“Led Zeppelin II” was released on October 22, 1969, the day I was born. Led Zeppelin recorded the album while touring in support of their debut album that was released January 13 of the same year. Unlike most of the band's other albums, nearly all the songs found on “Led Zeppelin II” have received radio airplay either on terrestrial album-oriented rock (A.O.R.) or classic rock radio stations. Thirty years after its release, the album had sold over 12 million copies worldwide.
My first exposure to the album's lead track, “Whole Lotta Love”, was from Night Flight, a weekend cable television show on The USA Network which aired from 1981 until 1988. In addition to video montages of the latest bands and movements in popular music, the show also broadcast footage from Beat-Club, a German music television program which ran from 1965 until 1972. Among the bands featured on Beat-Club were Led Zeppelin, in a video collage that was a combination of still photos of the band performing and some live footage that was projected onto a separate surface, making a hazy, dream-like presentation that was both psychedelic and intriguing. As a teen who had only been familiar with the band's 1971 epic “Stairway to Heaven”, I was unaware of the song prior to seeing this. Though it was edited down to just over two minutes, I was still captivated by it.
When a classmate offered to sell me his cassette of “Led Zeppelin II” after we discussed the song I had just discovered, I enthusiastically agreed. After the purchase, I listened to the album on my Sanyo portable cassette player almost non-stop. The range of the material was unlike anything I had heard before. Some of it seemed timeless, while “Whole Lotta Love”, the instrumental “Moby Dick”, and final track “Bring It on Home” all sounded like the classics they had by then become.
The album's brown cover shows a sepia tone group portrait of German World War I pilots with the four band members superimposed within it. In the background, the outline of the Hindenburg and smoke clouds are visible, referencing the artwork of their debut album.
Lead guitarist Jimmy Page is listed as the album's producer, and the main sound engineer for the album is Eddie Kramer who was renowned for his work with Jimi Hendrix. Lead Vocalist Robert Plant is credited with co-writing four of the nine tracks with Page. Bassist/organist John Paul Jones is credited on five of the songs, and drummer John Bonham is listed as co-writer of five songs as well. As much of the material was composed while the band toured, some of the improvisations lifted material from blues legends Chester Burnett (“The Lemon Song”) and Willie Dixon (“Whole Lotta Love” and “Bring It on Home”). Initially, these writers were not credited on the songs, but their heirs sued the band and won their place in the songwriting credits and their respective royalties.
I can remember first listening to the album and marveling at Plant's impressive vocal delivery. Scaling the heights of his range at the drop of a hat, he also croons with a distillation of the great American rock vocalists who preceded him. Jones's basslines sound smooth and mellow at times, (“What Is and What Should Never Be”, “Ramble On”) and urgently heavy at others, (“Whole Lotta Love”, “Heartbreaker”). Bonham's dynamic drumming explodes multiple times throughout the album. “Moby Dick” features his signature drum solo, and the percussion section of “Whole Lotta Love” adds to the song's mystique.
However, the album is a showcase of skill from Page. He delivers lead guitar pyrotechnics across the songs, utilizing the beefier Gibson Les Paul as his main electric guitar rather than the debut's twangier Fender Telecaster. His riffs on “Living Loving Maid (She's Just a Woman)” and “Heartbreaker”, coupled with the acoustic rhythm and lead lines on “Thank You” are among his most iconic.
Led Zeppelin would make more inventive albums in the future, but “Led Zeppelin II” demonstrates their early range and willingness to push the limits of their creativity. Over five and a half decades after its original release, it is still a thrilling listen.
(c)2024, 2025 Alex McGill