FEATURE:
The Songs Remains the Same
Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy at Fifty
_________
MAYBE not as celebrated as…
PHOTO CREDIT: Globe Photos/REX Shutterstock
Led Zeppelin II (1969), IV (1971), or Physical Graffiti (1975), I think that Houses of the Holy should rank alongside the best of Zep. Released on 28th March, 1973, Houses of the Holy falls between the spectacular and immense Led Zeppelin IV and Physical Graffiti. Maybe less accessible in places as the former and not quite as diverse as the latter, Houses of the Holy is a terrific album that sports Led Zeppelin classics like The Song Remains the Same, The Rain Song and No Quarter. The world-class songwriting of Robert Plant and Jimmy Page remains. Epic drumming from John Bonham, and the overall musical genius of John Paul Jones. I am going to end with a couple of positive reviews for the titanic Houses of the Holy. A number one success in the U.S. and U.K., everyone should check out this legendary album. Houses of the Holy benefited from two band members installing studios at home, which allowed them to develop more sophisticated songs and arrangements and expand their musical style. With all instrumentation by the band, and incredible production from Jimmy Page, Eddie Kramer’s mixing takes the album to another level. The notorious album cover was based on a photograph taken at Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland. It did cause a bit of controversy and, today, a band might not be able to get away with it!
There are a couple of feature I want to lead with before getting to those reviews. Classic Album Sundays celebrated Houses of the Holy’s fortieth anniversary in 2013. They discussed how Led Zeppelin rose in confidence and were on this new level when they made their fifth studio album. It is an album that does not get the acclaim it deserves but, when you consider it has gained a lot of retrospective acclaim since 1973, it is worthy of new inspection and appreciation:
“Rock Gods
In 1972 Led Zeppelin were Rock Gods. Their 1971 album (known as “Led Zeppelin IV”) was a behemoth slab of vinyl, taking the band to new dizzying heights with its commercial success and becoming one of the best-selling albums of all time. Zepp had also become the world’s biggest live act, outselling The Rolling Stones who were on their “Exile on Main Street” tour and Zepp would soon break The Beatles’ attendance records, flying to and from shows on their own private jet, The Starship. In between the legs of their worldwide tour, they recorded their fifth album and the first one with a proper title, “Houses of the Holy”, a term they used to describe the huge venues and stadiums where their fans partook in the Led Zeppelin sacrament.
Lightening Up
As they were now ‘The Biggest Band in the World’, the band members were now fairly confident in their musical abilities, and with this confidence came the freedom to pursue their own musical interests. Their first two albums were heavy-duty rock n’ roll fuelled by turbo-charged blues but as the band matured, so did their music. “Houses of the Holy” is distinguished by its humour and willingness to play with other forms of music such as the James Brown tribute “The Crunge” and the reggae and 50’s pop influenced “D’yer Mak’er”. They were unabashed in showing their admiration for other music forms, Robert Plant telling the NME that he wished he could write something as superb as Mendelssohn’s “Fingal’s Cave”. And as one of the 60’s most eminent session players, Jimmy Page was well-versed in many forms of music including folk, Indian, flamenco, classical and more. “Houses of the Holy” was their chance to experiment and to have a little fun. Good on ‘em.
The Cover
For their album cover, the band commissioned top art design group Hipgnosis. Pink Floyd album cover designer Storm Thorgerson first came up with an idea which involved a tennis court and tennis racquet, but Page didn’t take too well to Storm calling their music a racket. Then Aubrey Powell took over with an idea inspired by Arthur C. Clarke’s novel “Childhood’s End” where they photographed two naked children (siblings Stefan and Samantha Gates) climbing Giant’s Causeway in Ireland. The cover caused quite a stir and Atlantic Records added a paper wrapped around the album with the band and album title and also to cover the children’s buttocks. Page didn’t understand the controversy and stated, “Children are houses of the holy; we’re all houses of the holy – I don’t see how that’s naughty.” Instead, for Page, the cover “denoted the” feeling of expectancy for the music contained within”.
