You need POLLIN': Favorite track on Led Zeppelin II

Fun fact — this album came out exactly one month after I was born, so I'm basically Led Zeppelin II years old.

In Slade years you’re 12 tho.

ramble on and what is and what should never be are prob two of my top five zep songs

since i've been loving you, achilles last stand, and when the levee breaks are the other three, i think

maybe good times, bad times

don't think i've listened to this one in 15 years tbh. instinct says ramble on but i will relisten

I still love the overplayed and disreputable "Whole Lotta Love." "Ramble On" next.

The stutter-step triplets in the rhythm right after Plant yowls "Ramble on" — dunh dunh dunh — are so great.

My least favorite LZ, so much so that when I relistened to it a month ago, it had been at least 25 years since the previous listen. Muddy sound, more gross machismo lyrically, rock drum solo = filler no matter how good the drummer is, bleh. Voted WIAWSNB.

"Heartbreaker" for me, LZ's early sound at their most distilled, bonus points for the amazing BBC version

upon relisten it's definitely What Is and What Should Never Be

gross machismo lyrically

He's just talking about making lemonade.

"Thank You" is the one that always gets me. I love the fade-out, which is essentially half the song.

The middle section of Whole Lotta Love is still amazingly insane - love the way they drop the hammer at the end of that and go back into the song.

It's between that, What Is And What Should Never Be, or Ramble On.

I had this on cassette first and have still never been able to grok the original running order.

Relistened to this recently and was struck by just how important the Bring It On Home riff is to my conception of what Led Zeppelin is.

My least favorite LZ, so much so that when I relistened to it a month ago, it had been at least 25 years since the previous listen. Muddy sound, more gross machismo lyrically, rock drum solo = filler no matter how good the drummer is, bleh. Voted WIAWSNB.

― that's when I reach for my copy of Revolver (WmC)

at a certain point for me pop culture misogyny wraps around and becomes both hilarious and kind of awesome, and whole lotta love definitely passes that point. basically immediately the residents responded to the song with "holelottadick", which is great enough, but then tina turner comes along and records her version without changing any of the lyrics at all. tina turner singing about how she's gonna give you every inch of her love is one of the high points of human civilization as a whole, and without led zeppelin, we just wouldn't have had that. that's probably the best thing "whole lotta love" wrought, but i do wanna give an honorable mention to the italo version with the singer who clearly can't manage the title and just sings "wanna walalala".

This is harder than I thought it would be. "Heartbreaker," "What Is and What Should Never Be" and "Ramble On" are all strong contenders.

I'll even stan for "Moby Dick" just for sheer heaviness.

"Ramble On" rules but so does the stereo separation guitar transition - and gong! - at the end of "What Is and What Should Never Be."

if "heartbreaker"/"living lovin' maid" were one song, i'd vote for that. otherwise, after decades of listening to this, the one that still most excites me is "bring it on home". this is one of the ultimate RIFF albums

I know it took them until the '80s to settle up and pay up, but with two songwriting credits here I think Willie Dixon and his estate have probably done pretty well off of this through the years.

WIAWSNB is absolutely top-5 Zep. one of the first songs of theirs that really floored me when I was like 13-14 years old too

I bought II on vinyl originally, it had an off-center label on Side 1. I still hear the "psssh . . . psssh . . . psssh" of the needle hitting the label at the end of "Thank You," regardless of the medium.

Ramble On > WIAWSNB > Bring it on Home > Living Loving Maid > Thank You > Whole Lotta Love > Lemon Song > Heartbreaker > Moby Dick

King Curtis did an amazing version of "Whole Lotta Love" where instead of the psychedelic breakdown you get some killer percussion and horns:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oTr8Zk2Pok

Whole Lotta Love has definitely generated the best covers of any Zep tune, right? That central riff is so pliable. The Tina version absolutely kills, I agree, the Italo one is fun, and I love this disco version (especially the shivery strings).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEi-xSYw0Ro

Whoops, try this one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XU1Iz3oqgyc

this is the best led zeppelin record

Mickie Most-produced flute-heavy version, used as the theme music for Top of the Pops for many years:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SzQ7MGhgp8

upon relisten it's definitely What Is and What Should Never Be

Yes indeed.

I love "Thank You" but then I love late-period Small Faces so I would.

