The Led Zeppelin album Jimmy Page thought was too soft: “I wouldn’t have wanted”
Rock and roll has never been about being the most pleasant listening experience all the time. Although some people like the idea of listening to something breezy like Eagles whenever they throw on their headphones, there comes a moment when things either take a wrong turn or fans want to hear something that manages to rattle their speakers as they play it. Although Led Zeppelin was far from the heavy metal brand of rock and roll, there was no discounting their heaviness whenever they made their masterpieces.
The whole ethos behind Zeppelin in their early days was already to make something that no one had heard before. Jimmy Page had already been woodshedding his ideas with The Yardbirds, and the greatest way for him to channel his music was to have the thunder of someone like John Bonham behind him every time he played his guitar. That said, there was more to Zeppelin than Page.
Robert Plant could already make some howls that sounded like they were coming from his soul, but it’s hard to call the band heavy when a lot of their songs are acoustically driven. A tune like ‘Rock and Roll’ might embody everything that the genre stands for, but part of their appeal was their ability to put the heaviness on the shelf every now and again when working on tracks like ‘Going to California’ or ‘Hey Hey What Can I Do.’
All of that was usually in service to what suited the music. Even if Physical Graffiti is heralded as a masterpiece today, most of it revolved around the band trying anything and everything they could get their hands on, whether that was working in folksy ballads, modern epics like ‘Kashmir,’ or songs too good to fly completely under the radar like ‘Ten Years Gone.’
With that kind of peak, though, there was bound to be a moment when the bubble burst, and while John Bonham’s death was the band’s collective wake-up call, they had already started going astray from Page’s perspective on In Through the Out Door. While being far from a bad record, their latest album before Bonzo’s passing was a lot more synth-driven, usually featuring Page’s guitars pushed into the background to suit John Paul Jones’s new toy, The Dream Machine.
Although Page remains proud of everything that Zeppelin worked on, he remembered things feeling a bit too sanitised to his taste on this album, saying, “Bonzo and I had already started discussing plans for a hard-driving rock album after that. We both felt In Through the Out Door was a little soft. In its place it was fine, but I wouldn’t have wanted to pursue that direction in the future.”
Then again, it’s hard to completely discount the record as well. There might be a few moments that didn’t work out the way they intended, but it’s impossible to hate on what Bonham did on a track like ‘Fool in the Rain,’ and considering how much heart Plant put into ‘All My Love,’ In Through the Out Door still deserves the right to stand alongside other Zeppelin classics.
The only problem with it is that it felt like a transitional album as the band figured out what their next step was going to be. They were on the cusp of making something new and could have made some genuinely fantastic music had they had more time to hone their craft, but given how quickly Bonham was taken from us, all we can do is speculate now.
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