1003. Led Zeppelin / Led Zeppelin II. 1969. 3.5/5

The legacy of Led Zeppelin, of what they provided for the world of music and how that is still relevant, can often be related back to this, their sophomore album. Following the story of how the band came together and the subsequent release of their debut album, which you can find on the episode dedicated to that album in Season 6 of this podcast, the band continued on their rigorous touring schedule. It is difficult to fathom that in the period from when that debut album was released in January 1969 through until August of that year, the band had completed four separate European tours, and three further tours of the US. Not only is that a lot of touring and a lot of ground covered, but at the same time the band was also working on new material, and in some cases had begun playing new material live before they had recorded it, something that was more prevalent back in those days than necessarily occurs in the modern day.
Given that the songs for the next album were written on tour, they were also recorded in the same fashion. The band would have a song that they had written and completed and would then book a studio for a couple of hours between concerts, and go in and record the song, and then head back out to the next gig. It was a frantic way to do it. Under such time constraints each time they had the studio booked, you can imagine the urgency that went into the recording, and no doubt the spontaneity that was required on occasions in order to finish off a song. And there are certainly places in certain songs on this album that you can hear where something like that probably occurred. Studios in places such as London, Los Angeles, Memphis, New York and Vancouver were all used to record parts of the second album. The process used to write and record the album could easily have given it an uneven feel given that they came together at different periods, but in all likelihood it gives the album the point of difference from their debut album, with this one in places almost feeling like a live studio recording, and to many people a far better sound overall, a jump in quality of both writing and playing, that became ground breaking “Led Zeppelin II”.

From the outset, “Led Zeppelin II” makes a huge jump in the band's quickly evolving musical style based around blues-derived material and their desire to increase their guitar riff-based heavy drum sound. Some suggest it is the band’s heaviest album as a result. The speed at which the band went from the release of album one to the release of album two brought its own challenges. Six of the nine songs on this album are written by the band, while the other three are the band’s interpretations of blues songs by originally written and performed by Willie Dixon and Howlin' Wolf. Still, given the short time span between releases it is interesting to note the progression made between the two albums.
The heavy blues influence is still there for all to hear, especially in songs such as “The Lemon Song”, which is the band’s version of a Howlin’ Wolf track titled “Killing Floor” and had been played by the band live for some time with new lyrics and “What Is and What Should Never Be”, a Page and Plant track which uses flanging and other techniques during the song. but the take on songs such as “Ramble On” and “Heartbreaker” is more progressive in that they still have that blues base, but they have moved to a more hard rock influence. “heartbreaker” has that iconic guitar riff that Jimmy Page wrote that transcends time, while “Ramble On” moves from the quiet and acoustic through to the electric by the back half of the song.
You can hear how the way this album was written and recorded has affected its sound, with most of the songs having the feel that it’s a freeform writing style, stopping and starting into solo breaks for all members. It’s a style very much of that age, where bands on stage would happily stretch out instrumental breaks between songs or even in the middle of songs, creating new sounds as they went. Many of the songs here sound like that is just what they are doing, with a flowing structure rather than anything concrete. In the long run, it must have been almost impossible to tame and keep in check the four musicians in the band as they move towards the new decade. John Bonham just wants to hit those drums hard and fast and in a seemingly random order that falls into place perfectly. “Moby Dick” gives him that outlet, once both John Paul Jones and Jimmy Page have completed their own riffing at the start of the song. Both of these two musicians also sound like they are looking for greater outlets for their talents, and the morphing from straight blues backed songs to something a bit harder comes through. Combined with those honeyed vocal chords of Robert Plant you have a band that is bursting out of its original cocoon.
“What Is and What Should Never Be” has Beatles-ish qualities throughout, perhaps not a huge surprise given the era and the origin of the band, and “Thank You” has both Deep Purple and Pink Floyd similarities, again no surprise given the heritage of all of those bands and having all come from the same era and built on the same foundations. "Living Loving Maid (She’s Just a Woman)” is another upbeat track, but one that the band itself did not enjoy and felt was filler material, and yet whenever it comes on it almost lifts the mood of the album. On the other hand, the closing track “Bring It on Home” is a cover of a Willie Dixon song which mirrors the original.
“Whole Lotta Love” is perhaps still the star of the show, a song with some lyrics taken directly from a Willie Dixon song “You Need Love”, which eventually led to the band being sued for plagiarism, which they eventually settled out of court. Still, with that excellent Page guitar riff, Jones’s cool bass line underlying the song, Bonham’s wonderful drum rolls along with Plant’s super vocal performance it is a great song. It feels heavier than it actually is but has wider musical appeal regardless.

