Led Zeppelin II

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<b>100 Best Albums</b> Critics may not have cared much for Led Zeppelin’s first album—they were wrong—but the band’s fan, especially in the US, more than made up for it. <i>Led Zeppelin II</i>, written and recorded while the group barnstormed America, was released in late 1969, just nine months after <i>Led Zeppelin</i>. Borrowing from the Beatles’ assertion that the album, <i>not</i> the single, was rock’s proper format, the band members resisted releasing the five-and-a-half minute blues-metal maelstrom “Whole Lotta Love” as a single from their second album. Though Atlantic eventually issued a bowdlerized “Whole Lotta Love” as a 45—with the groupie-themed rave-up “Living Loving Maid (She’s Just a Woman)” as the B-side—the album version immediately ranked as rock’s most unhinged and elaborate deconstruction of American blue. Cribbing a guitar line originated by Chicago blues legend Willie Dixon—whom Led Zeppelin, as usual, didn’t credit—Jimmy Page inflated the elemental riff into a roaring jet engine, letting Robert Plant off his leash to growl like a satyr during the song’s terrifying psychedelic break. At time, “Whole Lotta Love” sounds like the world is collapsing—and, in a way, it was: Along with The Rolling Stones’ disastrous 1969 Altamont concert and Black Sabbath’s eponymous debut album in February 1970, the chart-topping <i>Led Zeppelin II</i> signaled that mercile, debauched hard rock—the kind performed in arenas and huge fields instead of clubs—was ascendant, and that Zeppelin were the dark overlords of the new regime. While <i>Led Zeppelin</i> was largely the execution of Page’s bleak studio vision, <i>Led Zeppelin II</i> was a more democratic effort, solidified by a lineup that had clearly gelled playing nonstop gig. On the soulful, Plant-penned power-ballad “Thank You,” the singer even revealed himself to be…grateful? To a <i>woman</i>? Were the members of Led Zeppelin evolving in real time? Meanwhile, Plant and Page collaborated on the buoyant “Ramble On,” with Plant’s lyrics merging the British tradition of free-walking through the countryside with JRR Tolkien’s <i>The Lord of the Rings</i>, as Page overdubbed acoustic guitars to create a muscular folk-rock. .

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