The 1979 Led Zeppelin song Robert Plant has grown to hate: “I rue it now”
For any artist, the greatest songs in their catalogue are a work in progress. Regardless of the number of overdubs they put on the final track, there’s always a struggle trying to get the sounds you’re hearing in your head onto the vinyl, and everyone from Brian Wilson to Pete Townshend has seen some of their best material left on the cutting room floor because they couldn’t get it together.
While Robert Plant was proud to at least have a song like ‘Carouselambra’ out in the world, he thought that the song was one of the biggest missed opportunities of Led Zeppelin.
That admission is particularly striking given the strength of Zeppelin’s catalogue. Few bands possess so many universally acclaimed recordings, which makes Plant’s lingering frustration with the track all the more revealing.
Then again, Zeppelin were already in a state of change on In Through the Out Door. Ever since Physical Graffiti, they had begun leaving a lot of their operatic sounds behind for something different, and after ‘Achilles Last Stand’, it felt like the golden era of the group was bound to go in a different direction.
The band’s priorities were gradually shifting as well. Rather than relying solely on the hard-rock blueprint that had defined their reputation, they were becoming increasingly interested in texture, atmosphere and experimentation.
If Presence threw everyone for a loop, it was clear that the group was on two separate pages making this album. While Jimmy Page’s guitar is still at the very front of the mix on tracks like ‘Fool in the Rain’, John Paul Jones playing with a specialist synthesiser, an intricate piece of kit dubbed ‘The Dream Machine’, is far more dominant on the final mix, providing the core solo in the middle of the song ‘All My Love’.
Just because they had a new toy didn’t mean the massive production had to stop. Yes, there are more than a few moments that have kicked up a stink among Zeppelin fans, like ‘Hot Dog’, but songs like ‘In The Evening’ were proof that mixing both of those worked. And since ‘Carouselambra’ was intended to be this massive piece, it would have been much easier to blend every piece of the group’s sound under one roof, right?
Well, yes and no. Because while the song is decent for what it is, both parts of their sound don’t always play off against each other. Page’s guitar licks were perfectly serviceable on ‘All My Love’, but for all ten minutes of the song, it feels like the instruments just stand awkwardly next to each other instead of working together.
For Plant, though, the biggest crime was not being able to cut through the mix like on the older albums, saying, “Parts of ‘Carouselambra’ were really good, especially the dark minor dirges that Pagey developed. I rue it now because the lyrics were about that environment and that situation. The whole story of Led Zeppelin in its later years is in that song, and I can’t even hear the words.”
While it’s easy to forgive some lacklustre vocals when Plant was singing from a wheelchair the album before, not putting him at the front of the mix here feels like a gigantic step backwards. This is the same guy who made the amazing yelps in the middle of ‘How Many More Times’, and yet he sounds like he’s singing from the bottom of a well underneath every other instrument in the mix.
Whereas a song like ‘Kashmir’ took time to spread the attention over every instrument, this was the first time that people realised that Zeppelin was going to have a few problems down the road. Then again, there’s a good chance that most of us would have forgiven more Zeppelin albums with spotty production choices then seeing them break up following John Bonham’s death.
Viewed today, ‘Carouselambra’ stands as both an intriguing experiment and a fascinating snapshot of Led Zeppelin in transition. It may not have fulfilled all of Plant’s ambitions, but it offers a glimpse into where the band might have headed had circumstances allowed them to continue.
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