The review of blues rock albums released in 1970 continues with two classic rock bands that need no introduction. Both albums came about after extensive touring in 1969. We start with one of the best live performances ever captured on Vinyl.
After the release of their classic rock opera Tommy in May 1969, The Who embarked on a US tour in October and November. The band’s sound engineer Bob Pridden was put in charge of the monumental task of recording each show, a total of 30 performances across the US. The goal was to record everything and after the tour select the best tracks for a release of a live album. The group’s bass player John Entwistle told Beat Instrumental in January 1970: “We always have been more of a live group than a recording group. I think that we’ve gone for too clean a sound on record. We’ve never been able to reproduce our stage sound on record – we’re too loud for one thing.”
Indeed at that time capturing a quality sounding live performance of a rock group was not a simple thing. The portable recording equipment suitable for large venues was in its infancy, but this time The Who were prepared. Entwistle added: “We’re recording our next album live with our own equipment. We’ve let other people record us live in the past, but the vocals always came out badly. On the new one we’re doing it straight from the PA plus a couple of mikes, one on my side and one on the drums. Everything has worked out OK except for the bass drum sound, but we’ve got a mixer now and a better tape recorder, which is giving us a much better sound than before.”
When the tour ended, Pete Townshend sat with Bob Pridden and a boatload of tapes. The following conversation ensued:
Pete: “So what have we got?”
Bob: “There’s definitely an album here.”
Pete: “So which show do you rate as the best?”
Bob: “They’re all amazing, Pete.”
Pete: “But which one stands out?”
Bob: “They all sort of stand out. They’re all fantastic.”
Pete: “So we should just pick one at random? Let’s have a look at your notes.”
The gifted sound man remained silent. What notes? He was tasked with capturing the sound, not creating a log of the best performances. Townshend had no time nor patience to listen and sift through hours of tape. A new idea sparked in his mind – record a couple more shows with the intent of releasing them as the live album. What to do with the US tour tapes, asked Bob? Townshend recalls: “I made one of the stupidest decisions of my life. ‘Destroy them,’ I snapped.” The 1969 summer concerts with full performances of Tommy are lost forever, including the seven shows recorded in Tommy week at the Fillmore in New York, and two standout performances at the Boston Tea Party. Ah, the mistakes of our youth.
The date was set for two performances in Leeds and Hull. The Leeds performance took place on February 14, 1970 at the University of Leeds Refectory and it was the band’s first UK performance of that year. This was after a short European tour in January, and Townshend said the day of the Leeds show that they were exhausted physically and mentally. But this was a Valentine’s Day show and the band was in top form. Townshend: “It just happened to be one of the greatest audiences we’ve ever played to in our whole career, just by chance. They were incredible and although you can’t hear a lot of shouting and screaming in the background, they’re civilized but they’re crazy.”
Pete Townshend recalls that when the band arrived at the venue, they found, “A junior engineer from Pye studios had showed up in a van with a bunch of bits and pieces in military-grade boxes, and was wiring them together in a room backstage. It hardly seemed an improvement on the basic rig Bob and I had dreamed up for the US tour, and I hoped there wouldn’t be any problems.”
The recording from the show in Hull was deemed unusable for missing the bass track on a number of songs. Townshend mixed the Leeds tape in his home studio and was not happy with the quality of recording: “They did a terrible job on the recording, they f****d it up incredibly. They got crackles all the way through.” However, realizing how great the show was, he decided to release it anyway. The album labels included the message “Crackling Noises OK – Do Not Correct!”
Just before taking the stage at Leeds, the band was interviewed for an article in the Leeds University student magazine. Keith Moon commented on the difficulty the band faces in making good-sounding records: “We don’t make particularly good records. We have good ideas but not always a good sound. We are difficult to record because we don’t work any different in the studio to on stage. Drumsticks are in the air when they should be on the drums and arms are flying when they should be on guitar.”
Regardless of the hurdles and difficulties, the resulting album Live At Leeds is considered one of the best live rock albums of all time. A review in the Yorkshire Evening Post, released shortly after the performance, recognized its significance: “I hope the record manages to generate some of the tremendous excitement The Who generates on stage, as well as their musical brilliance. The blasting ferocity gives an edge to their musical precision rather than distracting from it.” Witnessing The Who performing live on stage was indeed a spectacle to behold: “Townshend, leaping and cavorting in a white boiler suit, the inexhuastible and furious Moon, and Daltrey, resplendent in his famous fringes, swinging the microphone like a lasso.” Interestingly, the reporter kept a keen eye and ear on the quiet one: “Behind it all the black-clad figure of John Entistle stands immobile. Entwistle was the one who struck me with his musical ability. His bass lines, unlike those of Jack Bruce, are seldom complicated, but are so well constructed and blend so beautifully with the urgent sound of The Who.”
The album opens with the band’s unique cover of Young Man Blues. What you hear is not exactly what jazz pianist, composer and singer Mose Allison had in mind when he first recorded that song in 1957. But he was an open-minded musician, and after this version was released he called it the command performance of the song.
If The Who were a contender for the biggest rock act in 1970, the next album in this review certainly belongs to another formidable contender. In the spring of 1970 all members of Led Zeppelin needed a break. Since the beginning of 1969 they went on 10 tours, travelling the UK, Europe and the US and performing a total of 190 shows. This was a grueling schedule, during which they still managed to record and release their second album Led Zeppelin II, featuring the hit Whole Lotta Love. In May of 1970 Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, seeking an idyllic and pastoral place to rest and write songs, spent a few weeks at a cottage up a hill in mid-Wales named Bron-Yr-Aur. The 18-century brick house was as spartan as it gets – no electricity, no running water. The two musicians arrived with their acoustic guitars and embarked on a songwriting spree that yielded material they sprinkled over their early 1970s albums. Most significantly, the acoustic nature of the songs dictated a major shift in style on their third album, Led Zeppelin III, released in October 1970.
