Led Zeppelin II - The Greatest Rock Album of All Time Released 40 Years Ago Today

Same song.

In the UK "The Lemon Song" was considered WAY too close to the Wolf's original Killing Floor, so they used the title "Killing Floor" and gave him credit. Somehow in the US Zep knew they could get away with Lemon Song being a true Page/Plant original. Personally, I don't think it's a big deal. Back in those days nobody owned the blues. Everybody borrowed.


[EDIT] See next post for Lemon Song/Killing Floor back and forth history. Very first pressings of LZ II UK used "Lemon Song".

 

Some background information on the cover and tracks from Discogs (not sure of the source or authenticity):

About the album cover:
The cover features a white silhouette of a Zeppelin airship, operated by the Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-AG prior to the outbreak of World War I, when they were then redeployed as bombers. An adapted photograph of pilots from the Jasta Division of the German airforce in WWI is superimposed. Faces of the band members have been montaged onto this image, together with manager Peter Grant and tour manger Richard Cole. The Marlene Dietrich lookalike is "Mary Poppins" actress Glynis Johns, a play on the name of recording engineer Andy Johns' elder brother Glyn Johns. The remaining four faces are a matter of conjecture, and it has been suggested that one provides homage to blues musician Blind Willie Johnson.

The Zeppelin could not land as such, and was tethered in a hovering position above an access structure or dirigible terminal. This doubtless provided inspiration to artist David Juniper for his monolithic illustration on the inside spread of the gatefold. A tethered Zeppelin also appears as a monogram on the back cover.

About tracks & track credits:
• Cassette issues of this release have a different track order to that which is on the vinyl release.
• Initial releases of both cassette & vinyl did not contain track timings.
• The later attributed timing of 3:50 for "Thank You" is incorrect. It is, as the later CD issue, 4:47.
• Initial releases contain "The Lemon Song", later replaced by "Killing Floor".
• From around mid 1970 into '71 Polydor's licence expired. Issues, remastered from SD 8236, began appearing via the Kinney Group, K40037, with a red/green label. "The Lemon Song" also reappeared in the Kinney period. WEA will appear on sleeve 1972 onward. Sleeves with barcode on back are even later.
• The original UK release contains "Livin' Lovin' Wreck (She's A Woman)" ['Wreck' is replaced by 'Maid' on inside sleeve], later retitled "Living Loving Maid (She's Just A Woman)". There are releases between these events where "Livin' Lovin' Maid (She's A Woman)" appears.

The release of this album subsequently involved a number of law suits regarding copyright infringement. Among the tracks affected were:
• "Bring It On Home", eventually credited to Willie Dixon on later releases (I think 1985).
• "Whole Lotta Love", eventually credited to Willie Dixon on later releases (I think 1985).
• "The Lemon Song" credited to Zeppelin ('69), retitled "Killing Floor" on later releases credited to Chester Burnett (in '70) and then reverted to "The Lemon Song" (circa '70-'71 onward).

Despite these law suit events, the nature of blues music has always been derivative, with lyrical fragments or musical phrases inserted in appreciation, or as a tribute, to the artist in question. As an example, "Squeeze my lemon..." could be attributed to "Travelling Riverside Blues" by Robert Johnson or Arthur McKay's "She Squeezed My Lemon". In defense of Led Zeppelin, this album is quite simply a unique and progressive fusion of blues styles.

 

Listening to my compact disc copy of Led Zeppelin II right now... (thank you, Mr. Diament.)

My fave Zep album; I was a junior in high school when this came out. I recall getting it around the same time as Abbey Road and A Salty Dog. I've always looked upon this album as sort of a "passing of the torch"; it famously knocked Abbey Road from the #1 spot on the albums charts in late '69/early '70. Symbolic, eh? The eclectic, symphonic pop of the Beatles giving way to the hard arena rock of Zep: the two defining bands of their era. LZ II was also the most passed-around album in parking lots after school that year...

This album also codified the approach Zep would take for the next ten years: a mixture of folk, blues, funk, experimentation, and crunge that made sure their albums would never be predictable as so many of their imitators were.

As a guitarist, I've always marvelled at the array of tones Jimmy gets from his collexion of guitars and amps; LZ II has a boatload of 'em. Including, for me, the Les Paul/Marshall (or Tele/DeLuxe, or Danelectro/Vox, or...) sound that defined what a hard rock guitar sound should be: the outro to "What Is And What Should Never Be". "Heartbreaker" and "Whole Lotta Love" ain't bad either.

