MUSIC: Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffiti Deluxe

Physical Graffiti was re-released last week on its 100^th birthday or something or other, and in a horrible cover (for all of these Led Zep releases they’ve seen fit to make the covers ‘negatives’ of the originals, which looks rubbish).  As someone who is a casual as opposed to rabid fan of Led Zeppelin, it is this album more than any of their others which I think is actually fantastic, and worth looking forward to a re-release of...

Physical Graffiti is a wired and weird album.  It’s a double album for a start, and all double albums are weird – they have enough room for quirks and diversions (and cock-ups) like ‘Revolution 9’ on The Beatles’ White Album or ‘Brand New Cadillac’ on London Calling.  But Physical Graffiti is also a compilation album of sorts – when Led Zeppelin realised that the new material they had wouldn’t fit all onto one disc they padded it out with songs held over from the previous three albums.  Which makes it a forerunner of our current ‘Bonus Disc’ culture as well…  Physical Graffiti is perhaps weird because it works when it shouldn’t. 

The 2 discs have different moods.  The first is the more rock with a capital Rawk.  It sounds like a fortress, or maybe like the massive tenement block on the artwork.  It seems like there’s an element of attack in some of the songs and its not unlikely that years of touring, alcohol, cocaine, etc, etc, led to a lot of paranoia when they recorded this – the twitchy, nervous energy of ‘Trampled Under Foot’, for instance, feels like it’s the soundtrack to the moment late into your party where everything goes wrong. 

The second disc is what you might tenuously call ‘pastoral’.  It’s where you find things like the acoustic instrumental ‘Bron-Yr-Aur’ and the playful ‘Black Country Woman’.  It’s less crotch-grabbing and therefore less immediately diverting but of the same high quality, and shows that as a band they really did have more tricks up their sleeves.

It’s my favourite Led Zeppelin album partly because of this variety; ‘Kashmir’ is a brilliant combination of their inclination towards experimenting with softer sounds and their gut instinct to rock.  This is the apex of the album and it is there exactly half-way through - a peak in every sense.  I also admire the album’s cheek in fulfilling Jimmy Page’s ambition to have a double album by bunging a load of cast-offs on, (not that you can tell a dip in quality).

Maybe explaining a love of Physical Graffiti as an album over their others comes down to the filler.  All of the Led Zep albums have filler, and this one at least twice as much because of its length.  The difference is that on Physical Graffiti the filler is brilliant. 

We mentioned Physical Graffiti pioneering bonus discs, and this is of course the latest of Jimmy Page’s remixed and ever-debatably improved versions of all of Led Zeppelin’s albums.  The literal bonus disc for Physical Graffiti is underwhelming, the tracks all falling into the ‘Only Slightly Different’ category for me.  This has been true of all of the bonus tracks on these Led Zeppelin re-releases – it was reported excitedly that Led Zeppelin IV would have an unheard version of ‘Stairway To Heaven’ on it which sounds identical to the original. (It’s an overrated song anyway, with only its solo redeeming an otherwise dull plod – like listening to a coke-baffled hippy explaining why he loves Lord Of The Rings to you slowly and at great length…).  To take an example at random, the bonus tracks on The Fall’s expanded edition albums are very often revelatory, but the ones here aren’t particularly and haven’t been on the other Zeppelin releases.  The remaster sounds good though, the drums and guitar especially sound striking and present.  Though perhaps because the remastering is overseen by Jimmy Page it isn’t surprising that it’s not Robert Plant’s voice at the forefront of the mix. 

 

This Is... Led Zeppelin. 

Led Zeppelin were never really critically rated in their era and still get kind of overlooked sometimes…  Amongst my generation The Beatles went from being really uncool to being cool all over again during Britpop.  Several other bands that were declared verboten by  Malcolm MacLaren and co have been more or less rehabilitated now – Pink Floyd is fine for instance.  I’m not sure if that transition’s completely happened with Led Zep – I’m not sure it will.  They still have something of Spinal Tap about them, that means they always seem slightly risible.  But they were always slightly aloof, declaring themselves answerable only to their fans (casual or rabid, I guess).  So, if you already own a version of Physical Graffiti that isn’t naff this re-release isn’t essential.  But if you are even the most casual of Led Zep fans and don’t own any version ofPhysical Graffiti then this is essential.