Kashmir came together with John Paul Jones adding Mellotron and scoring a dramatic string arrangement. Some numbers would come out of thin air down there, like for example… Trampled Under Foot, which came out of thin air like that, just starting out on a riff.” “I knew the secrets of what could be done there. “I knew what we could do at Headley Grange after having had such a rewarding and productive experience there before,” Jimmy Page told Rolling Stone. The band had recorded much of what became known as “Led Zeppelin IV” on location there in 1971 and were excited by the prospect of revisiting the 18th-century English estate in rural Hampshire. ![]() Nonetheless, Zeppelin did much of the heavy lifting for Physical Graffiti during highly fruitful sessions at Headley Grange early in 1974. ![]() Loosely based on Richie Valens’ 1959 single Ooh My Head and featuring The Rolling Stones’ pianist Ian Stewart, Boogie With Stu dated from the sessions for Led Zeppelin’s untitled fourth album, while the ferociously anthemic Houses Of The Holy and spontaneous, bluesy Black Country Woman were refugees from the sessions that led to 1973’s Houses Of The Holy. Unusually, the band had a head start when it came to recording Physical Graffiti, as they already had a small stockpile of notable material before the sessions began. “Some numbers would come out of thin air” The tracklist included a generous helping of their trademark gut-level rockers to go alongside the best Led Zeppelin songs (Custard Pie, The Rover, The Wanton Song), but also took in the everything from the sweaty funk of Trampled Under Foot to acoustic workouts such as Page’s Bron-Yr-Aur and complex, suite-like epics In The Light and Ten Years Gone. Clocking in at an ambitious 80 minutes, it was refreshingly free of filler and showcased the group at their most thrillingly diverse. Given one of Led Zeppelin’s typically lavish album covers, Physical Graffiti was housed in Peter Corriston’s elaborate die-cut sleeve depicting a New York tenement block. “It was like a voyage of discovery, a topographical adventure.” “All of us knew that it was a monumental piece of work, just because of the various paths we’d trodden along to get to it,” Jimmy Page told Rolling Stone in 2015. The sound of a band at the very peak of their powers, it was – and remains – one of rock’s high-water marks, and its creators rightly feel it’s matured very nicely. Physical Graffiti still holds its own in such exalted company. Billboard hailed it as a “tour de force”, while Rolling Stone boldly declared it “the band’s Tommy, Beggars Banquet and Sgt Pepper rolled into one”, adding, “ Physical Graffiti is Led Zeppelin’s bid for artistic respectability.” Listen to Physical Graffiti here. The debut release on their newly-established Swan Song Records imprint, Led Zeppelin’s sixth album, Physical Graffiti, was first issued on 24 February 1975 and met with rapturous critical praise.
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