1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 196. Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin III (1970)

 

The Zep get a bit more acoustic with this album. Although it opens with the barnstorming rock anthem about Viking invasions, The Immigrant Song, it then turns to the much more stripped back Friends, which manages to use chord progressions and a melody line that evoke a sense of unease and incompletion. Gallows Pole is an arrangement of a traditional folk tune (trying to think if it’s been done in this list before, I don’t think so. Bellowhead did a version). There’s a bit of banjo in this one to give it a slightly blue-grass feel.

The track Tangerine starts off acoustic, but also includes some electric steel guitar, and sounds very very like a Byrds or Crosby, Stills and Nash number (Dave Bleedin’ Crosby again). This was apparently written when Page was still with The Yardbirds, hence why it sounds more like that style of music than the hard rock of previous Led Zeppelin. Apart from Immigrant Song, the other more classically Zep track is probably the bluesy Since I’ve Been Loving You.

I thought I was familiar with all of the numbered Led Zeppelin albums, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard this one in full. I missed the harder elements, it felt like the balance was too much in the direction of the folk/country rock popular at this time. That’s not to say that it’s a bad album, and I think it’s good for artists to explore different styles – while sometimes it's nice to know exactly what you are going to get from an album, it can also get a bit stagnant after a while. This is a step on the evolution towards The Battle of Evermore (and ultimately Jimmy Page twiddling about on mandolins).