I suppose you can talk about the legacy that Led Zeppelin has until you are blue in the face, but if the style of music just isn’t what you enjoy you still aren’t going to rate a song, an album or a band as highly as those who are obsessed with that artist. “Led Zeppelin II” is one of those albums that the fans insist you must listen to, and in essence that you must love as much as they do, and immediately. Importantly however, it won’t be to everyone’s taste. That said, this is an important album in the history of music,
My appreciation of Led Zeppelin as a band does tend to outweigh my actual love of their music. They are one of those bands where if you put on a best of compilation, say, the excellent “Remasters” collection, I will sit there and love listening to it. If you put on a Led Zeppelin album, I will appreciate it but have some reservations of some of the songs that fit on that album.
In that regard, “Led Zeppelin II” fits nicely into that category. I am happy to listen to the album, and about half of the songs here I think are still terrific to this day. The others... well, they are there so I listen to them. When the songs break out with guitars and bass and drums, and Robert Plant gets his voice out there, then Led Zeppelin are fully worth listening to. If not... then at times it is a little tedious.
While I had a digital copy of this album for years, I only recently got a CD copy of the album, which I have been listening to a lot over the last couple of weeks. And, through my stereo in the Metal Cavern, it sounds great sonically. Most things do actually. And I’ve enjoyed having it on. But my thoughts haven’t changed in this regard. I appreciate all four musicians and what they have done on this album. Each of them is terrific. And I can appreciate why this is so highly regarded. In the long run however, I’ll stick to “Remasters” when it comes to listening to a Led Zeppelin album.

764. Led Zeppelin / Led Zeppelin. 1969. 3/5

Rising from the ashes of The Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin's first album shows glimpses of their initial influences as well as what their music was going to develop into. The story about how the band came into being is like so many bands of that era. Guitarist Jimmy Page was left with the name rights and obligations of The Yardbirds when all of the other members quit, and he had to perform a tour of Scandinavia that had been booked ahead of this. Through a combination of acquaintances and their own friends, Page was able to recruit vocalist Robert Plant, drummer John Bonham and bass guitarist John Paul Jones to join the band to fulfil those tour requirements. They toured under the name of The New Yardbirds, and in the process played some old Yardbirds songs as well as some newer material that the foursome had been working on in rehearsals for the tour. With the feeling within the group being positive, the band returned to London, with Page changing the name of the band to Led Zeppelin, and they entered the studio to record their first album.
The album took only 36 hours to record, a figure that Jimmy Page was able to ascertain because he paid for it, and had the bill from the studio that listed 36 hours as the billable fee. Reportedly the band was able to have the album done in this short period of time because the material for the album had been selected beforehand, and had been rehearsed and in most instances played on that tour of Scandinavia. Thus everything was in place for the band’s first foray onto vinyl.

