Music / Physical Graffiti

Talk of days for which they sit and wait
All will be revealed

Physical Graffiti is the sixth studio album by the English rock band Led Zeppelin, released as a double album on 24 February 1975 through the band's vanity imprint Swan Song Records.

The band wrote and recorded eight new songs at Headley Grange. These eight songs stretched the total playing time of the record beyond a single LP's optimal length,^note The eight songs from the 1974 sessions ran for some 54 minutes, which still would fit on a single LP if the grooves were spaced closer together, but this in turn requires reducing the average volume of the record and therefore reduces the signal to noise ratio (and thus the sound quality). Moreover, if a record has narrow enough grooves, a worn or damaged needle can even destroy the record. As a result, artists typically avoided including more than about 23 minutes per LP side if they could help it, although much longer single LPs have been produced. so they made this a double album by including one outtake from Led Zeppelin III^note "Bron-Yr-Aur", and three each from Led Zeppelin IV^note "Down by the Seaside", "Night Flight", "Boogie with Stu" and Houses of the Holy^note "The Rover", "Houses of the Holy", "Black Country Woman", including the unused title track. This resulted in an album that covered even more stylistic ground than their other albums.

As a result, Physical Graffiti was a commercial and critical success (even garnering praise from Rolling Stone, of all places, which had disparaged most of the band's previous works). It has sold nearly ten million copies worldwide and continues to be one of the band's most critically acclaimed works for showcasing the band's mastery of a wide diversity of styles.

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Tracklist:

Disc One

Side One

1. "Custard Pie" (4:15)
2. "The Rover" (5:36)
3. "In My Time of Dying" (11:08)

Side Two

4. "Houses of the Holy" (4:01)
5. "Trampled Under Foot" (5:36)
6. "Kashmir" (8:37)

Disc Two

Side Three

7. "In the Light" (8:47)
8. "Bron-Yr-Aur" (2:06)
9. "Down by the Seaside" (5:15)
10. "Ten Years Gone" (6:34)

Side Four

11. "Night Flight" (3:38)
12. "The Wanton Song" (4:08)
13. "Boogie with Stu" (3:52)
14. "Black Country Woman" (4:24)
15. "Sick Again" (4:42)

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Principal Members:

• John Bonham – drums, percussion
• John Paul Jones – bass guitar, organ, acoustic and electric piano, mellotron, guitar, mandolin, VCS 3 synthesiser, Hohner clavinet, Hammond organ, string arrangement
• Jimmy Page – electric, acoustic, lap steel and slide guitar, mandolin, production
• Robert Plant – lead vocals, harmonica, acoustic guitar on "Boogie with Stu"

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In My Time of Troping:

• Auto Erotica: "Trampled Under Foot" is a strange example because it's not necessarily about having sex in a car; it uses car parts as a barely veiled metaphor for sexual activity. This usage was no doubt inspired by similar imagery in Robert Johnson's song "Terraplane Blues", but Johnson's song was about infidelity, whereas Zeppelin's song is just about giving into sexual temptation.
• Badass Boast: "Custard Pie" has a surprisingly subtle one (by this band's standards, at least). The "back door man" is a common trope in blues, where a woman's lover runs out the back door to avoid being caught by her boyfriend/husband. "Custard Pie" inverts this:
  See me comin', throw your man out the door
  • The implication is that the singer is so good in bed she'll kick her man out of the house to be with him.
• Epic Instrumental Opener: "In The Light" features a lengthy keyboard intro by John Paul Jones.
• Epic Rocking: 4 of the 15 songs on this album go over 6 minutes. At more than eleven minutes long, "In My Time of Dying" is Led Zeppelin's longest officially released studio track ever.
• Genre Roulette: Even by Zeppelin standards, this one is extremely diverse, covering Hard Rock ("Houses of the Holy", "The Wanton Song", "Sick Again"), Stevie Wonder-style funk-rock ("Trampled Under Foot"), blues-rock ("Custard Pie", "In My Time of Dying"), Progressive Rock ("Ten Years Gone", "In the Light"), Eastern-influenced symphonic rock ("Kashmir", "In the Light"), country-rock ("Down by the Seaside", "Black Country Woman", "Night Flight"), folk ("Bron-Yr-Aur"), soft rock ("Down by the Seaside", "Ten Years Gone"), and numerous other styles.
• Groupie Brigade: Plant's pity for the underaged groupies that would flock to the band's hotel rooms is the subject of "Sick Again".
• Instrumental: "Bron-Yr-Aur".
• Intercourse with You: It's a Zeppelin album, so of course roughly half the songs are this.
• In the Style of/Musical Pastiche: "Trampled Under Foot" is in the style of Stevie Wonder (specifically, "Superstition").
• Love Nostalgia Song: "Ten Years Gone", written for one of Plant's old girlfriends who'd given him a choice between her and his music career.
  "I was working my ass off before joining Zeppelin. A lady I really dearly loved said, 'Right. It's me or your fans.' Not that I had fans, but I said, 'I can't stop, I've got to keep going.' She's quite content these days, I imagine. She's got a washing machine that works by itself and a little sports car. We wouldn't have anything to say anymore. I could probably relate to her, but she couldn't relate to me. I'd be smiling too much. Ten years gone, I'm afraid. Anyway, there's a gamble for you."
• Loving a Shadow: "Ten Years Gone"
  'Vixen in my dreams, of great surprise to me; in the midst I see your face the way it used to be''
• Premature Encapsulation: "Houses of the Holy" was meant to be the previous album's title track.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Biographers of the band posited that "Sick Again" was at least partly based on Jimmy Page's widely documented relationship with Lori Mattix, an underage groupie.
• Recurring Riff: "Sick Again" reuses some riffs from "In My Time of Dying", particularly towards the end of the song.
• The Something Song: "The Wanton Song".
• Studio Chatter:
  • At the end of "In My Time of Dying", Bonham can be heard coughing, so Plant sings the word "Cough" as a Throw It In!. Then Bonham says, "That's gotta be the one, hasn't it?" Another voice, likely engineer Andy Johns, says, "Come have a listen, then," and Bonham replies, "Oh yes, thank you."
  • "Black Country Woman", which was recorded in Mick Jagger's garden, opens with some studio chatter about the recording process and an airplane flying overhead: "Gotta get this airplane off." "Naw, leave it, yeah."
• Uncommon Time:
  • "Kashmir" has, in the main section, the drums playing straight 4/4 while the strings, guitar, and bass are in 3/4. There's also a bar of 9/8 before the bridge.
  • Although "Sick Again" is mostly in 4/4, the band extended several measures by an extra beat where they felt it better suited the rhythm of the song. As a result, it has several measures of 5/4 as well.

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