Led Zeppelin II - Music Made On The Move

Led Zeppelin II continued the frantic, accelerated pace of the group’s debut album. While their first LP had been recorded at Olympic Studios, the second would be written on the fly and recorded wherever there was a studio close by.

In 1969, Led Zeppelin’s career was launched by the band’s First U.S. and Canadian Tour and successful debut album. Between January and August of that year, the group completed a total of three North American and four European tours.

Because its four musicians were masters at improvisation, all these concert dates afforded the band a terrific opportunity to test new material in a live environment and pre-sell audiences on it. Songs for their second album were often composed in hotel rooms.

Production was credited entirely to Jimmy Page, with Peter Grant as executive producer, but sound engineer Eddie Kramer collaborated on the mixing at Olympic Studios. Recording sessions took place in assorted studios in London, Los Angeles, Memphis, New York and Vancouver.

Atlantic Records released the album in North America on October 22, 1969. It was Zeppelin’s first record to hit #1 on the Billboard 200 chart. Over 500,000 copies were sold in 1969 alone. Eventually, several million records would be!

photo credits

A Whole Lotta Great Music

Of the nine tracks on Led Zeppelin II, seven were original compositions created by all four band members through varying alliances. To call the remaining two “cover songs” is a bit of a stretch, because Zeppelin’s versions are so novel.

Based on a Willie Dixon song, Whole Lotta Love is the album’s lead track and tour de force. Combined with Robert Plant’s on-stage gyrations and vocal gymnastics, it epitomizes Zeppelin’s raw sex appeal and machismo both live and on vinyl.

Plant takes the hollers and screams so integral to the blues genre to a new level here. His whoops and torturous moans are sonic demons zooming in and out, making sounds like doors creaking open and shut on other worlds.

Page’s stereo panning effects have these wraiths of sound flitting from speaker to speaker like a whoosh of psychedelic wind. He and Kramer opted not to edit out the vestiges of vocal leakage you can hear most especially at song’s end.

Still A Mix Of Influences

Led Zeppelin II further cemented the group’s reputation for fusion. Track Two, What Is and What Should Never Be, is rooted in psychedelia and folk. When I interviewed author Susan Fast, she described Plant as a “happy hippie”, his lyrics as “essentially hopeful”.

This hauntingly beautiful acoustic folk ballad is sandwiched between the album’s only two “covers”: Whole Lotta Love and The Lemon Song, which evolved from Howlin’ Wolf’s Killing Floor. Plant pays tribute to Howlin’ Wolf and Robert Johnson in his lyrics.

Jimi Hendrix loved the blues standard, Killing Floor. Zeppelin also performed it. Plant later imported Robert Johnson’s provocative line “Squeeze my lemon ‘til the juice runs down my leg”, effectively morphing Zeppelin’s cover of Killing Floor into The Lemon Song.

Interestingly, the band had done some work on their second album in May of 1969. That this particular snippet of lyric also found its way into Travellin’ Riverside Blues in June shows the material was on the minds of Zeppelin’s musicians.

From The Lemon To The Limelight

In concert, and on Led Zeppelin II, the band made a point of showcasing the talent of all its musicians. Track Four belonged to John Paul Jones, whose classical music background and prowess playing organ, shone brilliantly on Thank You.

Jones’ melodramatic melody and haunting harmonies still hold us spellbound. Together with Plant’s plaintive lyrics, Page’s acoustic fret work and Bonham’s empathetic and (rather uncharacteristically quiet!) percussion patterns, the piece is hypnotic and hymnal. Quite a contrast from The Lemon Song!

It’s precisely this blend of light and heavy that the band’s name itself metaphorically conveys. The delicacy of pieces like this one prevents Led Zeppelin from being labeled strictly a heavy metal band, although some assert the group invented the genre.

Moving Right Along

Side Two of the Led Zeppelin II album starts off with Heartbreaker and Living Loving Maid running into each other, just as producer Page had left nanoseconds between tracks on the first album to create that rush of musical momentum.

Both songs rock hard and loud. Page’s now-famous solo in Heartbreaker - played on a 1959 Gibson Les Paul electric guitar – remains an acidulous attack on the senses that has been studied by many, mastered by few.

Page returns to his acoustic guitar to accompany Robert Plant on Track Seven, Ramble On. A contractual obligation had excluded Plant from the songwriting credits on the group’s first album. Here, on the second, he emerges from the mists of anonymity.

Plant infused the lyrics of Ramble On with his fondness for the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien (author of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit). References to Mordor and Gollum perfectly match the ethereal, fairy-tale-like music.

Beating A Path Into History

Bonzo’s drum solo on Led Zeppelin II began as a tribute to his wife, whom he dearly missed while touring. Pat’s Delight was a 7-minute solo, first recorded during a performance at Gonzaga University in Spokane on December 30, 1968.

Moby Dick, as it was called on this album, would become one of rock’n’roll’s greatest drum solos. In concert, it would expand with every performance but, on this album, it was shorter than Pat’s Delight at 4 minutes, 25 seconds.

Appropriately enough, the last track on Led Zeppelin II album is Bring it on Home. Page and Plant wrote it in classic blues style, complete with call and response, harmonica riffs and a rhythm evoking the trains hobos travelled home on.

In Sonic Boom – Break & Enter, noted Led Zeppelin researcher and author, Robert Godwin, told me that this album was his introduction to Zeppelin’s music. He said he knows of no one else who used stereo to such good effect.

I’ll be writing about each of these songs in much greater detail soon. Please bookmark this page and visit often. You don’t want to miss a note!

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