The rapid conception of ‘In the Light’, Robert Plant’s favourite led Zeppelin song
When a band is six albums into their career together, things could go one of two ways: either the songwriting process becomes stale, and the members struggle to find new ways to keep things exciting, or everyone is so in tune with one another that it becomes such a slick and streamlined affair where each member has a perfectly accurate idea of the direction a song should take. Considering just how strong Led Zeppelin’s epic double album Physical Graffiti is, and given that an album of that magnitude came after an already impenetrable run of five albums, you’d have to say that they were operating well on each other’s wavelengths.
Considering that two of frontman Robert Plant’s favourite songs he ever made with the band feature on this particular album, it becomes even harder to deny the chemistry that was clearly present between the members of the group at this point in their career.
While the first of the two tracks, ‘Kashmir’, is a complex beast that became one of the only songs in Led Zeppelin’s catalogue to require the contributions of other musicians outside the band to make it work, the other, ‘In the Light’, is a track that came together with a surprising level of ease.
Based around a simple synthesiser line played by bassist John Paul Jones, the song is another typically progressive song that shows Led Zep’s ability to build upon a small idea and let it spiral into a sprawling masterpiece. Jimmy Page even went as far as to call it the band’s attempt at writing a follow-up to ‘Stairway to Heaven’, the Led Zeppelin IV track that had, prior to that, become their most well-known song.
Making a statement of this magnitude in the buildup to releasing a new album is sure to put a whole load of expectation on it being an instant classic, but that didn’t steer the band away from billing it as one of the best things they’d made together. While there are plenty of other songs on Physical Graffiti that could also live up to the title of being one of their finest moments, the straightforwardness of ‘In the Light’ was what set it apart from the others that they had released on the album.
In an interview with the BBC, Plant declared that “once the vocal lines and phrasing were sorted out, you’d know where not to play, which was as important as knowing when you should play. With ‘In The Light’, for instance, we knew exactly what its construction was going to be.”
Plant would go on to praise the efforts of each of his bandmates on the track. “Nevertheless, I had no idea at the time that John Paul Jones was going to come up with such an amazing synthesiser intro, plus there’s all the bowed guitars at the beginning as well, to give the overall drone effect. We did quite a few things with drones on, like ‘In The Evening’ and all that, but when he did that start for ‘In The Light’, it was just unbelievable.”
Frankly, many of their songs around this period were sonically unbelievable, but there is a stark simplicity to ‘In the Light’ that makes it stand tall above the rest of the output on the record, and indeed as one of their finest moments in a career of highs.
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