LED ZEPPELIN II @ 55

 

Released on October 22nd, 1969, Led Zeppelin II is turning 55 years old today. After the smash success of their debut, its follow-up would be the first album by the band to crack the #1 slot on the charts in both the US and UK, as well as Canada, Australia, Spain and several other markets.

The album came together in bits & pieces, and fits & starts, while the band were on a breakneck touring schedule throughout both the US and UK. Songs were mostly developed during jam sessions while setting up for gigs, and recorded at whatever studio could be secured wherever the band happened to be at the time. As such, a wide variety of facilities were used, from high end, to what the group would describe as "a hut" when they used a ramshackle 8 track facility in Vancouver, BC. With this disparate range of studios being used to record the album, it was something of an achievement that producer, Jimmy Page, managed to attain a sense of cohesion with the album's sound and mix. Eddie Kramer engineered the album and was quoted as saying, "The famous Whole Lotta Love mix, where everything is going bananas, is a combination of Jimmy and myself just flying around on a small console twiddling every knob known to man." Kramer later gave high praise to Page for the sound that was achieved: "We cut some of the tracks in some of the most bizarre studios you can imagine ... but in the end it sounded bloody marvellous ... there was one guy in charge and that was Mr. Page."

The music on the album was predominantly original compositions, with a selection of interpretations of classic Chicago blues pieces. "The Lemon Song" was a re-arrangement of Howlin' Wolf's "Killing Floor", "Bring It On Home" was a cover of a Willie Dixon song originally performed by Sonny Boy Williamson II. Of the originals, Whole Lotta Love is the most well known, especially being that it was released as a single outside the UK, against the band's wishes, I might add. Zeppelin never released singles, as a matter of policy, so this was a rare instance where the label edited down a track and put out a single without the group's approval. The song would become a hit, charting in many markets, and becoming a concert staple as well.

The album sleeve design was from a poster by David Juniper, who was simply told by the band to come up with an interesting idea. Juniper was a fellow student of Page's at Sutton Art College in Surrey. Juniper's design was based on a photograph of the Jagdstaffel 11 Division of the German Air Force during World War I, the Flying Circus led by the Red Baron. Juniper replaced four of the flyers' heads with photos of the band members, added facial hair and sunglasses to some of the flyers' faces or replaced some with the faces of other people. The blonde-haired woman is French actress Delphine Seyrig in her role as Marie-Madeleine in the film Mr. Freedom, a leftist anti-war satire by William Klein. The cover also pictured the outline of a Zeppelin on a brown background (similar to the cover of the band's first album), which gave the album its nickname "Brown Bomber". The cover was nominated for a Grammy award for best LP graphics in 1970.

Despite the commercial success, at the time of its release, the album was largely panned by critics, who simply weren't ready for an interpretation of the blues that was so heavy and so dark. Many found the album monotonous and overbearing. But it wouldn't take long for reassessments to start aligning with the position that this was, in fact, an album of unique distinction, setting a new tone for rock 'n' roll that would become integral to the development of heavy metal music in the decade to come. Today, you'd be hard pressed to find a Zeppelin fan who doesn't rank this as one of their greatest records. The fact it was created in such demanding circumstances, necessitating spontaneity and ferocity, is what makes it stand out for many as the band's most intense outing.

With the success of the album, the band's touring began to ramp up in terms of the venues they were playing, beginning in smaller clubs, then larger theatres, and ultimately, coliseums. The band were truly on the map as the biggest band in rock 'n' roll, and the coming decade would see them enshrined as truly legendary performers.

KISS - HOTTER THAN HELL @ 50

 

Marking half a century on the shelves, it's KISS' sophomore LP, Hotter Than Hell, which was released on October 22nd, 1974. While it wouldn't be the ticket to superstardom the band were desperate for, it did pack a bunch of solid songs that were concert staples throughout much of the band's prime career in the 1970s.

Hotter Than Hell followed fairly quickly on the heels of their eponymous debut, released earlier in the year. While that record hadn't made much of a dent in the charts for the band, it did give them enough momentum to keep touring and building their fan-base. The task, however, was still to capture the excitement of their live shows on record, an ambition that would prove elusive through their first trio of albums. The production team of Kenny Kerner and Richie Wise were again retained for the second album, after fairing well enough on the first.

With Richie Wise recently relocating to California, the band were convinced to set up shop in The Village, an LA studio, rather than recording in NYC. Moving out to the west coast proved to be an unpopular decision, however. All four members of the band were hardcore New Yorkers, so they were entirely uncomfortable with the vibe on the opposite side of the country. The fact one of Paul's guitars got stolen the first day they were out there didn't help with the mood either. Richie Wise has since taken responsibility for the lacklustre sound of the album overall, stating that the big move across the country, for him, was an entirely distracting affair, and his head just wasn't in the game when it came to recording the album.

Though the intention was to try to emulate the band's live sound, the production team still indulged the group in a lot of overdubs, far more than on the first album. They felt that the they were familiar enough with the studio by now to be able to manage the process, which was maybe another distraction from the goal at hand. While the murky production added to a sense of darkness on the album, that vibe was further intensified by the subject matter of the songs themselves. "Goin' Blind", which details a doomed, creepy romance between a 93-year-old and a 16-year-old girl, was a song written by Simmons and Stephen Coronel during their days with Wicked Lester. The original title was "Little Lady", and the song's original second verse lyric, revived by Simmons for their MTV Unplugged appearance, as well as on Alive IV, suggests that the song's narrator is a sea captain addressing a mermaid.

Though the album features three songs with Ace Frehley's writing credit, he was still gun-shy about singing lead vocals, opting only to provide backup on a few songs. Instead, he had Gene Simmons take the vocal for Parasite, while Peter Criss took on Strange Ways. And while his voice may not be on display, his guitar solo for Strange Ways is often cited as one of his best.

For the album's artwork, a striking Japanese themed design was conceived, with Japanese characters surrounding the group photo on the front, and the back cover featuring photos from a wild party where there was, apparently, a great deal of intoxication going on. Of course, this wasn't the case for Simmons, a confirmed tea-totaler, but the photos still indicate a debauched affair all round. The Japanese character on the bottom of the album cover (力) is chikara, which means "power". It would later be used on various forms of Kiss material during the 1970s and 1980s, most prominently on Eric Carr's drum kit. The Japanese characters on the top-right corner of the album cover (地獄 の さけび) are Jigoku no Sakebi, which means "shout/scream of hell" or "hell's shout/scream". There are also member names on banners, but the transliteration of the English into Japanese is pretty flawed in terms of representing the phonetic expressions accurately.

While the group toured extensively for the album, sales were actually far worse than for their debut release. Part of the problem was that Warner Bros were involved in distributing the first LP, but that deal had ended by the time the second album came out. This also meant the publicity push was substantially less as well, though there was a TV commercial aired for the album. Only one single was released, Let Me Go Rock 'n' Roll, but sales were dismal and it failed to chart. Four months into their tour to promote the album, Casablanca pulled them off the road and got them back in the studio to record another album, what would become Dressed to Kill, another misfired attempt to break the band. Hotter Than Hell would still end up certified gold, but it would not happen until June, 1977, but it would take an actual live album to truly capture the band's energy and turn them into superstars, and that was something that was more than a year away. Still, they would ultimately make the break and hit the top of the charts, but not with this record.