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Sat 25 October 2025 20:15, UK
The fact that Led Zeppelin made the mark they did despite only releasing 15 singles is like cooking a couple of dishes and still sealing a Michelin Star.
They were undoubtedly an album band through and through, neglecting the charts, radio play, and even critical opinion for that matter, and cementing an untold legacy in the process. They wanted total creative freedom, and they found that singles precluded that mission.
“When it went to the point of the more acoustic style of the third album, you can imagine our record company getting that in and going, ‘Where’s the ‘Whole Lotta Love?” If anyone had said that to me, I’d have said, ‘Oh that, that’s on the second album – this is the third album,’” Jimmy Page told Total Guitar.
That was reflective of the bold stance of the band that fed right through into their thrilling sound. “You know how it is with A&R men going, ‘Oh, you’ve got to have a single.’ We had singles in America and other places,” Page continues, “But I wanted to stay clear of that market and keep it as an albums thing.”
The guitarist, who knew the industry inside out from his early days as a session musician, added, “Right in the early stages, I demanded – after having done all the Mickie Most stuff – that we didn’t want to be a band that was known for singles. It was albums that we were going to be known for. And clearly, I wanted to make each album different from the one before.”
So, the blunderbuss group willfully roved through a variety of styles, developing an evolving back catalogue. But evolution doesn’t always ensure consistent greatness – just ask Bob Dylan and David Bowie – it entertains the possibility of a misstep just as much as it does the possibility of magic. As far as Plant was concerned, the latter ran out in 1975.
Speaking to NCTV ahead of the release of this fourth solo album, Now and Zen, the lion-like singer admitted, “All I wanna do is make good records. I just think I’ve made the best one since Physical Graffiti and that was the last good record I made, really. So everything in between has been ok. That’s a sweeping statement but it’s what I believe.”
The epic from ‘75, which featured Plant’s favourite track the band ever wrote, ‘Kashmir’, was followed by Presence, In Through the Out Door, and Coda, but clearly the singer with pants tighter than a snake’s pocket, figured that these efforts were simply “ok”.
While he reflected that Presence also “had its moments”. He also thought that it was held back by his own recovery from a freak accident.
“It was a wheelchair album,” he joked. “I was in a wheelchair all the time, tough that was. You could hear it in the voice. Presence was a real difficult record,” but Graffiti seemed to come together with ease, roaring with the vigour of the band at their very best.
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