Plan Voodoo” I first heard of this in a car on the way to New York City in 2009, driving south on I-95 from Tampa to Miami. There was a roadie who was running his own live show, taking CDs for trading. At that time, he was selling “Led Zeppelin IV,” “Horses,” “Tommy,” and “The Pretender.” I passed on the latter two, but I picked up the Led Zep. As a longtime fan of Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, I was drawn to the guitar playing and sonic texture of Zeppelin IV. As a musician, I’m a huge admirer of Page. In terms of sound, Zeppelin is like nothing else. I put this down to Page’s composition, arrangement, and guitar tone, particularly that opening riff: In terms of rock band sound, there has not been a band as distinctive as Zeppelin in the 1970s and ‘80s, before that, or since. I was always impressed with the power of Page’s guitars, which has gotten him labeled as a “power metal guitarist.” But the sound Zeppelin uses is so unique, his tone doesn’t really fit a contemporary metal box. I could be mistaken, but it seems to me that all the popular heavy metal bands draw on Page’s tone, more so in the US than in Europe. So when I first heard Page solo on “The Rain Song” in the Led Zeppelin IV track list, my heart skipped a beat. That one guitar riff is what really changed me from a casual rock listener to a hardcore Led Zeppelin fanatic. I first got the CD in 1999 when it was released on Rhino and then re-released in the Vinyl box set reissue of Led Zeppelin. In fact, this particular cover of the album was how I first discovered a music video for the band. There was something about hearing the song in its entirety in the format of a short promo video that was the biggest deal to me. The guitar solo really drew me in. I got this CD (actually cassette tape), so I could hear the entire album without worrying about missing something. I’m not sure how it is in other parts of the country, but, at that time, CD and cassette were the only formats in print here in Germany. A cassette costs about 1 Euro, which is about 1.30€ in US money. That’s the bulk of the album cost. In retrospect, I wished I’d got the Vinyl Boxed set, as I could not get the cassette from the US. Anyway, as an aside, I have seen Zep live, in 1977, in San Diego. Although I had already discovered this band on vinyl, the show put me over the top. The band was phenomenal that night; I didn’t feel I had been in the presence of real greatness. This was the first concert I ever did where I actually had to pay for a show. To make a long story short, the band was pissed, as they felt they hadn’t done enough to sell the venue, although the audience was great. Some years later, in the 1980s, I saw the band at another show in San Diego. This time, I bought the ticket in advance and showed up early. The show went well, until, halfway through the set, Page apparently felt that I wasn’t paying enough attention to the screen behind him, where various slides of bands were appearing. The stage was very dark at that point in the show. So he turned the stage lights on for a few seconds, turned them back off and told me to relax and enjoy the music. I guess he was pissed off at me, because that was the last I saw of Led Zeppelin live. This was the album that I bought, which I played again and again, probably more than anyone else in the US for about two years, including all the Zeppelin stuff, “Presence,” “In Through the Out Door,” “Swan Song,” and “Remasters of The Royal Art” This is a record where Page’s guitar work, his drumming, Page’s singing, and Plant’s voice merge to create an awesome combination. This is the album that really got me into British bands. I can’t describe it except to say this, as I did with “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”: “The Beatles made Sgt. Pepper the best album of its time. Zeppelin makes it the best album of its time.” I would call this my favorite album of all time, if I had not owned every Led Zeppelin album. This one is the best, without a doubt. This was the first album I’d ever bought on vinyl. When it came out in 1975, I owned a few cassettes and a few records, but I didn’t know anything about good music. All of the record stores in my hometown were so much shit. I started buying records on LP in earnest in the summer of 1976, when Led Zeppelin II came out. My entire album collection comes from that year, and it has remained basically the same ever since. In 1977, I went to San Diego again and went to one of the two record stores in the town. It was right on top of the 101. I was an hour early for the show, and the record store was closed. While I was there, I decided to see if there were any new Zeppelin albums. I didn’t see any, so I walked down the block to the book store, which was always open at 8pm, 9pm on a Wednesday night. I asked about all the Led Zeppelin stuff, and the guy told me they had some copies left over from a day before. He offered me one of the remaining copies of Houses of the Holy. I said sure, because I had seen it on record store shelves for weeks before, but I wanted to support the local musician I knew from seeing him play in the local clubs. I was at one of the record stores in San Diego in 1977, and I bought a copy of Houses of the Holy. In my mind, this was an essential release because of the title song, “Houses of the Holy.” It starts out with a deep, dark, ambient sound. It makes me think of the sounds on the cover of “The Dark Side of the Moon.” It gradually picks up with a high-pitched sound in the same frequency as a siren. The mood shifts from dark ambient to heavy rock as Plant sings the line, “And we shall not be moved.” Then, suddenly, the entire guitar is tuned a half step lower. In the last minute of the song, the guitars build from a whisper to a powerful screaming noise and finally a sustained heavy riff. There is no lead guitar on this track, so Page uses a pick in this context. He slides it across the strings to create these amazing guitar sounds. I call it an “up down picking sound.” He almost sounds like there is no pick in his hand. I call it “the Page sound.” Page and Plant are both excellent singers. However, the key to understanding their sound is the rhythm guitar, which is what creates the music. Page sounds as if he’s playing only the melody line in most of the songs, while Plant plays the rhythm. On “The Ocean,” which is the last song on the album, both guitarists are picking out the melody line, but they both slide their picks across the strings to create rhythm. Page also creates some wonderful atmospheric moments on his acoustic guitars during these recordings. Page gets to be so creative on this album. This album made me want to go and buy an old house and fix it up, make a home studio, and start writing my own music. I didn’t do this, but this album inspired me in the music and songwriting. My very first album of Led Zeppelin, and it’s the one with the most memorable songs, “The Rain Song” and “Since I’ve Been Loving You.” I’m not sure if you’ve seen the promo video, but Led Zeppelin in 1969 had just released “Celebration of the Ladder” on the “DVD” release. “Celebration” has become one of the most popular music videos of all time. It was the first video to use split-screen for a picture-in-picture effect. This was the first music video to use this technique. And how did Led Zeppelin do it? They sent a camera crew up to Wales to film in the studio. The crew rented a camera in the lobby, which ran on tape. Once inside the studio, they spliced a second camera to the machine and shot it. Today, this is second nature, but in 1969, this technology was a brilliant idea. Zeppelin then edited the video down to 10 minutes, and had it processed in New York. They created the entire thing on