Atlantic 7255
Producer: Jimmy Page
Track listing: The Song Remains the Same / The Rain Song / Over the Hills Far Away / The Crunge / Dancing Days / D’yer Mak’er / No Quarter / The Ocean
May 12, 1973
2 weeks
As Led Zeppelin prepared to record Houses of the Holy, they were rolling on a creative high. The band’s fourth album, which was officially untitled but is commonly referred to as Led Zeppelin IV, was its masterpiece. Along with such rockers as “Black Dog” and “Rock and Roll,” it contained “Stairway to Heaven,” which successfully fused the band’s acoustic and electric into one eight-minute epic. Despite the track’s length, it became the most-played song in the history of album rock radio during the ’70s. Yet strangely enough, Led Zeppelin IV never made it to the top of the charts. The album, which didn’t feature the band’s name on its cover, spent four weeks at number two, it it was unable to knock Sly & Family Stone’s There’s a Riot Goin’ On or Carole King’s Music from Number One.
Led Zeppelin remained undaunted. Although Led Zeppelin IV didn’t reach the top, it went on to become the best-selling album (and by 1996 become the fourth-best-selling album of all-time). The creative high continued on Houses of the Holy, recorded primarily during February and March of 1972. Again, the band opted to bypass tradition and recorded the album at a mansion, rather than a recording studio. Instead of Headley Grange, this time the band chose Mick Jagger’s summer home, Stargroves.
“The vibe was much the same,” says bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones. “We would do the tours, we would do the recordings, then we wouldn’t see each other at all. We weren’t a band that socialized.”
During the period prior to the Houses of the Holy sessions, Page and Jones, who by then both had home studios, used the down time to work up some material. “I worked on ‘No Quarter’ at home,” says Jones. “That was right after I set up my home studio. I started off with an electric piano with some interesting effects. I had most of the song worked out before they heard it, the melody and everything. Then Jimmy came up with a guitar part and Robert put some lyrics to it.” The final version featured Jones on grand piano, synthesizer piano, and synthesized bass.
On other tracks, Jones also experimented with the instrumentation. “The Rain Song” featured mellotron, “The Crunge” had synthesizer, and “Dancing Days” had organ. Yet Zeppelin was generally most effective with the traditional guitar/bass/drums lineup, featured at its most explosive on the unforgettably catchy riff of “The Ocean.”
While Plant’s otherworldly lyrics were often criticized, the band showed it still had a sense of humor on a reggae tune mysteriously titled “D’yer Mak’er.” Says Jones, “It’s from an old joke. I was telling a friend I took my wife on holiday and he said, ‘D’yer mak’er?’ and I said, ‘No, she went on her own free will.'”
The album’s opening track, “The Song Remains the Same,” would later serve as the title track for the band’s 1976 album and concert film. A song called “Houses of the Holy” was also cut during these sessions, but the band opted to keep it in the can until the release of Physical Graffiti.
Zeppelin scored its fourth Number One album at the expense of one of Plant and Page’s heroes — Elvis Presley. The duo had met Presley in Las Vegas in 1972. A year later, in its second week on the chart, Houses of the Holy knocked Presley’s Aloha from Hawaii Via Satellite from Number One. Elvis had left the peak of the album chart for the final time.
THE TOP FIVE
Week of May 12, 1973
1. Houses of the Holy, Led Zeppelin
2. The Best of Bread, Bread
3. Aloha from Hawaii Via Satellite, Elvis Presley
4. The Beatles/1962-1966, The Beatles
5. The Beatles/1967-1970, The Beatles