Led Zeppelin II
Led Zeppelin II is the second studio album by the English rock band Led Zeppelin, released on 22 October 1969 in the United States and on 31 October 1969 in the United Kingdom by Atlantic Records. Recording sessions for the album took place at several locations in both the United Kingdom and North America from January to August 1969. The album's production was credited to the band's lead guitarist and songwriter Jimmy Page, and it was also Led Zeppelin's first album on which Eddie Kramer served as engineer.
Led Zeppelin II
The album exhibited the band's evolving musical style of blues-derived material and their guitar riff-based sound. It has been described as the band's heaviest album.[2] Six of the nine songs were written by the band, while the other three were reinterpretations of Chicago blues songs by Willie Dixon and Howlin' Wolf. One single, "Whole Lotta Love", was released outside of the UK (the band would release no UK singles during their career),[3] and peaked as a top-ten single in over a dozen markets around the world.
Led Zeppelin II was a commercial success, and was the band's first album to reach number one on charts in the UK and the US. The album's cover designer David Juniper was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Recording Package in 1970. On 15 November 1999, the album was certified 12× Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for sales reaching 12 million copies in the US. Since its release, various writers and music critics have cited Led Zeppelin II as one of the greatest and most influential albums of all time.
Background[edit]
Led Zeppelin II was conceived during a busy period of Led Zeppelin's career from January through August 1969, when they completed four European and three American concert tours.[4] Each song was separately recorded, mixed and produced at various studios in the UK and North America. The album was written on tour, during periods of a couple of hours in between concerts, a studio was booked and the recording process begun, necessarily resulting in spontaneity and urgency, which is reflected in the sound.[4] Several songs resulted from improvisation while touring, including during the instrumental sections of "Dazed and Confused", and were recorded mostly live in the studio.[5]
Recording sessions for the album took place at a wide variety of studios in the UK and US, including Olympic and Morgan Studios in London, England; A&M, Quantum, Sunset, Mirror Sound and Mystic Studios in Los Angeles; Ardent Studios in Memphis, Tennessee; A&R, Juggy Sound, Groove and Mayfair Studios in New York City; and R&D Studios.[6] Some of these were ill-equipped, leading to one Vancouver studio, which had an 8-track set-up without even proper headphone facilities,[7] being credited as "a hut".[8][9] A more favourable set-up was Mystic Studios in Hollywood, Los Angeles with Chris Huston engineering.[7]
Lead singer Robert Plant later complained that the writing, recording, and mixing sessions were done in many different locations, and criticised the writing and recording process.[10] "Thank You", "The Lemon Song" and "Moby Dick" were overdubbed during the tour, while the mixing of "Whole Lotta Love" and "Heartbreaker" was also done on tour. Page later stated, "In other words, some of the material came out of rehearsing for the next tour and getting new material together."[11]
Page and Kramer spent two days mixing the album at A&R Studios,[12] and the album's production was entirely credited to Jimmy Page, with Eddie Kramer engineering.[7] Kramer was quoted as saying, "The famous Whole Lotta Love mix, where everything is going bananas, is a combination of Jimmy and myself just flying around on a small console twiddling every knob known to man."[7] Kramer later gave great credit to Page for the sound that was achieved, despite the inconsistent conditions in which it was recorded: "We cut some of the tracks in some of the most bizarre studios you can imagine ... but in the end it sounded bloody marvellous ... there was one guy in charge and that was Mr. Page."[12]
Release and reception[edit]
The album was released on 22 October 1969 on Atlantic Records, with advance orders of 400,000 copies.[27] The advertising campaign was built around the slogans 'Led Zeppelin – The Only Way to Fly' and 'Led Zeppelin II Now Flying'.[15] In the United States, some commercially duplicated reel-to-reel copies of Led Zeppelin II made by Ampex bore the title Led Zeppelin II – The Only Way to Fly on their spine. Commercially, Led Zeppelin II was the band's first album to hit No. 1 in the US, knocking The Beatles' Abbey Road (1969) twice from the top spot, where it remained for seven weeks.[15] By April 1970 it had registered three million American sales, whilst in Britain it enjoyed a 138-week residence on the LP chart, climbing to the top spot in February 1970.[15] Meanwhile, the album reached the top spot in other 5 national albums charts (including Canadian, Australian and Spanish albums charts). In November Ritchie Yorke reported in Billboard that while the album had achieved "staggering" sales, as a hard rock record it was considered unsuitable for North American Top 40 radio stations, who were "dreary and detached from the mainstream of contemporary rock music".[28]
The album also yielded Led Zeppelin's biggest hit, "Whole Lotta Love". This song reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 in January 1970, after Atlantic went against the group's wishes by releasing a shorter version on 45. The single's B-side, "Living Loving Maid (She's Just a Woman)", also hit the Billboard chart, peaking at No. 65 in April 1970. The album helped establish Led Zeppelin as an international concert attraction, and for the next year, the group continued to tour relentlessly, initially performing in clubs and ballrooms, then in larger auditoriums and eventually stadiums as their popularity grew.[29]
Led Zeppelin II was not well-received by contemporary music critics. John Mendelsohn wrote a negative review of the record for Rolling Stone, in which he mocked the group's heavy sound and white blues, while writing that "until you've listened to the album eight hundred times, as I have, it seems as if it's just one especially heavy song extended over the space of two whole sides".[30] In The Village Voice, Robert Christgau jokingly referred to the band as "the best of the wah-wah mannerist groups, so dirty they drool on demand", while complaining that "all the songs sound alike", before assigning the album a "B" grade.[31] He nonetheless conceded in 1970 that "Led Zeppelin simply out-heavied everyone" the previous year, "pitting Jimmy Page's repeated low-register fuzz riffs against the untiring freak intensity of Robert Plant's vocal. This trademark has only emerged clearly on the second album, and more and more I am coming to understand it as an artistic triumph."[32]
On 10 November 1969, the album was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America and in 1990 it was certified 5× platinum reflecting shipping of five million copies. By 14 November 1999, Led Zeppelin II had shipped twelve million copies and was certified 12× platinum by the RIAA.[33] The 2014 reissue of the album helped itself get back into the Billboard Top 10 when it got to No. 9.[34]
Led Zeppelin
Production
Digitally remastered editions