In drab, recession-hit Britain, 1973 paradoxically was the year of glam rock. Of boys who would be girls who would be boys cavorting on Top Of The Pops in tin-foil costumes, 12-inch stack-heels and trowelled-on make-up.
All that glitter had come early for Led Zeppelin, however. Already the most glamourous rock group in the world, the astonishing planetdevouring success of their famously untitled fourth album, aka Led Zep IV, meant Zeppelin were also now the biggest.
They had already been Number One in Britain and America simultaneously long before Bowie had acquired his lightning flash or Bolan had begun sticking stars on his funky little boat race. And it was Zeppelin who would release the most fabulously outré album of the year, one that perfectly summed up the joyous anything-goes atmosphere of the 1973 music scene. An album reveled in hedonistic pleasures, which they’d titled Houses Of The Holy.
The fifth Led Zeppelin album, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this month, it was also their first to have a title other than the band name, and was the gladdest they ever sounded. The most
Robert Plant beautifully poised. The most downright colourful and sparkly and infectious. As Jimmy Page recalled: “You can hear the fun we were having. You can also hear the dedication and commitment.”
This was peak Led Zeppelin, a band now at their creative zenith. Only the Rolling Stones matched them for musical promiscuousness, as both toyed, variously, with funk, reggae, country, West Coast. Then on Houses Of The Holy Zep went even further, allowing jazz, synthesisers, folk, doo-wop and Asian raga influences to seep into their signature sound.
As Robert Plant told me: “By that time the whole thing had taken on an entirely different aspect. It was such a big deal by then, the feeling of freedom it gave out was tremendous. We were buccaneer musicians, ready to try anything. Houses Of The Holy was the result.”
For Zeppelin, the newfound glitz and musical frivolity of 1973 had begun as far back as December 1971, when they entered Basing Street Studios in London. Straight from their ‘UK winter tour’, nobody had been sleeping and they sizzled as they jammed together.
Page was 27 and supreme master of all he surveyed, the light, the dark and everything between. Plant, at 23, was in golden-god mode and, as one onlooker observed, “dripping in pussy”. John Paul Jones was 25, could play anything and was already established as Page’s musical consiglieri. John Bonham was also 23, and in full beast mode. Off the road, a family man, they said. But Zeppelin were never off the road.
Young men, at the height of their powers, and several songs that gleefully spun off in different directions arrived all at once, including some buried treasure that wouldn’t see the light of day for years. The mellow, Neil Young-influenced and a fully leaded both of which surfaced in buffed-up form three years later on A semi-acoustic, cider-jug version of nailed togetherMost impressive, and decidedly deluxe, a cinematic, glacia-paced new synth-orchestrated made-for-midnight extravaganza Jonesy had been piecing together titled