Curious if this is the first second album to just be called "II."

ramble on why bcz GOLLUM THE EVIL ONE

The Chieftains 2, came out a few months before LZ2.

https://i.discogs.com/d3gZiHTYWERYDI0Z_n-nfiK5aR5yn-EYQO-XZnncLGs/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:600/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTk0MjY1/OTAtMTUzNTc0MTY0/OC04MjI2LmpwZWc.jpeg

that's different though

Bring it on Home is low key the best track on this album by a lot. I think people tend to not think about it as much because it follows several iconic zep tunes.

re: "thank you", i really like the live versions with the long organ intros. since i'm a mellotron nerd i particularly like the ones from late '72, early '73 when jpj is playing mellotron instead of organ.

my faves from the album are "what is and what should never be", "thank you", and "ramble on". my least faves are "livin' lovin' maid" and "moby dick". "bring it on home" is iconic but i keep forgetting how iconic it is because it has that acoustic intro before that thundering riff comes in. the psychedelic phasing bit of "whole lotta love" is also fucking iconic, but overall "whole lotta love" and "heartbreaker" are just too tainted by classic rock radio for me, at least in their original versions.

i guess the only song i haven't mentioned is "the lemon song" which, uh, exists i guess. i'm not sure why "squeeze my balls until i piss myself" is seen as "sexual", but i've never used a live fish as a dildo either so what do i know?

yeah lemon song was always a skip for me

that bass line tho

The fast jam parts of Lemon Song are great, but yeah the slow psych-blooz parts are my least favorite bits on the album.

Explicating the lyrics of The Lemon Song might be a sign of the end times, but I don't think juice = piss.

oh god

Look, I'm just saying that based on my personal experience, Robert Johnson's allegorical description of penile function is highly physiologically inaccurate.

From the "times when your parents were weird about music" thread:

So when I was growing up in the 70s and 80s my parents were evangelical christians until about the time I graduated high school. When I was 16, a friend got me into Led Zeppelin and I started buying their albums on cassette. After I bought a couple of cassettes, my dad staged an intervention where he forbid me from buying any more "Led Zeppelin tapes". He sat me down and explained to me how Led Zeppelin was wrong, citing "The Lemon Song", and asking me if I knew what it was about and then awkwardly explaining the lyrics to me.

that bass line tho

― budo jeru, Monday, February 12, 2024 7:37 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

OTM. Lemon Song is maybe the best example of JPJ's Motown-style bass playing. If James Jamerson played the blooze.

Listened yesterday, the remaster sounds kinda blown-out. Everything about this album is great until "Living Loving Maid"

I listened to The Man Who Sold The World yesterday immediately afterward, first the new Visconti mix and then the original. It is incredible how much better II sounds, in comparison

My least favorite Zep album? Yes.

ITTOD is spottier but nothing on II rocks me like "In the Evening."

Sonic-wise, I think the biggest and best decision is the foregrounding of Bonham. He sounds enormous, credit to Page for putting the drums so front and center.

Page was a hell of a producer, wasn't he? So much of the Zep sound is sculpted in the studio. It's why live recordings have a hard time competing, the studio stuff sounds so good.

Maid was the one they all agreed didn’t need to be included on the OG Crop Circles box set IIRC

I like Maid a lot as a sort of coda to Heartbreaker, but on its own it's pretty slight.

As a teen LZ fan I felt the psych jam on "Whole Lotta Love" was silly and boring. I was a wrong teen!

Crop circles track sequencing and disc placement is mildly interesting

"whole lotta love" has one of the best guitar solos ever

"Ramble On"

II is not one of my favorite Zeppelin albums, but Page's production is brilliant. I had no idea that it was recorded in a lot of different studios while they were touring.

I was eight when it came out. My father had a copy that he probably played only once or twice. He and his friends were into more grown-up acts like Dylan, the Band, and the Stones. A school friend's sister also had a copy; she was about 13, wore a fedora like Warren Beatty's in Bonnie and Clyde, and was much cooler than my dad.

Sonic-wise, I think the biggest and best decision is the foregrounding of Bonham. He sounds enormous, credit to Page for putting the drums so front and center.

The famous quote, I believe, was more or less "you can make the drums loud or make the guitars loud but you can't make them both loud," and yeah, Page picked Bonham. (To hear the opposite, listen to, like, Motley Crue or some terrible hair metal band in the '80s, where guitars and drums are both up there.)

