Led Zeppelin IV: Listen Closely

Erik Davis felt there were certain intentions as to why it was the 4th album, with 4 songs, and 4 symbols on the album cover. Led Zeppelin IV established a square "fourness base." This was a comforting complexity for most or at least for Erik Davis. The DVD of Led Zeppelin IV shows more clearly their shifts from light to shade within their music. Led Zeppelin's savery and clever use of ambiguity created a desire and meaning throughout album IV. Their symbolic and metaphoric lyrics were used to describe the corrupted changes in society at that time. Led Zeppelin IV helps you recognize what you are not conscious of that is influencing your culture.

The theme of the record according to Erik Davis, was to "bring balance back." Which meant bringing humans back to balance during a time when society was out of whack. "When The Levee Breaks" describes the need for balance by creating lust within heavy sound. According to Erik Davis, the weight on the album is carried out by the remarkable drums. John Bonham created nostalgia weather or not it was valid.

Led Zeppelin IV creates the "exotic mysticism of the east." The band displays such a vanishing world through technological effects within the studio. They accomplished the impossible. Led Zeppelin created a balance between culture and physiology which was very tricky and still is. It pays close listening. Erik Davis feels they made this record a real masterpiece.

What Does Led Zeppelin Mean to Your Inner Adolescent?

In the 1970's, Led Zeppelin created a mythological space for people to feel something where they couldn't before. The bands keen awareness of sound was used to create an environment for something else to suddenly occur in ones life. Adolescents found and still find themselves running away to this newly created environment to step away from life's confusion. Anyone and everyone can form they own interpretation to Led Zeppelin. It means something different to everyones individual life. Adolescents began using Led Zeppelin music as a right of passage during such times of confusion and during a major state of transition. Led Zeppelin facilitated this time of adolescent confusion on an unconscious level. Prevalent drug use at this time helped to aid the transit to adulthood and served as another right of passage.

Led Zeppelin connected with drug users as it provided a new trance type of music bringing people to far away lands and creating a loss of inhibition. Erik Davis describes trance music as a sudden shift that happens to you right then. It makes you feel alive and in a moment. There is a certain crispness to the happening moment where you just loose yourself. This made fans crazy and as Led Zeppelin became more and more popular they created a fierce violent intensity within their fan base. The raw intensity of their concerts allowed people to get used to getting off on their energy and stage presents. Led Zeppelin turned concerts into rituals. Their concerts were famously sloppy.

Led Zeppelin Creates A New Pop Culture With Trance

Several production techniques allowed Led Zeppelin to change an era of music through sound. Led Zeppelin created an element of surprise and a new range of loudness within music at this time. The language of light made their music dynamic as quiet, gentile, music erupted into strong forms of collaborative sound during most songs. The eruption of sound within songs was filled with a great deal of ferocity. This sudden shift of sound within individual songs created surprise amongst listers and a feeling of excitment. Erik Davis calls this form of music, "casaic" considered to be violent gestures that shift expectations while allowing something new to happen in the mind of listeners. Their unique quality of range created style.
Band members of Led Zeppelin played off eachothers energies to produce music in a more altered state which formed a new ambient sound than ever heard before. Songs such as "No Quarter" and "Kashmir" are perfect examples of their ambient sound and feelings of trance. The fuzzy, golatial, grit sound with the analog pulse of Jimmy's guitar provided much clarity and great novelty to sound. The riffs expressed by Jimmy are more repetitive and powerful than ever heard before. His use of the electric guitar provided an element of Rock and Roll which allowed for the primal quality of sound. When including the blues, sound was transformed into rich quality. This music of tamber such that of rock and roll helped Led Zeppelin develop a recognizable sound for the future.
Led Zeppelin created space for interesting things to occur within sound during their production process. They put their own money into all needed equipment and gear which allowed them to make all musical decisions. Through out the recording and production process, Led Zeppelin allowed you in as they turned music into a virtual reality. They essentially turned music into sonic fictions and stages for imagination. This new trance/esoteric form of pop music was expressed throughout pop culture from there on out. Led Zeppelin used technology for influencial purposes to create profetic sounds and allowed for increased intensity and ferocity within sound. Led Zeppelins explicit signals effected its audience and provided a realm for escape within many adolescents.

JIMMY PAIGE INTERVIEW ON NPR:

Meet The Music

Lead singer, Robert Plant and guitarist, Jimmy Paige, were defined by Erik Davis as the "Anti-Modernist Romantics." Led Zeppelin passionately speaks of an earlier age within their lyrics. The band crushes out glimmerings of the last natural call for our generation today.
Led Zeppelin used a significant strategy to connect music with the mind through inventive ways. The British based band had access to organic folk based traditions such as the blues in which they used throughout their music. Led Zeppelin spoke in their own language - a language of "light and shade", slow pace with a sudden musical explosion. The music obtained a different character when loud and forceful than folk music would have. This made them more dynamic than any other band before.
Led Zeppelin was now loud, sexy, and obnoxious. They let loose a sense of individuality that was not accepted in such an era. Their new appeal was not looked at positively by pop critics who were looking for traditional folk music. Led Zeppelin sought to communicate how music opened realms and aided the unconscious mind to escape into far away lands. They mediated pop commodities by interpreting sound while communicating a deeper and more emotional sense of captivation. Erik Davis would describe Led Zeppelin's form of music as "Haitian Voodoo-hypnotic trance" and considers them to be the "Hippies Younger Brother."
Led Zeppelin was spiritually consuming, allowing for this movement of trance. Led Zeppelin really was the holy grail of metal using esoteric sound while including cult elements into pop music as a whole.

About Erik Davis

Erik Davis is a San Francisco-based writer, culture critic, and independent scholar.He wrote the first critical analysis book on Led Zeppelin IV.As Erik sought to connect with his inner adolescence, he woke up suddenly from a dream inspired and later composed this book.