 

Holy crap, that was fun! Thanks, Chris, I don't get nearly enough Zep outtakes and damn, if Bonzo and JPJ can't groove, as that last section shows.

 

Great post. Thanks.

I hadn't thought about the "passing the torch" aspect of Abbey Road to LZ II but that is exactly how it came across to me (albeit subconsciously). I went from being a Beatles fanatic to being a LZ fanatic and that had never happened since Please, Please Me.

I also remember LZ II being the most passed around LP in parking lots after school.

 

Enjoying my Double RL Monarch on headphones
Overated?
It's a hot ****ing mess, distorted and loud, but will bring you closer to the primal core of this music than any CD version I have ever heard.

C

 

I loved Led Zep through the first five albums in particular. Personally, I'll take LZ I, LZ IV, HOTH over II. Maybe it's just that I had such great affection for LZ I as it really was a powerful album with so much energy and really different flavor than all the other big name hard rock/blues bands I loved at the time such as Hendrix, Cream, or Beck. And all done on a telecaster. (Love that tone on I Can't Quit You Baby.) And IV and HOTH are to me very polished albums with better material and yes guitar playing.

I saw Led Zep on the LZ II tour at Massey Hall in Toronto and it was a great show but it went too fast. They opened with Good Times Bad Times breaking into Communication Breakdown and the rest of the concert was non-stop tracks from the first two albums. They did much but not all of Led Zep II. (I remember that they didn't do Whole Lotta Love.) I vaguely recall a great version of "What is and What Should Never Be" and "How Many More Times."

I always thought as an album Led Zep II was, well, uneven - Moby Dick, the Lemon Song, and the long break in Whole Lotta Love (note that I think the guitar solo in Whole Lotta Love at the end of the break is one of Page's best in my mind) to me weakened the album. Others may like those aspects of the album but I always found myself wanting to hear LZ 1 or the other albums more.

 

Are you sure it was Massey Hall?

They played The Rock Pile and the O'Keefe Centre in 1969 in Toronto. To the best of my knowledge their next concert in Toronto was at Maple Leaf Gardens.

 

You're correct. Your memory serves you better than mine does. The O'Keefe Center is on Front Street near Massey Hall. (I haven't lived in Toronto since the early 70's. I never went to the Rock Pile but they had some great acts.

Were you there too?

 

One of the things I love about II is the rough sound - the tapes were bundled about with the band as they toured N. America that year, and they'd stop in some studio with the appropriate 8-track machine sometime in-between breakfast and sound-check to knock off a track, overdub or idea. (I have old friends in the biz in Seattle and Vancouver that have stories about quick Zeppelin studio raids in both places.) II is no audiophile delight, for sure; yet its communicative power remains undimmed. Amazingly, despite the variety of rooms, engineers, and moods of the day, Bonham's drums always sound huge and, ah, assaultive. (I suppose - Chris M? - that many of the basics were recorded with Glyn Johns in London, but still.) The original "band on the run" album.

I suppose you could argue that Zep went on to bigger things (LZ IV is a somewhat notable album ), but this album was the one that launched a thousand Seventies hard-rock groups. I was in several of them...Les Pauls and Marshalls in the back of my Dodge Dart wagon....flared trousers and unfortunate hair-do's....

 

i think in terms of their musical abilities this is the best.

 

Yet when I think of the many hard rock albums of its era - it IS essentially an audiophile delight. It has very nice sonics and dynamic range despite its 'saturated' sound. The drums and percussion, bass, and many guitar moments have better presence than many of its ilk. You can really 'feel' the studio at times.

 

Oh, I agree absolutely. I was just thinking of how, when you visited Magnolia Hi-Fi or wherever in the 70's, they'd always drag out Aja, Court & Spark or Crime Of The Century to try and get you into a new set of 4-way speakers or whatever.

 

Coincidentally, the engineer for that track was Chris Huston, who also engineered the '“The Above Ground Sound” of Jake Holmes' including his song "I'm Confused" that Led Zep ripped off for "Dazed and Confused". Chris was also present the night The Yardbirds caught a live Jake Holmes show a few years previous, where James Page first heard that song.