Many songs on the album are cover versions of other artists tracks, especially the very noticeable blues tracks. "You Shook Me" is complete, unadulterated, blues, written by Willie Dixon. No need to try and work out what the basis of this track is in the scheme of things. Apart from the higher pitched vocals on offer here, and the keyboards that make their appearance, it could have come from any blues record from the previous twenty years or so. You've got the slow beat of the drums, the blues riffling guitar, along with those keys and the harmonica as well. And it sometimes feels like it drags out a lot longer than those six minutes too. Still, it fits in well in the scheme of the album as a whole, and doesn't stick out like a sore thumb at least. You can read the same for "I Can't Quit You Baby", also written by Dixon, and showing all the same symptoms of blues. "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" is a reworking of the original Anne Bredon folk song, which is improved by being more up-tempo and with Plant's vocals crying over the top, but also the change from the acoustic guitar to begin into the harder push past the bridge of the song. For those that enjoy the band W.A.S.P. you will also hear where some of the music was ‘inspired’ by for their album “The Crimson Idol” on this song.
Some of it such as "Black Mountain Side" sounds like hippy music with guitars and bongos, the kind of stuff I was forced to go and listen to during my university days when I was courting a girl who loved this stuff (nope, I do not), and while of course that was still very much in vogue at the time of this album it has never appealed to me. This is saved by the immediate interruption of the next song, which then comes crashing into "Communication Breakdown", a much better tempoed song. The same for me occurs in regards to "I Can't Quit You Baby" into "So Many More Times". The slower blues number can sometimes lose my interest, but once the album moves into the last song on the album it jumps back into action.
The opening track “Good Times Bad Times” is a good one, with the initial showcasing of all four in their best environment. Plant on lead vocals has that honeyed main vocal line but the ability to hit the heights when he wants. The backing of all three of the other members is also important. Jones and his beautiful bass line throughout is terrific, while Page’s great lead breaks are that integral part to the best Led Zeppelin songs. “Dazed and Confused” is still one of the band’s best known tracks, but to be honest has never been one of my favourites. I like bits of the song (Jimmy’s guitar in general) but I’ve obviously never been dazed enough or confused enough to appreciate it more fully. And the opening track of side two, “Your Time is Gonna Come”, with opening organ into acoustic guitar with Robert’s vocals is nice and pretty, but for me never seems to get out of first gear. It is another example of a song that is fine for what it is, and no doubt was tremendously popular with the fans of this era, but for me just doesn’t wet my whistle.
This could have been a disastrous album if not for Robert Plant's vocals, and that is not having a go at the other three members and their contributions. It’s just that there are so many quiet places throughout, where only the slow and almost unnoticeable drum beat and a turned down or acoustic guitar leave the vocals open to any slight wavering or cock up. But that just never happens. Plant's voice is just magnificent, and makes those slow silent times become alive. The album shows glimpses of Bonham's hard hitting drum work, but focuses mainly on the lesser extravagant slow tom beating, which is nicely settled in rhythm by John Paul Jones bass guitar. The same with Jimmy Page's guitaring, which shows great technique in the blues and slower songs without really showcasing his greater talent.

I have never been the greatest Led Zeppelin fan, though I appreciate their faster heavier work more than the majority of what it on show here. Like many other albums of its type, I can still put this album on and listen to it without prejudice, and enjoy the skills being shown. Plant's vocals can draw anyone in such as the display on Led Zeppelin. But apart from the second half of "Dazed and Confused" and "Communication Breakdown", I can't say that I love anything else that is on this album. It's more of an appreciation of the talent of the band and what they do with these songs than a great love of the songs themselves for me here.
Over the years I would hear bits and pieces of the band’s work, but it really wasn’t until they released the excellent double CD “Remasters” with all of their greatest hits on it that I began to appreciate the band. And eventually I went back and began to gather their albums, one by one, and listen to them in order to catalogue each album as its own entity rather than listen to a selection of songs.
This debut album is one that I have had for a while now, and one that I am still getting more from each time I take it out and give it a spin. Over the past couple of weeks I have found I have heard more of each member in each song as I have listened. Perhaps that is simply because on this occasion I was listening to it in a critical way in order to present it for this podcast episode. But I think that more than that, being older and less attuned to have to say ‘that’s brilliant’ or ‘that’s crap’ to every album I listen to, I understand the album and its time better than I have in the past. As I said before, that doesn’t mean I actually love all these songs, or even love this album, but I appreciate it and have listened to it with enjoyment rather than out of necessity. The playing on this album is the real winner, the way the four members combine in the first instance of what became their music immortality. As a starting point, you can’t help but be drawn in just a little.

