Led Zeppelin: The Occult & Other Influences on ‘IV’

Great analysis. You should have your own radio channel. I'd listen.

I once smoked a crap load of weed and listened to this album. Robert Plant plays the devil coming down to Earth. You're going down, you're going down now.

Actually this is the best Tutorial I’ve heard of the Greatest Rock n Roll Album of them all! Great Job!

53 years old – but an album that still sounds so powerful, fresh and vital, as well as being almost ridiculously diverse.

Led Zep has an extraordinary catalog and this fourth album is certainly regarded as one of their best. Am I alone in NOT loving "IV" above all other LZ albums? In retrospect, I've come to prefer III to IV, and have always preferred Physical Graffiti, and yes, dare I say it, Houses of the Holy too.

Thanks for making mention of I.S.B……I rarely hear mention of them these days!

The Black Dog riff is not taken from Electric Mud, as is so often repeated, due to a JPJ misstatement. It was inspired by a zigzagging arrangement of Smokestack Lightning, on 1969’s This Is Howlin’ Wolf’s New Album.

I've always really liked the 3rd album. IV has always been a mixed bag for me.

Thanks for this. Looking forward to your review of the new David Gilmour album. How about reviewing his solo albums in general?

I think that Zeppelin were a band of their time and place. I feel I should be wearing bell bottoms whenever I hear their music. I'm not even sure this is a criticism, as they seemed to capture the zeitgeist of that era perfectly.

I have always considered this album to be one of the big three along with Close to the Edge and Dark side of the Moon. I consider these three to be the greatest classic rock albums of all time. Personally, the four symbols is the best of all. 🙂

The unofficially-titled Led Zeppelin IV was my first taste of Zeppelin's music. A classmate of mine played it for me when I was 11 years of age – amid the convenient 20th anniversary of the album's original release. What I didn't know while listening to it was that it was not my first taste of either Robert Plant or Jimmy Page as musicians. I learned 9 years later that I had heard them (and Jeff Beck) when we were treated to one of Robert's side projects, The Honeydrippers Volume 1 from 1984. It blew my mind to discover that the same voice delivered those 2 divergent performances. It's a testament to their prowess and diversity as musicians that they could pull that off.

I love the trolls videos.I know there’s a lot of dicks out there and they must get annoying.Your Witty replies are amazing ! 👍

Just don't get the hype.
Yes, they can play. But they never wrote a lyric that mattered, nearly all their records were half filler nonsense too.
Ambitious yes? Demonic ? Certainly
Their antics on tour were evil, and their security and management were possessed thugs,allowing the effete pop stars to absolve themselves if what they had become .
Pages autobiography won't be released until he does . Nuff said.

Wait until Jimmy’s book comes out…👹

I've always thought that "Black Dog" was also a reference to the mystical black dog mentioned in Carlos Castaneda's "The Teachings of Don Juan" and its companion books, wherein the black dog is a manifestation of Mescalito, a divine entity whose presence blesses the one who sees it and makes him one of those chosen to further the teachings of the Mescal cult. If, as Plant says, it was only a reference to a dog that walked into the cottage at Headly Grange, the dogs appearance may, in itself, have been a sign from the beyond . . . Did Robert know, or didn't he? Was he, like all true initiates, keeping the secret to himself?

I was just coming of age musically when this album came out. Black Dog, Rock and Roll, and Stairway to Heaven received lots of AM top-40 air play in Hawaii where I was living at the time. Radio DJ’s had a little more leeway to play what they wanted back then and LZ got lots of airplay overnight. I used to listen to my cheesy transistor radio on Friday and Saturday nights

My clock radio was set at 0445AM in the morning during weekdays because I had to take a bus, boat and two more buses to get to school those days. I remember listening to Stairway to Heaven at that hour being half asleep and the song effecting my subconscious dreams.

The album was a vital part of my high school soundtrack. I went to college on the mainland of the United States at a small university east of the Cascades in Washington state in the backwater outside of the sprawling metropolis of the greater Puget Sound area. Basically rural America. There was an evangelical religious revival going on. People were being ‘saved’ and public enemy number one was Led Zeppelin and specifically Led Zeppelin IV. The newly saved were destroying their albums to show their devotion to the almighty and would not give to me no matter how much I begged them to do it.

On last Led Zeppelin IV experience; I was dumped by a girl friend in my freshman year of college and When The Levee Breaks perfectly captured my angst while going through that experience.

Today when I’m in multistory office buildings or hotels that have the talking elevators that say ‘going up’ or ‘going down’, I find my self singing (just in my head, not out loud) “going down, going down now” when the elevator says ‘going down.’ That’s thanks to When The Levee Breaks.

Jimmy Page walked into Tull’s studio when Martin Barre was playing the Aqualung solo. Allegedly, Martin didn’t blink and nailed that great solo.

Well done yet again, Barry. Lester Bangs' head was often up his own bum. He thought very highly of his ability to criticize an art form he could never master. So many of his reviews haven't aged well.

I thought you weren't big on Zeppelin.

For me, it's always been Zep III, Immigrant Song sums up all that is heavy about the band, Friends has the best exotic vibe they ever recorded, Since I've been loving you is arguably their best blues and then there are the accoustic gems, Gallows Pole, That's the way and Tangerine. I don't think they ever put that many wonderful songs on one album. It's also the only album I can listen to from start to finish without feeling sonically trampled under foot (see what I did there? 🙂).

1975 tour started with Rock And Roll. Led Zeppelin were very good live but not great. Page produced albums with multiple guitars and tons of overdubs. Impossible to play live.

Not a zep fan but bieng a drummer , Bonzo is definitely my favorite rock drummer hands down .