Robert Plant later recalled the blissful time he spent with Page in that cottage: “No matter how cute and comical it might be now to look back at that, it gave us so much energy, because we were really close to something. We believed. It was absolutely wonderful, and my heart was so light and happy. At that time, at that age, 1970 was like the biggest blue sky I ever saw.’” Page agreed and added: “It was the first time I really came to know Robert. Actually living together at Bron-Yr-Aur, as opposed to occupying nearby hotel rooms. The songs took us into areas that changed the band.”
Since his early career as a guitarist Page was influenced by a wide range of music. Visiting London coffee houses in the early and mid-1960s he took notice of acoustic guitar virtuosos such as Davey Graham, John Renbourn, and most importantly Bert Jansch, about which he said, “As much as Hendrix had done on the electric, I really think he’s done on the acoustic.” He got acquainted with Indian music and met Ravi Shankar when the sitar master started performing in England. Meeting Shankar after a performance in London, “I explained that I had a sitar but I didn’t know how to tune it. He was very nice to me and wrote down the tuning on a piece of paper.” Middle Eastern and North African influences are also in the mix on Led Zeppelin III, as can clearly be heard on Friends. Strings arrangement by John Paul Jones:
Coming back from Wales, Page and Plant together with John Paul Jones and John Bonham entered Olympic studio in London to record their newly written material. After their rural experience at Bron-Yr-Aur, the studio felt too sterile and the band struggled in creating the right feel for the songs. Seeking to recreate the needed atmosphere, they decamped in a mansion in Hampshire named Headley Grange, aided by the Rolling Stones’ mobile studio.
The centerpiece of the album, and one of led Zeppelin’s signature numbers, is the slow blues rock classic ‘Since I’ve Been Loving You’. Like many of the band’s songs from their early albums, the song has its origin in a previously recorded tune. In 1968 Moby Grape released the song ‘Never’ on the giveaway Grape Jam album that accompanied the band’s second release, Wow. The opening lines of ‘Since I’ve Been Loving You’ are ‘Working from seven to eleven every night, it really makes life a drag, I don’t think that’s right’. Other than working different shifts, Plant pretty much sang Moby Grape’s lyrics almost verbatim: ‘Working from eleven to seven every night, ought to make life a drag, yeah, and I know that ain’t right.’
But lifting up the lyrics did not prevent Plant from giving this song one of his best vocal performances. Richard Digby Smith, who was the tape operator at the recording session, remembers: “I can see Robert at the mike now. He was so passionate. Lived every line. What you got on the record is what happened. His only preparation was an herbal cigarette and a couple of shots of Jack Daniel’s. I remember Pagey pushing him, ‘Let’s try the outro chorus again, improvise a bit more.’ There was a hugeness about everything Zeppelin did. I mean, look behind you and there was Peter Grant sitting on the sofa – the whole sofa.”
The song also features one of Jimmy Page’s best ever solos. For a musician who graced us with so many wonderful performances, this is high praise indeed. It did not come easy, though, for the gifted guitarist struggled before he was able to get it just right. Page remembers: “It was a tricky number to record. It was hard to capture the exact dynamics and the overall tension of it, and it was crucial to get the rise and fall of it. We had attempted to record it before and it didn’t come off. To play a blues in C minor is not necessarily that difficult a thing, but our approach was pretty unique. John Paul Jones was definitely integral to creating some of the chordal movement.”
Page recorded his solo after the rest of the track has been played and put on tape by all other band members. He talked in detail about how he approached this task: “After hearing this wonderful construction where everyone is playing so beautifully together and making their own statements— big statements, massive statements, accents and phrases, locking into it and swooning—I had to deliver a solo that would live up to this incredible buildup. It was like getting ready for a hundred-yard dash or something. Just vibing up for it, psyching myself up and coming up with some idea of how to get the solo off, and then … go!” Indeed Page managed to deliver the goods and played a solo for the ages.
Since I’ve Been Loving You proved to be a milestone and a turning point in Led Zeppelin’s musical direction. Jimmy Page talked about its importance: “The people reviewing the album when it first came out literally didn’t understand what they were hearing. We all do now, but at the time it was just too much for them to be able to work out the significance. With ‘Since I’ve Been Loving You,’ we were setting the scene of something that was yet to come. It was meant to push the envelope. We were playing in the spirit of blues, but trying to take it into new dimensions dictated by the mass consciousness of the four players involved.”
And one last anecdote about this great song, this one involving a piece of hardware in need of lubing. John Bonham played exclusively on Ludwig drums for the duration of his career in Led Zeppelin. The American-made drums were more expensive but considered louder than the British-made Premiere, and many British rock drummers preferred to use them for that reason. In an era when miking up bass drums in live shows was not yet common, it made a difference.
As part of his setup, Bonham used a Ludwig SpeedKing bass drum pedal, which was fondly nicknamed the “Squeak King” because it, well, squeaked a lot. It is definitely audible on ‘Since I’ve Been Loving You’, and for true seekers of squeaks go listen to the oil-hungry pedal on The Ocean, The Rain Song, Houses of the Holy, Ten Years Gone, Bonzo’s Montreux, the live version of I Can’t Quit You Baby on Coda and All My Love on In Through The Out Door.
Sources:
When Giants Walked the Earth: A Biography of Led Zeppelin, by Mick Wall
Light & Shade: Conversations with Jimmy Page, by Brad Tolinski