{"id":364817,"date":"2026-01-11T17:54:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-11T17:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/364817\/"},"modified":"2026-01-11T17:54:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T17:54:09","slug":"the-led-zeppelin-song-jimmy-page-couldnt-recreate-twice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/364817\/","title":{"rendered":"The Led Zeppelin song Jimmy Page couldn’t recreate twice"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Jimmy<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Open Culture)<\/p>\n

Sun 11 January 2026 16:00, UK <\/p>\n

By the time Led Zeppelin<\/a> came to record their fourth album, they were essentially already confirmed to be the biggest hard rock band in the world, and it was anyone\u2019s guess as to how they could top their previous efforts.<\/p>\n

Back in 1971, there was seemingly no cap on the budget pumped into a band like Led Zeppelin, and anything they wanted to do would surely be funded by the executives at Atlantic, their record label throughout their existence. If Jimmy Page<\/a> wanted to go to America to mix an album, then everything would be set up for them to do just that \u2013 no questions asked.<\/p>\n

The only issue with this was that his time in Los Angeles at Sunset Sound Studios was a frankly disastrous affair, where everything that could have possibly gone wrong would hamper the band\u2019s efforts to put together yet another masterpiece. Having written and recorded a large amount of material that they believed would eclipse the brilliance of Led Zeppelin I-III, the results of his time alongside engineer Andy Johns were a severe disappointment.<\/p>\n

According to Page\u2019s account of the process, the band had recorded virtually everything that would end up on\u00a0Led Zeppelin IV\u00a0at Island Studios in London and in the mobile studio at Headley Grange country house, which was previously owned by the\u00a0Rolling Stones<\/a>. Not only that, but they\u2019d recorded a handful of songs that would end up on later releases, such as \u2018Down By The Seaside\u2019 and \u2018Boogie With Stu\u2019, both of which were included on Physical Graffiti four years later.<\/p>\n

Things were all going swimmingly when it came to mixing the album, and Page headed to Los Angeles with the idea that the record would be finished alongside Johns, and while he was originally satisfied with what he heard back through the studio monitors, the copies that they received back in England weren\u2019t a patch on what he believed he\u2019d heard. <\/p>\n

During a 2014 interview with Guitar World, Page put this down to the \u201ccolourful\u201d monitoring system in the US, and claimed that because of the difference in quality, when it was played back in the UK, it sounded completely different.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile we were mixing, everything sounded huge and the low end sounded especially massive,\u201d he recalled. \u201cBut when we returned to England and played our work back, the sound was nothing like what we had heard in Los Angeles. It was deflated\u2026 a pale echo of what we\u2019d heard in LA.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, there was one song which Page believed still exceeded what they were able to remix back home, and remains the only song from the Sunset Sound sessions that made it onto the final version of Led Zeppelin IV. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere were exceptions,\u201d he claimed. \u201cThe Sunset Sound mix of \u2018When the Levee Breaks\u2019 had a density that could not be replicated when we remixed it in England. It didn\u2019t have that space \u2013 that black hole. So we put that one on the original album.\u201d<\/p>\n

Evidently, the band would end up able to salvage the rest of the material, culminating in what is widely regarded as one of their finest albums, but considering \u2018When The Levee Breaks\u2019 is one of the highlights of the album, it\u2019s clear that this \u201ccolourful\u201d system at Sunset Sound was exactly what they needed to bring that particular song to life.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n

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Straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Open Culture) Sun 11 January 2026 16:00, UK By the time Led Zeppelin came…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":314428,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,23795,10866,128,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-364817","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-jimmy-page","10":"tag-led-zeppelin","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/314428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}