675. Alice Cooper / Pretties For You. 1969. 2.5/5

The road leading up to the Alice Cooper Band coming together, and then releasing their debut album, is one of many varied paths and distinct differences in the way each member got there. Vincent Furnier, who would eventually come to take on the moniker of Alice Cooper as his own, guitarist Glen Buxton and bass guitarist Dennis Dunaway, came together in high school as a part of the cross-country running team, forming an act for an end of session show. Dressed to resemble the Beatles, and performing parodies of their songs, they won the contest, and this convinced them to start a band for real. The problem was, Buxton was the only one who really knew how to play, so they bought instruments from the local pawn shop and he proceeded to teach them. This first group, the Spiders, played around for two years, at which time they graduated from high school, having also recorded their first single “Why Don’t You Love Me”. The band’s other guitarist was then replaced by Michael Bruce who had been a football player for a rival high school, and a second single, “Don’t Blow Your Mind” was released in 1966. While making regular trips to other cities to play gigs, the band changed their name to Nazz, recruited Neal Smith as their new drummer, relocated to Los Angeles, and released a third single.
By 1968, they discovered that the name Nazz was being used by Todd Rundgren, and along with believing that they needed a gimmick to increase the power and marketability of their music, they decided they needed another change. An urban legend suggested that the name the band came up with to change to, Alice Cooper, had come via a seance with a Ouija board. Furnier many years later in an interview suggested this was false. Instead, he said, "What if we sounded like we were somebody's aunt?" It was kind of like the all-American, sweet little old lady name. And I wasn't Alice Cooper. I was just the singer in the band Alice Cooper, like Manfred Mann. Pretty soon everybody called me Alice, they just assumed that the singer's name was Alice. So, at that point, I legally changed my name to Alice Cooper. It was a total outrage at the time. Now it's a household name".
After a gig in 1968 where most of the audience had left after hearing the band play just ten minutes, they were approached by music manager Shep Gordon, who felt they could turn that promotion into a positive. The band auditioned for Frank Zappa, turning up at 7am rather than the 7pm Zappa had actually organised. This actually impressed him enough to sign the band to a three album deal. And thus became the start of the Alice Cooper Band, and their debut studio album, “Pretties for You”

This is where it all began for the Alice Cooper Band, and it is mostly unrecognisable from the material that made them famous, and from what the namesake lead singer went onto in his solo career. It is an interesting step back in time to listen to, hearing the kind of music that was prominent when the Alice Cooper Band started back in 1968, to the material that has been published through the various decades that followed.
This is a very psychedelic album, much as was the style in the late 1960's. Most of the album is very much influenced by the differing styles of the age. In places, and on some tracks, the music is almost Beatles-esque from that era, especially from the sound they were putting out with “Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band”, the experimenting that was going on in both music and sideline habits, but it is also reminiscent of that era's Pink Floyd and Frank Zappa and other 'flower power' artists. On almost every level, it is a real effort to get through this album in a normal setting. Unless you are a big fan of the style and genre of music that this is composed in, then It just isn't the kind of album you will put on for enjoyment value to listen to. Now, perhaps if you dropped a couple of tabs of acid beforehand, you just may get a great deal more out of it! In general, with this kind of psychedelic mish-mash, it would have to be the norm.
When listening to the album, there is some information that you need to know upfront before you diss it or dismiss it. In an interview in latter years, the band's manager at the time Shep Gordon has stated that the album actually contains mostly what was recorded in one long rehearsal session. Zappa had left his brother in charge of recording, was then told later that afternoon that the album was done, and Zappa himself never listened to the end product. The only track on the album not a part of that session was a live recording of the song “Levity Ball”. Gordon suggests the band had no full songs written, and that what is put down on this album is what was done on the spot in many instances. With that knowledge in mind, it does make what you hear when you listen to the album can be taken with a different perspective. There is so much going on in all of the songs, and it doesn't always feel as though there is any rhyme or reason to what is being played. In some songs, such as "Sing Low, Sweet Cheerio" it feels like they are just doing a Spinal Tap free form jazz experimentation. It sounds just like a rehearsal room jam session which they ended up liking and putting on the album. Drums, guitars, bass, even the harmonica, all seem to be coming in and out as the musician pleases. That's not to say it's bad, but you really need to be in the right frame of mind to listen to it. And with the information in that interview, you can know relate exactly to that.

