Rediscovering Houses of the Holy
November 15, 2003
by David Brown

I just purchased Led Zeppelin's Complete Studio Recordings box set. I spent much of high school listening to Zeppelin off of tapes, most of which were copied from friends back in the glorious heyday of the dual cassette recorder. As I moved away from cassettes to CDs, I didn’t upgrade much Zeppelin – just the 1st album and Physical Graffiti. I also got the original 4 CD box set, which covered a lot of material. I felt I was pretty much set for a while. Especially considering that between wearing out my tapes and years of overexposure to homogenized classic rock radio (“Here’s the start of another Led Zeppelin six-pack! Only on [insert your local classic rock station here]!”), I was pretty much burned out on Led Zep for a while.

But we always go back to the those we love, so the remasters were finally brought home in one fell swoop, courtesy of a steal of a deal from the fine folks in Terre Haute, Indiana (you record club geeks know what I’m talking about).

Today I’m reindoctrinating myself with Houses of the Holy. First of all, I’m realizing how much I missed the first time around. My stereo circa 1987 was a Fisher compact unit with zero bass response. And those little headphones that came with my Sony Walkman apparently weren’t designed to pump bottom end into your skull. Now that I’ve upgraded my ‘kwipment, these songs sound soooo much better. I have a nice set of German headphones I’m listening through right now (they’re fucking GERMAN!) with amazing bass response, and I find myself not even paying attention to Jimmy Page. I’m unable to focus on anything but Bonzo and Jonesy. Of course HOTH was more of a JPJ album: "No Quarter," "Rain Song," lots of nice keyboard work throughout. Great stuff, and not yet cheesy (see "All of My Love" – apologies to people who love that song, but the synth sound makes it a nickel short of unlistenable for me).

I also realized that the imperfection in the very beginning of "Dancing Days" was actually on the master. I always thought it was my crappy tape. As the song opens, the sound kind of breaks down, like they were playing a little too loudly for the mics to handle. Low and behold, it’s right there on my remastered CD! I like that. Nostalgic.

I never really liked "The Crunge." Probably because the guitar part is so lame and uninteresting for someone of Page’s inventiveness. It sounds like something I would come up with. But the drum/bass groove is so solid and sounds great on the remaster. I also have to hand it to Plant: he somehow pulls the lyrics off, even though they sound like they were improvised on the spot (as indeed the whole song does). Check out these lyrics: “I ain’t gonna tell you nothing I can’t tell you no more she’s my baby let me tell you I love her so…” That’s called not getting in the way of the groove. No Norse mythology or flimsy sexual allegory – just words.

And I almost forgot about Jonesy’s little synthesizer lick. It comes out of left field and sounds completely out of place. The first time you hear it, you look behind you, wondering where that strange noise is coming from, like maybe something’s caught up in the dishwasher. Yet it’s incredibly endearing. That in combination with the lyrics plus the tag line at the end (Plant joking about the fact that the song has no bridge) all give the song a goofy campiness that makes it work. After all, how could anyone take a bunch of skinny white English boys playing seriously syncopated funk seriously?

If I have one complaint about HOTH, it’s that there isn’t enough loud, sloppy guitar playing from Page, although I could make that complaint about almost any album after the 2nd one. Page has always been one of my absolute favorites on guitar. Not just because of his creative approach, masterful composition skills or flamboyant spontaneity (somehow I’ve started describing Elton John). I love his willingness to sacrifice precision for speed, to risk everything in order to keep careening further into the void, ever faster, higher, LOUDER. He was the embodiment of everything the electric guitar was meant to be. His playing was RAUNCHY (as Plant described it in an interview recalled in the liner notes of the remasters). Sure, I love his acoustic songs, but that’s not what ultimately makes me worship him in the pantheon with Hendrix and precious few others. It’s that devil-may-care, suck-it! attitude of "Dazed and Confused," "Heartbreaker," and "Custard Pie." But let’s not hold it against him on HOTH. "The Rain Song" and "The Song Remains the Same" more than make up for it.

(David Brown is a volunteer staff writer for 2 Walls Webzine)