The flawed 1973 Led Zeppelin performance that was too perfect to replace
It’s not often that you’ll see people picking holes in the work of Led Zeppelin, but despite their prowess as one of the greatest rock bands of their era, they certainly weren’t immune to making mistakes every once in a while.
For starters, despite their proficiency as musicians, there are occasions where things feel as though they’re a little slapped together, with Jimmy Page rushing his way through a slurry of notes in a lead break, or John Bonham missing a rare beat or fill. That being said, the way all of their moments of overzealous chaos end up coalescing on record tends to work out for them, with it coming across as their way of capturing a feeling rather than going for precise execution.
It might not be perfect all of the time, but their estimation of perfection certainly wouldn’t have come without immense amounts of hard work and effort being put into everything they made. Even though their records rarely arrived with a lengthy gap between them, plenty of toil went into their creation during the interim periods, and the outcome was often sublime.
This is an indication of a group operating at the peak of their abilities over the course of almost a decade, and while it might seem as though plenty of tinkering went into ensuring that every release was completely free of any mistakes, there were naturally moments where nothing could be done to cover up the aforementioned blemishes.
However, while slight errors might be the sort of thing that a band would be ashamed to own up to and wish they’d had the opportunity to correct, sometimes these hiccups can’t be rectified, or can even end up offering an additional layer of unintentional charm to a recording. In the case of one classic track from 1973, there’s a notable imperfection that most other bands would scramble to remove from the recording, but that Led Zeppelin simply had no interest or intention of ironing over.
‘No Quarter’, which serves as the penultimate track of the band’s criminally underrated Houses of the Holy, is one of the band’s more subdued tracks, owing to the fact that there aren’t as many of Page’s crunching riffs or howls coming from the mouth of Robert Plant, which would make any snags more noticeable.
On the second disc for the 2014 deluxe reissue of the album, there’s a major flaw in the sound quality of the instrumental recording of ‘No Quarter’, but while most would be hesitant to showcase something so imperfect, Page told Guitar World that everything else about the recording was exactly as he wanted it.
“It was such a great take by John Paul Jones,” he revealed, referring to the keyboard overdubs he recorded, “I wasn’t about to let a little hiss stop me from using it. In some ways, it adds to the ambience of the time and place.”
Of course, this isn’t the final version that’s used on Houses of the Holy, but for Page and the rest of the band to feel comfortable in showing off their flaws in such a brazen manner is actually a rather commendable creative decision, and highlights how tough it is to get things perfect every time, no matter how exceptional you are.
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Led Zeppelin Newsletter
All the latest stories about Led Zeppelin from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.