Much of the experience of the Alice Cooper Band, especially in these early days, was the stage show, and the antics that occurred during live performances. As a result this first studio album doesn't really convey to the listener what they would have been missing visually, and in this respect it would be easy to just write this off and dismiss it. But to do so would be hasty. Given an ability and desire to sit back and listen to the album a few times, you can find plenty to appreciate here. Once you are acquainted with the methodology of the structure of the album, it becomes easier to relate to, easier to accept the meshing of instruments in a random kind of noise, easier to come to terms with the fact that Alice sounds a little spookily like John Lennon in places (“10 Minutes Before the Worm” in particular), and easier to find where all of this develops from this starting point into what soon became a band that took hard rock by storm, with songs like "BB on Mars" and "Reflected" especially sounding this way. "Reflected" was eventually reworked and became recorded as "Elected' a few years later, so the roots of what the band became are certainly present here.
I discovered Alice Cooper in the mid-1980's, and eventually went back to the original albums of the Alice Cooper Band, all of which are far different from the modern version of the solo artist. And this album was more so than the others. It’s another planet, another universe. Nothing about this album really corresponds with anything you would know after this. But I persisted with it initially, because I love Alice and I admire the original band. And it is still weird. Even this past week or so reliving it for this podcast episode, it has been a battle. I still get snatches that I enjoy, and I can appreciate it for what it is in the time it is from. But I just am never going to reach for it when I have the urge to listen to an album fro this band. There are so many many better albums than this one.
For those who are familiar with Alice Cooper's later work, listening to this for the first time would be like hopping into a different dimension. And though you may never come to really like this album, it is certainly worth listening to it if for no other reason than to see what progression was made through the years by this most enduring artist. It’s a trip, in many senses of the word.

336. Deep Purple / Concerto for Group and Orchestra. 1969. 2.5/5

Not a bad idea, I guess, and especially with John Lord's influence. In the long run though, it is a classical piece that, if you put on and listen to expecting Deep Purple, you will be disappointed. Which I am whenever it gets dragged out and has the dust blown off it.

Rating: Not to my style as such. 2.5/5

293. The Beatles / Abbey Road. 1969. 3.5/5

So – this is the number one rated album of all time. Well, I guess you have to have been alive when it was released to fully appreciate it then (I came along two weeks later…).

The Beatles are one of those bands that just about everyone has been exposed to, and thusly there must be a wide variety of opinions on their music and individual albums. I guess for me, like most of the Beatles albums, this album is divided by the very good from the just average. And in general, it is the songs that I have had more exposure to that I enjoy more. Probably why they became singles in the first place I guess.

Some of the songs I find really annoying though. “Oh! Darling” is like someone running their fingernails down a blackboard. “I Want You” drags on for nearly eight minutes, and does nothing for me whatsoever. “You Never Give Me Your Money” doesn’t inspire me at all, there just isn’t a hook there to grab me. OK – there is probably some sort of deeper message I’m supposed to have gotten with all of these songs, but on a superficial level I find them dead weight. It is difficult sometimes to compare them to those songs on the album that I do enjoy however, as they are all of the same beast.
Being a devoted follower of heavy metal perhaps clouds my ‘vision’ of this album. But none of us are the same are we? And though this is widely regarded as one of the greatest albums of all time, I’m afraid I don’t agree so readily.

Favourites for me on the album include usuals – “Come Together”, “Something” and “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”

Rating: I think they did others that were better. 3.5 / 5

218. Deep Purple / Deep Purple. 1969. 2.5/5

This was Purps third album, and the final album that contained their first line-up.

From the time this was completed, it was obvious that a change in musical direction was necessary, or certainly prevalent.
Deep Purple as an album is very much based around the keyboards of John Lord, with Ritchie Blackmore's distinctive guitaring also in the mix, but certainly not at the forefront of the music. Even for the 1960's this music is quite bland. It is very flower-power-ish, without a great deal to get excited about. I can certainly appreciate it for what it is and from the time it comes from, but it is not what excites me about Deep Purple.

Rating : An interesting page in Deep Purple history. 2.5/5.