Robert Plant - Singer - 1976 - Led Zeppelin

Credit: Far Out / Led Zeppelin

The 1975 album Robert Plant called the last good Zeppelin record

Sun 26 April 2026 16:30, UK

Anyone whoever entertains the idea of Led Zeppelin having a bad album is liable to get their ass kicked by someone.

Even though no artist is absolutely perfect, picking between the best Zeppelin albums tends to be like choosing between which child is the best, and Jimmy Page didn’t even try to have a favourite when looking through all of his discography. Each of them were special in their own way, but when Robert Plant struck out on his own, he wasn’t afraid to throw a few shots at his old band now and again.

But had John Bonham had lived, who knows if the band would have kept going until the end of time? Bonzo was the heartbeat of the group, and while his death left everyone in the band devastated, they were already moving in a different direction if you look at their music. Plant was willing to dive headfirst into new territory, but if there was one thing that was for sure, it was that nothing he played was going to sound like his old outfit.

And while every single rock and roll fan is pissed to hear about Plant stepping back from rock and roll, it actually makes a lot of sense coming from him. He didn’t want to live the life of a rock and roll star when he was in his 60s, and even when he did come back for the Celebration Day performance in 2007, it was clearly done as a way to close the chapter on that side of Zeppelin rather than come together for an entire tour or anything.

Then again, that doesn’t mean that he wasn’t proud of being one of the biggest frontmen of all time in the mid-1970s. By the time of their fourth album, Zeppelin had become almost too big for mere mortals, and while Plant still remained the same hippy that he was when he was in the Band of Joy, it was hard not to revel in the fact that they sold out the biggest stadiums in the world when they went out on the Physical Graffiti tour.

The album itself was already the most excessive record that they had ever put out, so why not do the same thing whenever they made their next touring cycle? The band were at the peak of their powers, and even though Plant was willing to do anything he could to give the audience a good time, he felt that going out on the road and making that album was the last time where he felt totally committed to Zeppelin.

Presence and In Through the Out Door are still behemoths of rock, but Plant felt that Physical Graffiti marked the last major victory for Zeppelin, saying when referring to Now and Zen in 1988, “All I wanna do is make good records. I just think I’ve made the best one since Physical Graffiti and that was the last good record I made, really. So everything in between has been ok. That’s a sweeping statement but it’s what I believe.”

That’s a bit cruel when talking about Zeppelin’s last records, but it’s not like either of them were terrible or anything. Each of them were going for a different sound after they spent the last few years of their career making the biggest albums of all time, and while they were building towards something bigger on their next records, we simply never got to hear what that version of the band would have sounded like.

Page might still have a treasure trove of riffs still lying in his vault, but it’s hard to deny that Plant did have a point when calling Graffiti the last of its kind. Zeppelin was still alive and well for a few years after that, but no one could deny that they had hit the high watermark when looking at the kind of size and scope of ‘Kashmir’.