The eight Led Zeppelin songs with a strange studio connection
There are specific moments in music that change everything. For most artists, it comes when they finally stumble upon a particular chord progression or the lyrics to a chorus which has been tormenting them finally come together; however, for Jimmy Page, it came when he collapsed in Sheffield as touring took its toll.
He was on tour with Neil Christian and The Crusaders, and people started to become obsessed with the young new guitarist who was captivating audiences around the country. While Jimmy Page was happy playing these gigs, the combination of going on tour, hardly sleeping, and partying constantly proved too much, and he passed out one night.
After his stint with Neil Christian, he still played in bands, for instance, in The Yardbirds and, more famously, in Led Zeppelin, but before he went back out on the road, he took some time to work as a session musician and a recording engineer. This role saw him develop expertise in multiple playing styles and become more comfortable in a studio setting.
Both of these lessons were important for Page, as they allowed him to develop the foundation on which Led Zeppelin was eventually built. Firstly, his new expertise in multiple forms of music meant that when he started a band with the interest of blurring the lines between genres, he was equipped to do exactly that.
“I had a lot of ideas from my days with The Yardbirds. The Yardbirds allowed me to improvise a lot in live performance, and I started building a textbook of ideas that I eventually used in Zeppelin,” said Page, “I wanted Zeppelin to be a marriage of blues, hard rock and acoustic music topped with heavy choruses – a combination that had never been done before. Lots of light and shade in the music.”
By taking plenty of time to work in studios, Page also developed a knack for engineering and producing. This meant that when he came forward with suggestions about songs, he had the skill to create his ideas based on what he had previously done with other artists. This newly discovered know-how meant Page was experimental with recording techniques and used various effects when recording music.
For instance, a bellowing fuzz can be heard at the beginning of their song ‘Black Dog’. This was Jimmy Page turning up his guitar, and the distortion took over. He decided to keep the noise in as some form of call to arms, which he aptly called “Waking up the army of guitars”.
A lot of Led Zeppelin songs are sonically linked because of these different recording techniques that Page used, and that is what connects eight of the band’s tracks, which otherwise feel as though they have nothing in common. From ‘Thank You’ on Led Zeppelin II to ‘No Quarter’ on Houses of the Holy, they are all connected because they all start with a slow fade-in. This was a technique that Page used frequently in a bid to ease a listener into the ensuing chaos.
Throughout all of Led Zeppelin’s varied albums and tracks, these are the songs that are linked thanks to the low fade-in.
Eight Led Zeppelin songs that use a fade:
- ‘Thank You’
- ‘The Battle of Evermore’
- ‘No Quarter’
- ‘In The Light’
- ‘Bron-Yr-Aur’
- ‘Achilles Last Stand’
- ‘In the Evening’
- ‘Royal Orleans’
Never Miss A Beat
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