening verse over and over - if I didn't know what happened next.
For the four bar phrase linking verse to chorus Page adds a mellow lead figure on electric over a country-rock tinged electric, while the acoustic changes rhythm to sync with a rockier bass figure, though it still has that overall long-short pulse as E changes to A. And all along Bonzo's still keeping up the 16s on that plastic bucket, except that now he's leaning on those accents a bit more heavily.
And then it happens. A typical Bonhamesque snare figure at the end of the bridge, echoing the bass turnaround in the verses, and its Electric Zeppelin. There's immediate contrast, and not just between the acoustic and electric guitars, Plant's switch from bel canto to can belto, JPJ giving it some and Bonzo giving it everything. The entire feel has changed. The subtle but insistent rhythm is suddenly full of punctuation and the arrangement across the repeated two-bar phrase is spikier. But it's still got that slow-quick thing about it. Just listen to the drum pattern: half a bar of standard rock hi-hat with snare on the back beat, then everything drops out save for the kick drum adding a bit of oomph to the bass as it races up to A, then an urgent snare on every beat while it's the bass and guitar's turn to play 16s.
Just as you're really rocking, a sumptuous gong-like crash announces it's time for the first course again. This time the verse's lyrics are half the length with the second half given over to a beautifully phrased, double tracked solo for Page.
One of the marvels of this track was that it was originally mixed in the early days of stereo when separation was often far greater and much of that is retained on the remastered CD mix. So you can really hear the two guitar parts, in thirds, easing in, vibratos and phrasing perfectly matched. Again it's a repeated part, again with more notes in the second half, but second time through, when you might have expected it to take off into a solo, it drops out to leave space for Jones and Bonham's turnaround figure to lead not into the bridge but straight into the chorus.
The discipline is incredible. By the end of the second chorus they've played E and A alternately for 60 medium tempo bars, but they stick to their parts with controlled aggression - and even then they delay the climax. Instead of heading back for verse three, there's another piece of Page's double tracking, but now it's over four bars of A and he's harmonizing in sixths instead of thirds. And whereas the twin guitars earlier were given equal billing, now the top line predominates, the extra reverb on the secondary part giving depth to the sonic image. The bass and drums are funkier but you can feel them holding back, until, when the guitar line finally resolves to the chord of E and that sizzling crash signals a return to the verse, it's like a warm, lazy orgasm.
And like an orgasm, there's a wonderful tail off, the wash of the crash and the G# and B of the twin leads dying naturally as the third verse takes over. It's such a perfect resolution that it's only a second or two later that you register that Page has managed to find yet another part to overlay, another mellow 16th based figure on electric, somehow finding a place to sit between the acoustic and the bassline.
This time the band does take the bridge to the final chorus and then we get a dose of Led Zep letting rip. All along Plant has double-tracked the accented phrase on the chorus but now he's singing two and three tracks, phasing and phrasing in and out with each other. Bonzo carries on playing his set rhythm, gradually introducing more intricacy as JPJ starts to motor. Finally, as the long fade starts, there's the snare bashing away four square, and Plant giving the performance of his life, so much so that you could almost swear there was a guitar solo going on in there. There isn't. Page's genius on this track is his masterful layering of part upon part, and when it comes to the fade he knows there's nothing to add that wouldn't detract. 'Nuff said. GK
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Led Zep reunion - Tour still a possibility - Take a look now.
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