Your view on: Led Zeppelin - IV

[Sneelock]

worry not! senility is just around the corner!

[loveless]

Mar 1, 2024 17:59:10 GMT Half Machine Lipschitz said:

I'm listening to it again right now for the first time in ages and all I can think is "I wish I could go back in time and hear this for the first time again."

Yep.

I have a nice first-ish US pressing which I threw on earlier this afternoon in response to this thread. SURPRISINGLY pristine condition - 60s/70s Zeppelin albums tend to be beat to SHIT when you find them in the wild. People PARTIED with those records. Lucky me.

I cranked it.

Anyhow, it's lovely, wonderful, etc. - my real epiphanies today were with Four Sticks, Levee, and the two acoustic numbers. Otherwise, it was a lot of very good music that kind of washed over me and made me wish I were hearing it with the thrill of my first few dozen listens.

[DarknessFish]

I couldn't really imagine wanting to listen to anything from it ever again, other than Battle of Evermore. I think the cover art is alright though.

[osgood]

After reading this thread, I played, for the second time ever, the companion disc of the 2014 Deluxe release. It confirmed my initial disappointment. I can barely tell the differences between the new mixes and the well known ones, with the obvious exceptions of Black Dog without the guitar solo (!) and the vocal-less California and Evermore (!!!).
I wonder if there are alternate takes somewhere waiting for release - probably not, considering Page's habit of periodically milking the cow.

Or am I missing something?

[toomanyhatz]

What did you think when you first heard it or heard about it, and how about now?

I honestly can't remember when/where I first hear it, but I suspect it was in the context of only having heard "Stairway" (even then very overplayed - and on AM 'hit' radio at that! - the first non-single I remember that happening with). I'd like to think it blew my little mind, but I can't say for sure. I will say that even as a pre-teen I recognized that they weren't just the "Black Dog" side. They were, for better or worse, my entry into 'album rock.'


Where does it stand for you in terms of their catalogue, and in the wider rock genre?

On a good day it's the best. Can live without ever hearing Stairway again (OK, I still love the guitar solo, and it's always welcome in my world) and "Levee" is a fantastic sounding thing that doesn't really add up to much, but I do love most of it - side two particularly.

I mean, Page's 'we were as much Incredible String Band influenced as Black Sabbath' conceit is largely accurate. Plant is no Joni Mitchell on any level, but just the fact that they succeeded in providing stoner kids with a little something to think about is to their credit.

Compared to the 'wider rock genre' it definitely stood outside - though of course a lot of things did then.

What are your fave songs? Pick the ones you like in the poll and tell us why (if you feel like it).

Picked everything but "Stairway" and Rock & Roll - mostly due to oversaturation - but "Misty Mountain Hop" and "Four Sticks" are the ones that really stand out as not quite like anything else. And "Battle of Evermore" and "Going to California" represent the 'other side' nicely. That just leaves "Levee," which I have mixed feelings about - it's just so o-t-t and bombastic that sometimes I start to think about how full-of-shite they are on one level. But I can still 'buy in' and be carried away by it.

What do you think of the cover art?

It's great, but I don't think about it much anymore. I guess if you're on your way to being the hugest band in the world, and defining a new decade, you might as well just concentrate on the iconography and worry less about displaying the artist or title or giving anything away about the music inside. In the long run it was a smart move, but it probably felt like taking a chance at the time.

[Mr. FOLLARD]

I didn't get it, or even hear it, until I was well into my twenties. This was probably down to the NME - Led Zep were hoary old cock-rockers, etc. But I don't mind that really. Marquee Moon, Trout Mask Replica, Forever Changes and The Clash came first. This lot seemed like a band that other people liked.

I finally bought it on cassette in 1992 and played it a fair bit that summer, but it didn't really do much for me. Slowly - over years - I started to appreciate it, but (predictably) it was the rockers that hit me hardest. Now I'd have to agree that 'Battle of Evermore' is the best (pleasant surprise to see that winning).

I do think it's a very strong album, but I've never slept with it like I have with lots of other records.

[Charlie O.]

fange, I enjoy these threads, but I've been wondering for a while now about the huge spaces between the questions. I hope we're not meant to be handwriting our answers on our screens?

What did you think when you first heard it or heard about it, and how about now?

The month it was released - November 1971 - my ten-years-older brother got it as a 16th birthday present from my seven-years-older brother, and we all listened to it together in the older brother's bedrooom. I already knew II, which had blown my fragile eggshell mind, and before that "Immigrant Song", which for whatever reason had not. I was pretty knocked out by the new album, though the slower acoustic-y numbers had to grow on me a bit. Come to think of it, so did "Levee". I remember how gobsmacked my brothers were by "Stairway", which puzzled me - I thought it was just long and kinda dull. But that grew on me, too. I'm making it sound like I was underwhelmed by the album, but I wasn't; cumulatively, I was hugely impressed by it.

After at least a couple of decades of being sick of it, for reasons others here have adequately spelled out (but mostly radio ubiquity), I "rediscovered" it maybe twenty years ago - and though I don't listen to it often, I thoroughly enjoy it when I do... maybe even a little more than I did in the mid-'70s. (I'm not a vinyl snob, but I agree with whoever said that a prolonged pause following "Stairway" is aesthetically crucial.)



Where does it stand for you in terms of their catalogue, and in the wider rock genre?

I'll go along with the notion that it's their best album. It could even be my favorite at this point.