I want to move on to a feature from Far Out Magazine. They wrote about how Houses of the Holy ripped up the Rock rulebook for their piece of 2021. Fifty years after its release, and there is still something utterly compelling, new, and strange about this wonderful album. If Led Zeppelin did change things and go in another direction for Physical Graffiti, I have plenty of time for the lesser-loved songs such as The Crunge. They help make Houses of the Holy a true classic:
“Houses of the Holy was both inevitable and miraculous. The band were most likely expected to blow it with their fifth effort; one can almost hear the music press at the time, thinking to themselves: ‘this is where they fall flat on their faces’. Not only did Zeppelin create something very different from that, but they exceeded expectations and created something that was distinct from their original musical DNA of blues-rock.
Houses of the Holy proved to the world that Led Zeppelin had combined all their elements: blues, mystics, science-fiction, fantasy, and general other-worldliness into a compact package of refined solipsism. The band on this record possessed progressive rock elements that entailed non-standard signatures; with their sustained success, Led Zeppelin had nowhere else to go but to dive even deeper within themselves.
One key ingredient to the success of this formula was a newly found chemistry of writing together. Whereas on their prior records, Jimmy Page did the bulk of the writing with Robert Plant providing his ethereal crooning melodies and Lord of The Rings-inspired lyrics; with their fifth record, there was a newfound sense of cohesiveness. “When we first went down there, we had no set ideas,” Jimmy Page noted to biographer Ritchie Yorke. “We just recorded the ideas each one of us had at that particular time. It was simply a matter of getting together and letting it come out,” Page added.
John Paul Jones played a significantly larger role on the album as well. John Paul Jones, the band’s bass player, organ player/keys, was their secret weapon in many regards. His sense of composition, arrangement, and overall technical proficiency was paid more attention to and utilised. Jimmy Page was the black magician who dabbled in deep mysticism to unlock the sub-conscious and provide the spark for many of their songs. Robert Plant was the fairy leader with a gorgeous voice and an incredible magnetic presence. John Bonham was the loose cannon and the rocker who provided powerhouse percussion, and John Paul Jones was the technician, the loner nerd who works in the proverbial IT department of Led Zeppelin.
When they were looking to start the recording process for Houses of the Holy, as they did with their last records, Jimmy Page wanted to really inhabit the album; he didn’t want the band to go to a recording studio for a few hours and then return home; he wanted the band to live within the process itself. As their usual choice of location, Headley Grange had been unavailable in the Spring of 1972, they chose, instead, Stargroves; none other than Mick Jagger’s manor in a place called East Woodhay.
It had a certain je ne sais quoi about the energy — this is where The Rolling Stones recorded Exile On Main Street and Sticky Fingers. The Who also recorded Who’s Next here. This idea of living within the recording studio was initially inspired by Music From Big Pink from The Band, in which they employed this strategy.
“I didn’t know for sure if they had, but I liked the idea. I thought it was definitely worth a shot to actually go someplace and really live it, rather than visiting a studio and going home. I wanted to see what would happen if all we did was have this one thing in sight – making music and just really living the experience of it,” Jimmy Page said in an interview with Guitar World”.
I shall come to reviews for Houses of the Holy. They were quite mixed in 1973, as many critics might have been expecting something akin to Led Zeppelin IV. Every great band evolves and changes things, and that always takes critics by surprise. Rather than repeat themselves, they created something very special with Houses of the Holy. This is what Classic Rock offered up when they tackled the album in 2013 prior to its fortieth anniversary:
“The album featured styles and sub-genres not heard on previous Led Zeppelin albums, such as funk, reggae, and doo-wop. The album is an indirect tribute to their fan base, who were showing up in record numbers to their live shows. It perfectly straddles the band’s early, more blues-based period from their later work, which consisted of more richly produced studio albums that tilted more towards pop and modern rock. Bass player and keyboardist John Paul Jones temporarily left the band for a few days during this album’s recording but soon returned and stayed with the band until the end.