 

This stuff about Zep ripping people off - yeah true on a rather naive level but let's face it, that's been a blues tradition for many, many years. It's not like Willie Dixon and the others just up and created those blues tunes out of thin air - many were based on riffs and bits handed down from prior generations - it's just that those prior generations weren't recorded much or at all so you can't track down the stuff that Willie and Howlin' Wolf et al undoubtedly "ripped off" (borrowed from) quite so readily.

I like LZ II but III is "the one" for me - the best overall representation of the band, captures all the different facets and has by far their best blues number - e.g. least self-parodic, most truly dramatic, and the one with the most incredible and musical Jimmy Page solo - "Since I've Been Loving You."

 

LZII is a fun album and quite a bit better than the debut. It reminds me of high school, and I graduated in 1989!

 

I agree, this was their best slow blues. Epic, massive, and delivered with conviction. This song should've been as big as "Stairway", IMO.

 

Great pieces of information. I have been listening to Led Zeppelin, but a lot of the above I didn't know. Thanks.

 

This is the album that hooked me to LZ, and I wasn't a huge fan of "Whole Lotta Love". What grabbed me was JPJ bass from "The Lemon Song", and the guitar solo from "Ramble On". As I was playing the drums in 1984, the cherry on the sunday was "Moby Dick". I then began to judge drum solo intros. I've come up with this list (that will be unpopular):


1) Toad (The intro is better than Moby Dick, but the solo is not)
2) Moby Dick
3) Rubber Duck
4) The Mule

 

What I was trying to say in my post - only said much better here.

 

Riffs. In miraculous profusion.

 

I agree with most of what you said, but even Jimmy Page admits that Fleetwood Mac (Peter Green) was THE British Blues band. The first two albums FM recorded under Mike Vernon covered all of this ground. If they only had Peter Grant as a manager instead of Clifford Adams (Davis).


I'd pay a lot of money to see Jimmy Page try to play Peter Green's "Love That Burns" solo from "Mr. Wonderful".

 

Just finished side 2 of my scratchy RL and I absolutely agree. I hate it when people say it's a crap recording because of a little overload here and there.

I don't think I've ever heard drums and bass recorded this way before or since. Just meaty and huge yet still tight and perfectly balanced in the mix. The bass on Heartbreaker- Living Loving Maid sequence is astonishing coming off my 30 year old Technics TT. Quite the sonic achievement and the music ain't bad either.

This pic may be from '70 (third album) but they certainly were a band on the run in those days. They made four US tour trips in 1969.

 

the pic is from May of 1969 with them carrying the master tapes for Zep II at the Honolulu airport

 

I am SO SICK of these rip off allegations so lets break it down for those who simply CANNOT let it go


Whole Lotta Love - music/all Zep's
lyrics an delivery/lifted from Willie Dixon and Small Faces
mostly

What Is... - all Zep


The Lemon Song - music/all Zep
lyrics/mostly lifted form various blues songs

Thank You - all Zep

Heartbreaker - all Zep

Living Loving Maid - all Zep

Ramble On - all Zep

Moby Dick - all Zep (probably got the idea from Toad by Cream but totally unrelated)

Bring It On Home - intro meant as a TRIBUTE to Sonny Boy Williamson, played as "black" as they could on purpose....rest of song all Zep


so PLEASE TELL ME how this is a "covers album". What a joke!

I swear, there are a few members who SIMPLY CANNOT LEAVE A ZEP THREAD ALONE without introducing this crap every time. From now on we are going to break it down like this so you see how lame it is and how over-stated it is too.

Also very important to note is that even when the lyrics or music is borrowed it is usually in the loosest way possible, and when Zep used something they managed to play it better than any other white blues rock act in existence. So maybe they played In My Time of Dying by Blind Willie Johnson but there is ZERO similarity between the music and only vague references lyrically....not the same song by any stretch. This is usually the case.

I am not going to say that some lyrics weren't borrowed because they were but usually they were a mish mash of various songs of dubious origin and mixed so that really there was no one source. The Lemon Song is a good example of this.

Zep borrowed less than Cream did musically if you want to get technical but where are the anti-Cream, blues rip-off artist threads?

I am SICK of this crap so let's put it to bed. Zep were inspired by the blues like a BILLION other Uk acts of the time but what they actually created with it was the most original and enduring white blues rock of all time.......