Physical Grafitti

Posted on May 01, 2010 08:57 am
Tadpui
I am not a crook's head
Member Since: Mar 14, 2003

(I'm bored and I've had a 3-shot cappucino this morning so this is going to be a very, very long post. So either grab a cup of coffee and dig in, or move along to something more brief and interesting. Besides, it's a long album so it deserves a long post.)

The other day I reactivated my eMusic account to see what's new. Well, they've struck a deal and obtained all of Led Zeppelin's back-catalog, which is pretty sweet.

As much as I've listened to Zeppelin (you can't help but listen to about 1/2 of their music due to the insane amount of radio play they get on the classic rock stations here in the States, I'm not sure how it is in other parts of the world but I'd bet it's the same in their native England), all I'd ever actually owned of theirs was that 4-cassette boxed set they released in the 1990's (the one with the crop circles on the front), and I used to listen to my brother's copy of Physical Graffiti on vinyl when I was growing up as well. That's it, never owned any of their albums. Well, I guess I did dub Zeppelin IV off of a friend but hell, you'd hear each one of those songs in a single day of listening to classic rock radio anyways.

Back then I couldn't really appreciate the significance of most of their music. I was an unfortunate desciple of the hair band movement that came out of the Hollywood Strip at the peak of my musical upbringing. But I at least could identify that some of Zep's songs were cool. You don't have to be a music conisseur to get the main riff of Kashmir stuck in your head for days at a time.

But now that I've been around the block, so to speak, I decided to revisit this double-album that I now realize was released by one of the world's mightiest bands right at the peak of their fame, songrwiting prowess, stage presence, and overall strength as a band. This was after they broke out of the British blues band invasion mold, but before John Paul Jones had to take over songwriting duties due to Robert Plant and Jimmy Page being too washed up and drugged out to put two chords together and remember it the next day. This was, again, a mighty band at its peak.

There are certain albums that have been ruined for me because of the singles that were released and licensed and subsequently became overexposed daily staples of classic rock radio, TV commercials, movie soundtracks, and every cover band to ever step foot into a smoky bar in a small town. Much to Zeppelin's credit, they did keep a pretty tight hold on their material as far as licensing songs for TV commercials and movie soundtracks. But their exposure on the radio in the U.S. is rivaled only by Boston, The Rolling Stones, Clapton (only because of Layla) and a select few other bands that swept the entire world at one point or another in bygone eras. It's that overexposure of certain songs that make them stick out when they come up in their natural place on their original release albums.

The example that always comes up for me is how the radio made The Dark Side Of The Moon, one of history's most cherishable and valueable albums, totally unlistenable to me because of the runaway success of the singles off of that album. The continuity of what should be a moody, dark, and beautiful concept album is shattered and the album is reduced to what amounts to little more than "Pink Floyd's Greatest Hits, Vol. 1". I even cringe when the hit singles crop up during a particularly emotional listen of The Wall. Clear Channel Communications has basically ruined a whole bevy of classic albums in the same manner.

So on to Physical Graffiti. This album spawned several big singles, but thankfully none as big as the monstorous juggernauts of the album prior (Led Zeppelin IV, The Untitled Album, or Zoso, depending on what you feel like calling it). Think about it: almost every song on Zeppelin IV became a HUGE hit single, including what was, for a very long time, the most-played song ever ("Stairway To Heaven"). Zeppelin IV transformed this band from being just one of a number of popular blues-based heavy rock bands or their time into a band whose very name became forever etched in the annals of rock history. After the success of Zeppelin IV, expectations for their next album were, needless to say, extremely high.

Well, to the band's credit, under the pressure to prove their worthiness as an elite world-class outfit, they came through with an album that was raucous, ingeniously written, sprawled through several styles and genres, and was inimitably performed and produced. Simply put, they wrote and released their masterpiece right when the public's expectations were the highest. That must have been akin to that weird kinky thing that some people do where they strangle themselves at the same time as they come to sexual climax, the combination of which is apparently much more satisfying than the sum of its parts...uh, ahem, anyways...

Physical Graffiti featured the guitars that everybody had come to expect from Jimmy page: single-note blues-influenced riffs that immediately seared themselves into the pages of rock history as if they were written upon a red-hot cattle brand and pressed directly onto the album's vinyl. These riffs were interspersed with complex dissonant chords, softly picked arpeggios that tamed his wildly aggressive guitar rig into a clean-ish tone that would explode into overdriven bliss when picked hard. His guitar writing had been taking a turn ever since Led Zeppelin III, incorporating more dynamics and complexities. I think that he reached the peak of his prowess as a guitarist and composer with Physical Graffiti, right along with the rest of the band's climax. There is a lot for ANY guitarist to take from the experience of listening to this album. To simply reproduce the dynamics and feel of the riffs and solos on "In My Time Of Dying", "Ten Years Gone", "The Rover", "In The Light", or "Bron-Yr-Aur" would be as valuable to a guitarist as years of lessons in a stuffy little room with an instructor.

