“They pulled out”: the producer Led Zeppelin refused to speak to for a year
Led Zeppelin weren’t the kind of band that wanted to share the gory details of their career with the world.
There are many bands that prefer that sense of mystique, and even if the band were gods among men whenever they arrived in a massive stadium, there was always a certain mystery around whether or not Jimmy Page was actually interested in the occult or if Robert Plant was truly a ‘Golden God’ whenever he sang those massive high notes. But even if they had a more laid-back demeanour off the stage, not everyone in their circle was safe from their cold shoulder every now and again.
I mean, for one, it’s not like any editor of Rolling Stone was going to be one of their closest allies when they started performing. The magazine notoriously dragged the band through the mud more than a few times, and the smarminess that they had towards Zeppelin’s music was enough for Page to swear off giving any interviews to them for years. But that shouldn’t matter as long as he knew that he was making the best music he could.
The untitled record was proof enough that the band didn’t even need their name on the record to be one of the greatest rock and roll bands in the world, and a lot of that came down to the way that Page arranged everything. He was going after a specific sound every single time Zeppelin worked on a record, and while he could bring out the best in everybody, there was nothing stopping him from making the riffs that left every other rock and roll band in the dust.
But before they had reached the apex with Houses of the Holy, Page was already going after a much different noise than he had been working towards. The first four albums had been laser-focused on letter-perfect hard rock, but there were also songs like ‘Going to California’ that were more mellow or songs like ‘Friends’ that didn’t seem to have any kind of reference point outside of classical music.
And while Page deserves his due credit for turning Zeppelin into a powerhouse, Eddie Kramer really is the unsung hero of a lot of their records. He was the co-captain in the producer’s chair a lot of the time, and having worked the same magic when producing Electric Ladyland with Jimi Hendrix, but even if he was a solid engineer, he remembered the band getting more than a little bit pissed off when he ended up flying off the handle when the roadies ended up making a mess in the studio.
Compared to the wild rock and roll antics Zeppelin were used to, dropping Indian food on the floor shouldn’t have been that big a deal, but Kramer remembered the band being ice cold to him for a year, saying, “The band ordered some Indian food and a whole bunch of it spilled on the floor. I asked the roadies to please clean it up. The studio was brand new and I had a lot of pride in it. Suddenly [Led Zeppelin] are yelling, ‘You don’t tell our roadies what to do!’ And they pulled out; they left, and I didn’t speak to them for about a year!”
There are bound to be these kinds of tense moments in the studio, but it’s not like Zeppelin could have made their records without Kramer. He was the one who helped discover the trademark backwards echo on ‘Whole Lotta Love’, and even when they began making Physical Graffiti, it would be hard to imagine anyone else flying beside Page when they began testing the beginnings of a song like ‘Kashmir’.
They were a match made in heaven in every sense of the word, but if Zeppelin decided to take a break from Kramer, chances are they would have had more of an uphill battle than they initially realised. Page still could have made the same mind-bending records that he did, but it would have been a shame if the band’s unofficial secret weapon in the studio ended up falling apart because of spilled food.
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