What are your fave songs? Pick the ones you like in the poll and tell us why (if you feel like it).

"Stairway" stuns me now in a way that it never did back in the day (even after I had learned to love it) - it really is an astonishing piece of work, as a composition and as a performance. I've always had a special love for "Misty Mountain Hop" - there's something really dreamy/trippy/psychoactive about it, especially the echoing "I really don't know"s at the end. And I love that Page left in two or three serious guitar CLAMS that almost anyone else among his peers would have insisted on fixing; they subtly contribute something to the overall warpedness of the track. I love every other song, too, but those are the only ones I feel like pontificating about at this time.



What do you think of the cover art?

Not that I hate or even dislike it, but I was always a bit puzzled by the outer cover - there's something "let's be obscure for obscurity's sake" about it (kinda like "let's not put our name anywhere on the cover or give the album a proper title"). I'm slightly surprised that so many here love it, and I can only assume that association with the music and the moment has a lot to do with that. The inside gatefold seems portentiously silly to me now (perhaps especially after seeing Page's "fantasy sequence" in TSRTS), though I'm sure I thought it was awesome as a kid. The inner sleeve is really nice.

[Charlie O.]

It must say something that every track has at least four votes in the poll. How often does that happen with these things?

[loveless]

Right, there's not a "dog" on there, by any means.

(Black or otherwise, har har)

[fonz]

After being familiar with TSRTS for a while and THEN getting IV, TBoE was the song that blew me away. It was sublime as nd other-worldly.

[DayoRemix]

I give it one and a half Mud Sharks out of 4

[Sneelock]

Mar 1, 2024 13:33:06 GMT adamcoan said:

People gravitate to it because of stairway to heaven and its mythical status. I was stunned as a 13/14-year-old hearing it for the first time. I didn't have an experienced rock historians' ear, nor much of an idea as to how different it was at the time. Admittedly, bustling in hedgerows can often sound silly, mostly it is a welcome sidestep from songs about love and fucking. Playing it again after a gap of a few years, the whole composition excited me, and it just seemed to progress and flow in a wonderful ,pleasing manner. Familiarity breeds contempt of course, it is hard to raise an eyebrow or feel excited about the prospect of playing it normally, which is a mistake.

I have a Junior High School memory of the track. A certain teacher let his students eat lunch in his class and play his records. All his records were R&B chestnuts that I value more now than I did then. (Goodnight Sweetheart - stuff like that) they'd open the windows and you could hear them out at the lunch tables.

one day at lunch there was a Substitute teacher. the lunch students had bamboozled the sub into thinking it was okay for them to play their own records. the entire "stairway to heaven" track played before the Narcs & tattletales shut it down.

what is memorable about it is how every fuckin' kid responded to it. I mean, there's quite a cross section of humanity in a junior high school at lunch time. "Stairway" came out that window instead of Greasy Kid Stuff and a jolt of electricity just ran through the place. kids stood up, cheered, raised their arms etc..

I've often thought about that moment over the years. for years I thought this is when I first started getting my fill of hearing the tune. now, I look at it a little differently. I think everybody responded to it because it was that song's time and it was our time and we'd sort of chosen it for ourselves.

I'm glad I've grown to appreciate that teacher's record collection and that he let his kids play it loud enough for others to enjoy. But looking backwards down my long nose I think the day his student played "stairway" is notable for how music has charms to soothe the savage beast. Music IS the best.

I try to hang onto this philosophical bullshit when the youngsters are wearing me down on music that's really not doing anything for me. it's their time now.

whatever it is, I'll probably like it better when it's older.

[quaco]

I just listened to this with relatively fresh ears a few months ago, and it's totally great. Maybe the best thing they've done. Pretty much a perfect album. I say that, but it'll be another five years before I listen to it again, and other of their albums are always more likely to be played, even if I've heard them just as much.

I picked 'Four Sticks' and 'Going to California' because they sounded the best to me this time. The former in particular, because it's so nuts - I love it!

[Stacy Heydon]

What's interesting to me is how much things like this are part of a shared culture amongst American posters, you get into it almost as a rite of passage, sometimes passed down by older brothers. Very often different posters experience the record at the same young age. This isn't exactly a revelation to me, I've certainly noticed this before, but the extent of it still surprises me.

I'm even slightly envious that we didn't have that in the UK where things were more tribal and relations between the generations, even if they were only a few years apart, tended to be mildly antagonistic and competitive.

[fange]

Mar 2, 2024 7:39:51 GMT Stacy Heydon said:

What's interesting to me is how much things like this are part of a shared culture amongst American posters, you get into it almost as a rite of passage, sometimes passed down by older brothers. Very often different posters experience the record at the same young age. This isn't exactly a revelation to me, I've certainly noticed this before, but the extent of it still surprises me.

I'm even slightly envious that we didn't have that in the UK where things were more tribal and relations between the generations, even if they were only a few years apart, tended to be mildly antagonistic and competitive.

Just playing devil's advocate here, JC, but maybe there was but for whatever musical/personal reasons that sort of "shared culture" didn't really connect with you.

I've talked to quite a few Brits who are our age/bit younger/bit older, and they have often mentioned how their tastes were influenced by an older brother/mate's older brother who would pass on their love of Cream, PG-era Genesis, King Crimson, Roy Harper, Zep, etc. But just from what I kinda know of your musical tastes now, you've always been very selective, if not openly hostile, against a lot of that era's Classic Rock and Prog Rock mainstays.