In March 1973, advertisements for Led Zeppelin’s new album, Houses of the Holy, began to appear in music magazines.
One featured a black-and-white drawing of a man with his hands bound behind his back and his head jammed between the bumpers of two railway carriages. Another featured a uniformed figure with its head exploding in a cloud of smoke and flames, above the phrase, “Led Zeppelin. Houses of the Holy. The Effect Is Shattering…”
Even ads for Pink Floyd’s enigmatic-looking new album The Dark Side of the Moon, released that same month, couldn’t equal the confidence of Zeppelin’s campaign. With 1971’s Led Zeppelin IV, their previous and fourth album, the group had quit placing images of themselves on their record sleeves. Led Zeppelin no longer needed a band picture or even an album cover in their ads; the crushed skull and exploding head did the job just fine.
Fifty years since its release on March 28, 1973, can still blow you away, though in truth it’s a more subtle record than that schlock-horror ad campaign suggests. Yes, it’s a bit messy and almost perversely eclectic, but it also contains at least five classic tracks: “The Song Remains the Same,” “The Rain Song,” “Over the Hills and Far Away,” “Dancing Days” and “D’yer Maker.” Taken as a whole, it bottles Zeppelin’s gleeful energy and any thing goes experimentalism just at the point before they became the
