Top 5/Bottom 5: Led Zeppelin

If you’re anything like me, you love to listen to, talk about, and even argue about music. In that spirit I’ve decided to embark on a little project. Each week I’ll be listing my top 5 and bottom 5 songs from an artist or band that I love, or at least like. Disagree? Let me know, that’s half the fun.

If the many popular shows and movies based in ‘70s and ‘80s adolescence are to be believed, no teenager’s bedroom of the time was complete without a Led Zeppelin poster. As the residents of those bedrooms knew and would no doubt have argued, Led Zeppelin were one of the greatest, most popular and influential rock bands of all time. Learning and jamming Zeppelin riffs was a rite of passage for myself and countless other aspiring guitar players. With a deep and varied catalogue that covered a ton of stylistic ground, Zeppelin are an ideal candidate for this week’s Top5/Bottom 5.

Top 5:

·      “Whole Lotta Love”: This is about as Led Zeppelin a song as there is. It’s got all the elements: hot-rodded blues riffing and lyrics, innovative and trippy production, horny moaning and barely disguised innuendos, thunderous drumming, and a virtuoso ensemble sound with no weak links. If you love Zeppelin, you love this song. Led Zeppelin II was the first Zeppelin album I owned, and it still may be my favorite. Where the first album showed a band that could do almost anything musically and weren’t shy about showing off their range, this one was something else entirely. “Whole Lotta Love,” “The Lemon Song,” and “Bring It on Home” take blues to a whole other place, one much more interesting and original than the two straight blues covers on the first Zeppelin album. This song and this album would still be my recommendations to anyone who wonders what Zeppelin are all about.

·      “Good Times/Bad Times”: This makes the list pretty much for the opening chords and drum fills alone. Jun-jun! As I’ve already hinted, I think the first album tries to do a little too much in terms of showing off the band’s range, and I certainly don’t agree with Rolling Stone that it should be the highest-ranked Zeppelin album on the list of greatest albums of all time; but this is a perfect album opener and a perfect first song. Zeppelin famously didn’t release many singles, but this was an early exception, and for most fans at the time this was the first thing they would have heard from this new band. Holy shit. The guitar playing, the bass playing, the vocals, and the drums all get their moment to shine. I can only imagine how many people were inspired to pick up a bass by John Paul Jones’s fills on this song, or to play drums by Bonham’s blend of perfect support and over-the-top bashing here, not to mention Jimmy Page’s obvious impact on legions of guitar players. Not many bands before or since can match this as a first song.

·      “Ramble On”: It’s a tough call, but for me this is the ultimate Zeppelin ballad, edging out “That’s the Way” and “Going to California.” It may be unfair to compare it to those songs, since “Ramble” does contain some heavier Zeppelin elements, including some fairly heavy electric guitar and drumming on the choruses, but to me it remains a ballad at its heart. This song is also in my opinion the best of the Tolkein-referencing Zeppelin songs, of which there are several. The electric guitar leads in between verses are sublime, and again the vocals, bass, and drums all show extraordinary range and virtuosity.

·      “Over the Hills and Far Away”: Another ballad/heavy rocker combined in one. I’m not aware of any band that combined acoustic sounds and heavy rock elements in quite this way before Zeppelin. No doubt this was partly owing to improving recording technology and the ability to cleanly layer acoustic and electric instruments in the studio. Whatever the case, Zeppelin certainly pioneered the loud/quiet/loud dynamic of much modern rock with songs like this, and no one has ever done it better. Epic.

·      “Stairway to Heaven”: Sure, this song has been played to death and it’s now almost impossible to hear it without thinking of jokes like the Wayne’s World “No Stairway” bit. And maybe the intro is just a little too close to that of Spirit’s “Taurus” for comfort. Nevertheless, Stairway has it all: an all-time classic acoustic guitar intro, the brilliant studio layering that was such a hallmark of their recordings, some mystical lyrics vague enough to mean nothing and everything all at once, a killer guitar solo, and a heavy outro. Though I don’t often listen to it deliberately these days, every once in a while I hear this song afresh and it strikes me again how great it is.

Bottom 5:

·      “The Crunge”: Famously composed as Zeppelin’s answer to James Brown, this song does groove in a unique way, and I’ve always enjoyed that nonsensical “Where’s that confounded bridge?” bit at the end. Nevertheless, it’s a bit of a letdown on Houses of the Holy, following the first three magnificent songs, and for me it contributes to Houses being the first not-quite-great Led Zeppelin album. It just feels a bit like heavy filler that doesn’t quite go anywhere.

·      “Since I’ve Been Loving You”: I love a good slow blues and there was a time when I loved Page’s guitar playing on this song. But having now heard the song many times since I was young, it sounds to me like a plodding, bombastic piece of not super-original, overbaked noodling, full of unnecessary drum fills and vocal and guitar histrionics. In short, it’s everything that people who don’t like Led Zeppelin don’t like about Led Zeppelin. I like Led Zeppelin, but sometimes the critics are partly right.

·      “Candy Store Rock”: Did I select this randomly by looking at one of Zeppelin’s weakest albums and picking a very straight-forward rock and roll number? I’m not telling. I will tell you that I listened to it again, and it is not better than I remembered. Every line begins with “Oh baby, baby,” and it doesn’t really get better or more interesting from there. It’s not terrible exactly, just not great, and that’s the measuring stick for Led Zeppelin.

·      “Hats Off to (Roy) Harper”: This song isn’t really terrible either, but it’s pretty half-baked, and another example of Zeppelin needlessly trying to show off that they can play blues, in this case without adding anything of note to it but some vocal effects and weird production. It should probably be titled “Hats off to Fred McDowell,” since he’s the most obvious progenitor of this style of country blues–for that matter, he probably should have received a songwriting credit. The guitar playing is fine, but doesn’t come close to matching McDowell’s rhythmic drive, and doesn’t add any other elements to the style. It’s also hard not to blame tracks like this for every amateur guitarist who sticks a slide on his finger, tunes to an open chord and thinks he’s a “blues man”. The lyric is standard blues cliché stuff, which is fine as far as it goes, but not very interesting. Overall, pretty forgettable. I mean, did you even remember what song this was by the title? I didn’t.

·      “Stairway to Heaven”: I hope I never hear this song again. What a bunch of nonsense.