Although I've never been able to say that I've loved Robert Plant's vocals, especially live on stage when he was prone to go out of key almost as badly as I do, I must give him props on his studio performances on Graffiti. When he overdubs his voice and harmonizes with himself, he really had a great ear for where to go with the harmonizations to make them interesting and not simply adding a major 3rd or an octave. He wasn't even really interested in keeping the overdubs tight, which adds to the texture. I'm not sure how he pulls that off because when I do the same thing, it simply sounds sloppy. I guess that's the difference between a hack and a pro!

I don't know much about John Paul Jones, other than he was an extraordinary talent that never got the recognition that he deserved. This album was right before his presence in the band was elevated due to the disintegration of Page and Plant due to years of heavy drug and alcohol abuse. But none of these songs would sound the same without his bass and keyboards. "Trampled Underfoot" is definitely a song that would fall flat without Jones in the mix with that funky clavinet plunking along with the guitar. JPJ is one of the good "quiet guys" in rock n' roll. The places on PG where Jones' input improved the song immensely are too many to count. He's that guy that every great band should have: the multi-instrumentalist.

But the centerpiece of raw talent and bombast on this album for me has to be Bonham's drumming. John Bohham's drums on this album are absolutely amazing. Insert a string of superlatives here. I think that this album eternalized and cemented his signature sound on the drums. There is nobody, and I mean NOBODY that sounds like John Bonham on drums, and that fact is so boldly presented on Physical Graffiti that it will continue to frustrate aspiring drummers for decades to come. He alerted the world with his work on the previous 4 Zeppelin albums, and having the last bit of drumming that the world heard before PG being "When The Levee Breaks", he picked up right where he left off 2 years earlier with the first syncopated cracks of the snare on the albums's opener "Custard Pie". His footwork on a single kick pedal is unreal, as was evidenced on earlier albums on songs like "Ramble On" and "Immigrant Song". I read a story that said that the band would hide Bonham's 2nd kick pedal during tea breaks because he could do more with one than anybody else could do with 2, and it ended up being overkill when they turned him loose with 2 kick pedals. And that snare! Oh, that snare, I feel sorry for the poor thing to have taken the constant beating that it did. When he wasn't pounding the **** out of it on the 2 and 4 beats, he was ghosting notes and syncopating interesting little phrases in between.

If any of you drummers wants to feel humbled by how powerful yet subtle Gonzo could be, listen to "In My Time Of Dying". Oh my god, the amazing things he has going on there that any other drummer would have never ever possibly thought to play...just his snare work alone on that tune endlessly entertains me. His hi-hats were always so subtle unless he wanted them to sound otherwise, and this song is a shining example of how you didn't notice his hi-hats unless he wanted you to hear them. There are more examples all over the album where his control over the hi-hats and other cymbals makes his absolute bashing of the rest of the kit sound even bigger. That's a lesson that every recording drummer should take from Gonzo: the easier you take it on the brass, the bigger the skins sound. This album proved the fact that the band could never go on without his presence. The same drums, the same studios, the same equipment, the same engineers and producers could never make another drummer sound like John Bonham.

This whole album is chock full of great ideas, no-fear usage of effects and odd techniques. For instance, the guitars on "In The Light". The intro has him using a bow on an acoustic guitar, there's plenty of flange to be heard on the electric guitars playing the main riff, and the whole song kind of swirls towards the end as it fades out.

Then there are the bits and pieces that were thrown in to make the already over-long LP into a double-LP. There were B-sides and leftovers from previous sessions that fit surprisingly well into this album. "Bron-Yr-Aur" was recorded 5 years before the album's release, "Boogie With Stu", "Down By The Seaside", "Night Flight", and "Black Country Woman" were all recorded at earlier sessions as well. But they add a lot of whimsy to an album that comes a little too close to taking itself too seriously. It's hard to pull off a double-album. You really have to have 65 or 70 minutes of consistently strong material, and contemporary artists like Ryan Adams and Wilco can tell you that it's not always best to include the kitchen sink on an album when a distilled version of the strongest material would make for a superior listening experience.

OK, enough about this. I just had to share my awe at an album that I hadn't listened to for almost 20 years, was released to record numbers of sales 15 years before that, and how well it's held up. Not a lot of albums carry that distinction. But hopefully if you've made it this far through my ramblings and gushing about an album released in 1975, then you'll be at least a little eager to pick it up the next time you either have some spare downloads or see it at the record store.

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