By Andrew Bansal
It’s been exactly 40 years since British rock legends Led Zeppelin released their fifth studio album ‘Houses Of The Holy’, on March 28th 1973. Forty years! It’s hard to even imagine such a long time period, specially for those who weren’t even born yet at the time. It’s even harder to imagine a rock album carrying itself through 40 years and still feeling as fresh to the ear as it probably did in ’73. This album certainly succeeded in doing so, and today it celebrates this amazing milestone in its never-ending journey through generations of music listeners all over the world. No amount of words can ever do justice to the magnificence of ‘Houses Of The Holy’. Nevertheless, I’ll make an attempt here to put forth my thoughts on the album, and its impact on the band and their fans.
Greatness invariably accompanies cynicism, and Zeppelin’s detractors have always harped on the fact that the band isn’t ‘original’ enough. Sure, they adopted compositions of folk artists for some of their songs, but Houses Of The Holy really proved their true prowess, if at all it needed any proving. It was their first album of all original material, and that’s perhaps why it has more of a cohesive flow to it, and it’s no coincidence that this is my favorite Zeppelin record. With that said, I enjoy the first four Zeppelin albums as much as anyone else, but it’s probably the ‘Zeppelin proper’ from the first song to the last, no covers of songs written by others, which makes this album all the more special.
The band had the unenviable task of following up to an album like Led Zeppelin IV, which was a runaway success and rapidly solidified the band’s mega rockstar stature back then. The quality and strength of musicianship on Houses Of The Holy further vindicated Zeppelin’s greatness. Music-wise, even though it’s not exactly as ‘heavy metal’ as some of the material on previous albums, it creates the kind of vibe that somehow appeals even to fans of heavy Zeppelin. It’s a deeper, more layered, intricate and diverse album. For tunes like ‘The Song Remains The Same’, ‘The Rain Song’, ‘Over The Hills And Far Away’, and ‘No Quarter’, everything that should be said about them has been said already. They are each legendary pieces of music in their own right. No Quarter is perhaps the trippiest song of all time. But besides those, there are a few other delightful compositions like ‘The Crunge’, ‘Dancing Days’, ‘D’Yer Maker’ and ‘The Ocean’ that are most often overshadowed by the aforementioned classics.
For me, regardless of the sales figures or the popular opinion, Led Zeppelin’s Houses Of The Holy holds equal importance as the band’s first four. I often wish I was a 20-something in the early 70s rather than the late 2000s. I feel a totally different level of excitement when a young band whom I’ve been following since their formation releases a new album. I can only imagine what that level would have been like, had I existed at the time of Zeppelin’s peak. Anyhow, that’s enough fantasizing for the time being, and I’ll leave you with a full stream of the album I’m talking about.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdMG0MTeKL0