Best parts of this record are the dual electric harmony leads on Ramble

The second of which resolves from minor to major the same way the Bring it riff does

Fun fact: an old band of mine once tried to replicate the pitter-patter of the "Ramble On" drums in the studio once, but the result sounded like someone cartoonishly beating off, so we dropped it. (Zep would have probably kept it.)

I know the lyrics of Maid are dumb and misogynist, but I think it's a fun precursor to Black Dog.

if you guys ever come my way i can play you my clean bob ludwig mix of Led Zep II thru my Klipschs at the store. its a little frightening. so loud. but clear and bright. the drums on "whole lotta love" are massive and insane. the original pressings sound fine to me but the RL mix is a whole other thing.

Massachusetts or bust

doo-be-doo and bop-bop-a-doo-whoa

Ooh Scott I might take you up on that

Road trip!

I would usually be loathe to suggest a hoffman detour, but I found this to be a really interesting examination of the LZ II mix qualities (good and bad):

https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/led-zeppelin-ii-1988-technidisc-cd-with-different-mastering.768690/#post-19283152

The famous quote, I believe, was more or less "you can make the drums loud or make the guitars loud but you can't make them both loud," and yeah, Page picked Bonham. (To hear the opposite, listen to, like, Motley Crue or some terrible hair metal band in the '80s, where guitars and drums are both up there.)

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, February 13, 2024 3:28 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I hadn't heard this quote, but it's a great point. And Page's guitar sound was also fairly thin and trebly -- I don't remember who it was, but I saw some guitarist on youtube talking about how a good guitar sound/tone in a mix is very different from a good guitar sound/tone on its own, and you sometimes actually want a pretty "thin" sound to fit in well and cut through. I feel like a lot of engineers try to make every instrument individually sound as *good* and full as possible and then the mix is oppressive.

"Ramble On" mostly for the intro alone

jpj's bass on 'what is' and 'lemon song' really is wonderful

ITTOD is spottier but nothing on II rocks me like "In the Evening."

― poppers fueled buttsex crescendo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, February 13, 2024 10:52 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

at this point, why even listen to led zeppelin when you can listen to billy squire?

^^^vegemite girl back to thread

i mean, 'in the dark' is a fantastic late zep song, as is most of 'don't say no'

'lonely is the night' is a straight rip

and awesome

what the fuck is happening

do not deny the big beat

gross

none so blind as those who refuse to rock

billy squier can go to hell

if you guys ever come my way i can play you my clean bob ludwig mix of Led Zep II thru my Klipschs at the store. its a little frightening. so loud. but clear and bright. the drums on "whole lotta love" are massive and insane. the original pressings sound fine to me but the RL mix is a whole other thing.

Scott, how is it that you have a proprietary Bob Ludwig mix of this album?

wait I am now reading the story behind this "Hot Mix" that he did that was recalled because it sounded especially poor on crappy turntables. I am guessing you just happen to have one of the copies that were pressed.

“Are these all your Bob Ludwig mixes?”

Ludwig Mix copies of II are evergreen wall hangers at quality used record shops

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I know Whole lotta love and Heartbreaker/Living Loving Maid from guitar class
Ramble on from the radio
Don’t think I’ve heard any of the other songs

What a find, going to listen to this right now and report back.

It has been some time since the last time I heard this album. But I do remember that they said they were an albums band and not a singles band. This album is made to get high to. The rhythm section of this but as others have said the drumming is unbelievable and perfect. "Heartbreaker" in the end but could have been a few others too.

Billy Squier >>> Led Zeppelin sounds like something xhucx would have said back in the day

lol true

Second side is pretty ace in how each track rolls into the next one. Definitely edited well to roll together with the quick cuts after the tunes.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

i want to say that the parts of "moby dick" that aren't a drum solo are some of the best material on the record

wow that King Curtis version of "Whole Lotta Love" totally rules

So glad ‘Ramble On’ wins here. It’s always been a high light - def in my top 3 Zep

i want to say that the parts of "moby dick" that aren't a drum solo are some of the best material on the record

for real, I love Bonham and I am a drummer and drum solos are just the worst, it's such a cool riff! the neat little fills in between are plenty, listening to just a drummer is absolutely vulgar and stupid and I don't get it at all

Definitely worthy 1-2-3. I figured Whole Lotta Love would win just by mass exposure.

And otm about Moby Dick, it’s a great groove.

Good lord, the EWF-style inner gatefold airbrush painting on this thing, pretty bold for a band’s second album in 1969