Second A Time's Charm
‘Led Zeppelin II was the biggestselling album in America that year, deposing Abbey Road from No.1 and keeping the Stones’ Let It Bleed from the top spot.’
Those dirty-fingernail skull-ring riffs that hook you like a harpoon. Those devil’s-scream vocals that spread like wildfire across the devastated hilltops of your tiny ruined mind. The voodoo-ritual drums and bad-medicine bass that cause the blood to pulse and ooze like a radiation sore erupting from your already dead soul. You know, that whole mounting explosion that constitutes the second Led Zeppelin album?
It was born of real adventures out there on the as-yet untamed American road, at a time, 1969, when Charles Manson was killing for fun and men were walking on the Moon. A time when Woodstock was about wondering, and Altamont lay just around the corner like one of Charlie’s angels ready to pounce again.
At a time when Led Zeppelin were making their bones as the greatest rock band of all time, zig-zagging from coast to coast, while recording, piecemeal, what for Zep diehards remains the greatest, certainly the heaviest, album the band would ever put their name to.
At the end of May, with the first Zep album at No.10, the band ended their second US tour with two sold-out nights at the Fillmore East in New York City. Reviewing the show, Variety wrote of the band’s “obsession with power, volume and melodramatic theatrics… forsaking their music sense for the sheer power that entices their predominantly juvenile audience.”
After the second show, Atlantic Records held a party for them at the Plaza hotel, where they were presented with their first gold record for their Led Zeppelin debut. It was also here that Jimmy Page was informed that they would need to pull their fingers out and get the second album finished, as the label wanted a follow-up out pronto. Stung into action, Jimmy ordered the band back to the studio straight after the party.
The music was evolving at a faster rate on stage, too, with many of the spontaneous jams of the first US tour now taking on a life of their own, turning into fully-fledged songs – Whole Lotta Love, which had first surfaced on tour as part of an extended improvisation during As Long As I Have You; the snake-eyed What Is And What Should Never Be; and a shorter, bouncy rocker called Ramble On.
Their US touring routine was now well established. Clive Coulson oversaw
