Yellow desert screen

On this day in 1973, Robert Plant was headed off to enjoy his "Shangri-La beneath the summer moon."

Led Zeppelin was taking time off from the stage and the spotlight and the hustle and bustle of success. Just having completed a three-month tour of the United States that culminated in the filming of a three-night concert series at Madison Square Garden in New York, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and John Bonham returned to their homes in England to be with their families.

"I went past the point of no return physically quite a while back, but now I've gone past the mental point," Page had told a reporter late into the tour. "I've only kept going by functioning automatically."

Robert Plant's idea of relaxation was going to view the "yellow desert screen" of the Sahara desert in a section of southern Morocco. He seemed to value places of seclusion, and the desert provided him just that.

Driving down a long road between Goulimine and Tantan, Plant became inspired. Describing the route in a later interview, he said, "The road went on and on. It was a single-track road which cut neatly through the desert. Two miles to the east and west were ridges of sand rock. It basically looked like you were driving down a channel, this dilapidated road, and there was seemingly no end to it."

Plant's experiences there would become the foundation for lyrics he later wrote for a song first called "Driving to Kashmir" and then renamed just "Kashmir." It was one of the pieces Led Zeppelin would be recording by the end of the year for the album eventually called Physical Graffiti.

Geographically, Kashmir was another continent away from Plant's trek on the northwestern coast of Africa. Situated in south-central Asia and bordering China to the north and east, Kashmir is home to lush scenic views of the Himalaya mountain range.

Plant had never been there. "It's my ambition to go to Kashmir, and I'm saving that as the last trek," he said in 1976.

Kashmir was divided into sections in 1972 to be controlled by two of its neighboring countries, Pakistan to the west and India to the south. Militaristic rule has been in effect in the territory since 1990, and control of Kashmir is still in dispute today.

Led Zeppelin was at another milestone in the middle of its existence, with a camera crew having been able to capture three shows on concert and plans to assemble The Song Remains the Same, a feature film incorporating scenes developed from the band members' imaginations. Another project being devised was the creation of a record label.

The challenge for the band in the second half of 1973 would be not to take off too much time in 1973 so the unit could get back to creating music. "After a couple of months, I'd get itchy feet again," Page told an interviewer when speaking about time off.

Plant tended to agree with the guitarist. On the night of the final concert of the 1973 tour, he noted, "We've got a bunch of new songs written, and we can't wait to record them."

Happy Spring!

On this day in 1973, the prerelease promotion of Led Zeppelin's fifth album reached British television as the BBC's Old Grey Whistle Test aired a new song.

Just a week before Houses of the Holy hit the shelves, the song "No Quarter" received special treatment, being played against an abstract film clip on Bob Harris' television program.

"No Quarter" was just one of eight songs on Houses of the Holy, the first new Led Zeppelin album released since the untitled fourth LP in November 1971. Jimmy Page told Bravo in West Germany, "We have enough songs," he said. "If we went by that we would bring out a new album every month, but we want to put out only good stuff."

But "good stuff" to one person can be filler to another. Disc and Music Echo published a review whose headline read "Zeppelin Lose Their Way." It called the LP "an incredibly inconsistent piece of work" and said that Page and Plant were "strangely sluggish and vacant" throughout.

The review complained, "They seem to have run out of good melody lines as witnessed by 'The Crunge,' a straight jam that barrels along on a couple of chords and ends with Plant crying for someone to 'take it, take it' and 'has anyone seen the bridge?' It cuts out without them ever finding it." It also said, "'The Ocean' is another track that fizzles to an inconclusive ending."

Even the Melody Maker's Chris Welch wrote something bad about Houses of the Holy. The diehard supporter of Led Zeppelin he was, he filled his review with comments about how the band was capable of producing such wonderful music. "Thus it grieves me very much when they allow their tremendously high standards to slip," he intoned. Welch wrote that "The Song Remains the Same" was the only song with any buzz of excitement.

The New Musical Express may have been the only British magazine to cast the album in a wholly positive light. Mentioning "The Crunge," Roy Carr stated, "Brother Bobby shows James Brown where it's at." Carr also offered that "No Quarter" is "another faultless track which I'm sure points a direction for things to come."

The song that seemed too hard to swallow for most critics was "D'yer Mak'er." In the negative reviews, Welch called the tune "sadly indulgent," and Disc and Music Echo said it was "another fill track, a not very amusing parody on a '50s boy-loses-girl-and-weeps teen ballad." But Carr suggested in his favorable New Musical Express review, "Own up. Like everything they attempt, it's a bloody great track with a fine workout from Bonzo. See what a diet of bananas and best bitter can do."

Crystal clear

On this day in 1973, Led Zeppelin spent the evening of St. Patrick's Day playing a concert at the Olympiahalle in Munich, West Germany.

Of the 12 shows played on that tour, seven of them were in West Germany. Led Zeppelin's performances in the six cities of Essen, Hamburg, Munich, Nuremberg, Offenburg and West Berlin contained some of the band's finest moments, many of which were captured in gorgeous audio by pristine soundboard recordings. Low-generation copies of these soundboard tape fragments have found their way into trading circles over the years.

Audience noise is minimal even between songs. What is more audible between songs is the chatter onstage. At times, the loud voice of John Bonham is heard feeding lines for Robert Plant to announce to the audience. Sometimes, jokes and laughter between the band members are heard. And every once in a while, Jimmy Page will use his guitar to play a line of Italian opera and follow it up in a full tenor voice.

But to say that the most creative music actually took place between songs would be overlooking some brilliant interplay on "Dazed and Confused." In fact, the marathon versions of that song recorded in March 1973 are widely recognized as the best ever renditions. Most notably, author Luis Rey sketched an outline of the song's movements, using March 1973 versions as the basis. But not every move was predictable. These are the prime cases of when Led Zeppelin was, as John Paul Jones says, "the band of nods." A funky drum pattern from Bonham could signal the beginning of "The Crunge" within "Dazed and Confused," but Bonham, Jones and Page could just as easily segue into a pattern more like "Walter's Walk." These are the ultimate versions of the song.

Furthermore, Led Zeppelin's onstage creativity was not limited to just that. "Whole Lotta Love" also had its moments, both in and out of a medley. Page's Theremin produces some hectic sounds in the instrumental section. But the medleys that followed it read like a great radio station with the best of blues, rockabilly, soul and rock. Plant could sing like John Lee Hooker, Elvis Presley, James Brown or himself all within the span of a few minutes.