{"id":491519,"date":"2019-10-22T07:15:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-22T13:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/uncategorized\/uncategorized-news\/how-led-zeppelin-ii-was-born-238721\/"},"modified":"2019-10-22T07:15:00","modified_gmt":"2019-10-22T13:15:00","slug":"how-led-zeppelin-ii-was-born","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/music-news\/how-led-zeppelin-ii-was-born\/","title":{"rendered":"How \u2018Led Zeppelin II\u2019 Was Born"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cOn the second LP, you can really hear the group identity coming together,\u201d Jimmy Page recalled years after the release of Led Zeppelin<\/a>\u2019s second LP. While the group recorded its first album in three weeks after a single, two-week Scandinavian tour, Led Zeppelin II<\/a><\/em><\/a> was cut over six months on tour in London, New York, Vancouver and Los Angeles, with the band carrying the master tapes along the way in a steamer trunk.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was quite insane, really,\u201d Page said. \u201cWe had no time, and we had to write numbers in hotel rooms. By the time the album came out, I was really fed up with it. I\u2019d just heard it so many times in so many places. I really think I had lost confidence in it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In reality, they made one of the greatest, heaviest and raunchiest albums ever, steeped in both Delta and Chicago blues, Sixties psychedelia and gentle-to-bone-crushing dynamics. Highlights ranged from the chugging, apocalyptic chaos of \u201cWhole Lotta Love\u201d to the bullet-fast fuzz riffs of \u201cHeartbreaker\u201d to \u201cBring It on Home,\u201d a juke-joint blues gone mad. \u201cThey were the first numbers written with the band in mind,\u201d Page told writer Mick Wall later. \u201cIt was music more tailor-made for the elements you\u2019ve got. Like knowing that Bonzo\u2019s gonna come in hard at some point, and building that in.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Less than four months after the release of their first LP<\/a>, in January 1969, Atlantic was already prodding the band for new material in time for the Christmas season. In April, Zeppelin headed into London\u2019s Olympic Studios with engineer George Chkiantz. \u201cWhole Lotta Love\u201d was one of the first tracks they worked on; it was constructed from a riff Page invented during one of their 15-minute-plus live versions of \u201cAs Long As I Have You,\u201d with Plant adding lyrics taken straight from Muddy Waters\u2019 1962 single \u201cYou Need Love.\u201d They finished it in New York with Hendrix engineer Eddie Kramer, who helped execute the terrifying middle section, incorporating a variety of sounds: Page\u2019s slide guitar mixed backward, his eerie theremin, a female orgasm and a napalm-bomb explosion. Said Page, \u201cIt\u2019s sort of what psychedelia would have been if they could have got there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Guitar solos were recorded in studio hallways; Bonham played the percussion part to \u201cRamble On\u201d on a guitar case, a drum stool or a garbage can (no one recalls which), and his showpiece \u201cMoby Dick\u201d solo was patched together from several recordings in separate studios.<\/p>\n

The recording methods may have been ad hoc, but the results were fully realized. \u201cWhat Is and What Should Never Be\u201d used stereo mixing to send Page\u2019s guitar and Plant\u2019s squeals ping-ponging from speaker to speaker as if mimicking a bad acid trip. \u201cThe Lemon Song\u201d \u2014 their version of Howlin\u2019 Wolf\u2019s \u201cKilling Floor\u201d \u2014 was cut live in the studio, seamlessly time-shifting from smoky cool to frantic boogie, Plant howling, \u201cSqueeze my lemon till the juice runs down my leg!\u201d<\/p>\n