Led Zeppelin IV – Led Zeppelin

Untitled sleeve, Headley Grange, four symbols

On 8 November 1971 Atlantic released what the world calls Led Zeppelin IV: no title on the cover, no band name on the sleeve, four hand-drawn symbols and a framed photograph of a man bent under a load of sticks. Robert Plant had found that picture in a junk shop. Hung against the peeling wall of a house already coming down, it became the only picture the sleeve offered. No logo. No smiling faces. The record had to carry the rest.

The music had been tracked the winter before, mostly at Headley Grange, a cold country house in Hampshire, with the Rolling Stones’ mobile studio parked outside. Jimmy Page produced. Living where they recorded bought time: arrangements could be tried, dropped, tried again, without a studio clock in the hallway. When the Levee Breaks found its drum sound in a stairwell, John Bonham hitting as if the house were the instrument. Black Dog sets a riff against the silence between phrases. Rock and Roll is the band reminding itself that speed can also be joy. Sandy Denny steps into The Battle of Evermore and the song becomes a duet with the ballad tradition, not a costume piece.

Then comes Stairway to Heaven, eight minutes that start as acoustic folk and end as a hard crescendo. Page built it in sections. The solo, cut later at Island Studios, does not decorate the song. It carries the last section. Around it sit Going to California, Misty Mountain Hop, Four Sticks: open acoustic air, a heavy shuffle, a drum part played with four sticks, two in each hand, which is how the song got its name. The fourth album is not one mood. It moves through several kinds of song, and the sleeve prints no map on the outside.