The Led Zeppelin song that left Jimmy Page screaming
It’s true, the concepts of “Led Zeppelin” and “Screaming” should go together like birthdays and cake. There may not be an individual sound more associated with the hard rock titans than Robert Plant’s keening, sandpaper howl. This is kind of a miracle when you think about it. Zep were a band made up of four very individual talents. Taken in isolation, every aspect of their sound is unmistakable. Plant is the most obvious, but Bonham’s intense drumming, Jones’ musical omnivorousness, and Jimmy Page swaggering through the most thunderous riffs of the entire 1970s are all competing for attention pretty much every song.
Very little effort is made to dovetail their talents together, and it should go together like birthdays and prolapsing, but the mad bastards make it work. Somehow, all these disparate musicians straining for the spotlight became indisputably the biggest band of the ‘70s, and while it made for some great music (and some truly disgusting acts with a red snapper), it wasn’t always a bundle of laughs actually living it.
Principally, because when one of them had an idea that they wanted to take centre stage, they had to work for it. There was no sitting down and passing a talking stick around. You had to be louder than everyone else. And John Bonham’s next to you playing the drums with sticks the size of truncheons, so best of luck with that.
At least they knew it was going to be like that from the start. Led Zeppelin 1 was a famously spartan piece of work, recorded in 30 hours of studio time with Page going full drill sergeant to get it all done. However, while Page was producing, the band tapped Glyn Johns to actually man the board and during the recording of the slinky Muddy Waters cover ‘You Shook Me’, Johns suddenly decided now was the time to start chatting bold.
In an interview with Guitar Magazine, Page talked about how he wanted to add a backwards echo of his guitar at the end: “He said, ‘Jimmy, it can’t be done.’ I said, ‘Yes, it can. I’ve already done it.’ Then he began arguing, so I said, ‘Look, I’m the producer. I’m going to tell you what to do, and just do it.'”
Credit where it’s due here; Page had used this effect before on The Yardbirds track ’10 Little Indians’, so he wasn’t throwing his weight around for the sake of it. Johns, though, was adamant. Even after they recorded the track, he was so convinced it would sound like 24-carat ass, he again took matters into his own hands: “When we were finished, he started refusing to push the fader up so I could hear the result. Finally, I had to scream, ‘Push the bloody fader up!’ And lo and behold, the effect worked perfectly.”
Neither ‘You Shook Me’ nor ’10 Little Indians’ were the first time this effect found its way onto records either. The Beatles had used it on one of their countless lesser spotted gems, ‘Paperback Writer’ B-side ‘Rain’. The Stones’ ‘You Got The Silver’ had it, too, and that dropped the same summer as Led Zeppelin 1. So, it’s difficult to see why Glyn Johns, of all people, was so reluctant to have it on this record. Maybe he could see which way the wind was blowing and wanted to make sure that whoever was going to call the shots in Led Zep was really going to earn it.
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