The fact that this album features different sounds is evident right from the top with “The Song Remains the Same”. This song is odd on several fronts, from the pitch-effect vocals of Robert Plant to the extremely bright multi-tracked guitars of Page. Still, the song is great and is set up as a sort of journey, not a rotation. The song is a jam that feels loose yet does not get lost for one second, due mainly to the steady and strong drumming of John Bonham. The song was originally an instrumental which was given the working title “The Overture”, before Plant added lyrics and the title to it. It was originally going to be an intro for “The Rain Song”, and these songs were often coupled together in concert. “The Rain Song” Is an extended piece with eloquent acoustic and electric guitars weaved together. The song also features a long mellotron section (some would say too long) played by Jones, adding a surreal orchestral effect above Page’s guitar before returned to the climatic final verses and soft and excellent guitar outtro.
Parts of “Over the Hills and Far Away” written by Page and Plant during the 1970 sessions at the Welsh cottage Bron-Yr-Aur for the album Led Zeppelin III. The song is mostly acoustic throughout but works into a harder rock section during the middle, making it one of the most dynamic Led Zeppelin songs ever. Jones and Bonham add a tight rhythm to Page and Plant’s etheral dynamics. The song was released as a US single, but failed to reach the “Top 40”, faring much better on classic rock radio through the decades. Over the Hills and Far Away single“The Crunge” is a funk tribute to Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding and James Brown and evolved out of a jam session built around Bonham’s off-beat drums and a bass riff by Jones. This song features an overdubbed VCS3 synthesizer to replicated the funk “horn” section, which gives it a totally unique sound of its own. During the jam Plant calls for a “bridge” (imitating Brown’s habit of shouting instructions to his band during live recordings). When no such section materializes, the song (and first side) uniquely ends with the spoken “Where’s that Confounded Bridge?”
The closest Led Zeppelin ever came to writing a pure pop song, “Dancing Days” was actually inspired by an Indian tune that Page and Plant heard while traveling in Mumbai. The guitar overdubs are simply masterful in this upbeat song about summer nights and young love. It was played live as early as November 1971 and, although not officially released as a single, it received heavy radio play in the UK. “D’Yer Ma’ker” was released as a single and became the band’s final Top 40 hit (although they didn’t have many of those). The song has a unique sound with Bonham’s exaggerated drum pounding backing a reggae-inspired riff by Page and Jones and Plant’s bubblegum pop vocals. The distinctive drum sound was created by placing three microphones a good distance away from Bonham’s drums, giving him much natural reverb to make the banging sound more majestic. The name of the song is derived from an old joke about Jamaica, and was often mispronounced as “Dire Maker” by those not privvy to the joke.
John Paul Jones centerpiece “No Quarter” provides a great contrast with a much darker piece about viking conquest, with the title derived from the military practice of showing no mercy to a vanquished opponent. The song features a distinct, heavily treated electric piano throughout with an acoustic piano solo by Jones in the long mid-section. Page doubles up with electric guitars and a theremin for effect, while Plant’s voice is deep and distorted. The album concludes with the upbeat rocker “The Ocean”, which refers to the “sea of fans” at the band’s concerts. Launching from a voice intro by Bonham, the song returns to the heavy riff-driven anthems that were popular on their earlier albums. But this song does contain its own unique parts, including an overdubbed vocal chorus, performed a Capella, by Plant in the middle and a doo-wop outro section that contains a boogie bass with strong guitar overdubs, bringing the album to a climatic end”.
I shall finish with Back Seat Mafia’s 2018 reappraisal of Houses of the Holy. They revisited the album on its forty-fifth anniversary. On 28th March, fans around the world will share their memories of Houses of the Holy. Those new to it will have different experiences. Let’s hope there is a lot of new revision and investigation of this wonderful album on its fiftieth anniversary. It definitely deserves that at the very least.
