 Last night I went to see the movie "It Might Get Loud" and I was enchanted by Jimmy Page, at 65, re-visiting Headley Grange, an old Victorian house, in East Hampshire, England, where the album was recorded. He seemed haunted by the memories of that place and what the band created there. This album, the band's 4th, while it did extremely well on the charts, didn't get much critical acclaim. Jimmy says in the documentary that the best review the record received was a paragraph long. And yet, the music holds up beautifully. This collection of songs is as perfect a record as you can find out there. "Goin' To California" remains my favorite Zeppelin song but the world at large embraced "Stairway to Heaven" and it endures as one of the great rock anthems of all time. The rest, "Black Dog", "Misty Mountain Hop", "When The Levee Breaks" and the rest all contribute to the absolute brllince of this LP. The exquisite combination of Robert Plant's vocals and Jimmy's playing arranged so thoughtfully and intelligently and yet, still exploding into straight up hair-raising hard rock is hard to figure but as I put it on my turntable now, I'm still in awe.
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