“On the release of Houses of the Holy in 1973, there simply wasn’t a bigger band on the planet than Led Zeppelin. Over their first four albums they had perfected blues rock, invented heavy metal, and then fused that folk influences, released a fourth album that was so anticipated that it required neither a title, nor the band’s name on the artwork to sell it. Having already eclipsed the solo careers of all four former members of The Beatles and Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin were the new yardstick by which rock and roll success and excess was measured.
But having pretty much nailed down heavy rock, what new sonic territory was available to explore? Well what else was out there selling albums in eye watering numbers? 1973’s Houses of the Holy was the moment where Page, Plant, Jones and Bonham went all in at having a crack at this progressive rock thing, thereby neatly sidestepping the unenviable task of following up Led Zeppelin [IV] with something bigger and better, by just going ‘Hey, we can do this stuff too you know!’.
The tone of Houses of the Holy is quickly set with the opening pairing of “The Song Remains the Same”, “Rain Song”, and “Over the Hills and Far Away”, a trio of dramatic epics that confirmed that this album was the sound of Led Zeppelin showing that they could do extended song structures at least as well, if not better than, the likes of Yes or Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Of course, Zeppelin weren’t exactly strangers to the multi-part epic, as a little number called “Stairway to Heaven” had previously demonstrated. Houses of the Holy would prove to be chock full of them though, and was the album where the band took full advantage of John Paul Jones knowing his way around a keyboard and his talent for lush arrangements. Of course, this meant there was precious little room for a straight forward rocker in the mould of “Communication Breakdown”, “Whole Lotta Love”, or “Black Dog”, so there was no obvious single on the album outside of maybe “Dancing Days” or album closer “The Ocean”, but hey, Led Zeppelin didn’t release singles, so that just didn’t matter. Led Zeppelin were Led Zeppelin and could do what the hell they wanted when they wanted to do it. No album expected every twelve months for these guys!
Of course Houses of the Holy wasn’t just Led Zeppelin getting the prog out of their system, as “D’yer Mak’er” was a committed, if somewhat clumsy attempt at assimilating a reggae influence into their sound, and “The Crunge” was a slightly more successful stab at going all funky on us. You can hear Page and Jones getting into their grooves, but John Bonham’s skin pounding remains unmistakably heavy rock (though admittedly, his drumming on “D’yer M’aker” is one of the best things about that song), and Plant pleading for directions to the bridge is just forcing the point.
Houses of the Holy closes in a similar manner to the way it starts, with Zeppelin demonstrating they can do progressive rock with the best of them. “No Quarter” finds John Paul Jones making a bid for a place among the organ bothering greats of the decade, backed up by one of Page’s most iconic riffs, while “The Ocean” finds Led Zeppelin celebrating themselves and their fans with one of their best rock epics, another stand out riff, an outstanding closing 75 seconds (hell they even manage to crowbar some doo wop into it), and maybe, just maybe, one of the greatest hard rock singles never released. Oh, and Bonham’s elephantine drumming.
Houses of the Holy is the sound of Led Zeppelin demonstrating that they were much more than the sound and style that they themselves had established, by expanding their range and experimenting with other styles of music that were proving popular at the time. For a lesser act it might have proved a disaster, but for some, myself included, Houses of the Holy is one of Led Zeppelin’s most curiously under-appreciated albums, along with Led Zeppelin III, simply because it is one of the albums on which they sound the least like Led Zeppelin.
Houses of the Holy is an album with a tremendous amount of replay value, but it might not be the best place for the newcomer to Led Zeppelin to start. Instead it is an album that adds depth to their catalogue rather than an all out crowd pleaser. It is an album which is subtle, nuanced, and complex, which is a hell of a thing for Heavy Metal to achieve”.
On 28th March, Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy turns fifty. With epics such as No Quarter and shorter blasts like Dancing Days offering up variation and satisfaction, this is an album that everyone needs to spin. It is a tremendous work from the iconic band. One of the great things about Houses of the Holy is that it still sounds incredible and has not aged at all. In that way…
THE songs remain the same.