IN THROUGH THE OUT DOOR

" Led Zeppelin? All I have to do is look at one of their album covers and I feel like throwing up". - Paul Simonon, The Clash

Much like disco, punk, glam-rock and prog-rock, Led Zeppelin were a phenomenom of the 1970s, but unlike the aforementioned they were a phenomenom unto themselves that transcended music and rose to leviathan proportions whose mythical stature would never again be attained in the annals of rock'n'roll. Proverbial legends in their own time. Even though the legend would endure, Led Zeppelin as a physical collective ceased to exist with the accidendtal death of their drummer John Bonham on the eve of their first tour in almost 3 years to support their 1979 album In Through the Out Door, a title selected to reflect the state of affairs and hardships that awaited the band in the wake of a 3 year public absence.

Despite being beset with difficulties and the fact that punk and disco dominated the popular music landscape at the time the album had unsuprisingly soared to number one on both sides of the Atlantic by the time of Bonham's untimely death in September 1980. Their swashbuckling manager Peter Grant had joked on more than one occasion in the press that you could stuff a Zeppelin album into a paper bag and it would sell and as if to prove this theory this is literally what happened with InThrough the out Door with the album released wrapped in brown paper. To add to the conciet the album was released with six different covers that depicted a New Orleans bar scene shot from different perspectives. An inner sleeve "colouring book " gimmick was also included with litmus paper that changed colour when moistened with water.

Despite the cover stratagem, possibly to divert the attention from the album's incongruity, musically it was a discordant conflagration of slagging tracks that really didn't have anything to do with one another and when considered collectively contradicted earlier Zeppelin acumens. Both guitarist Jimmy Page and drummer John Bonham were both battling the demons of substance addiction at the time and their lack of benefaction left singer Robert Plant and jack-of -all-trades John Paul Jones to their devices to put most of the album together. The focus on keyboards was interesting and Jones deserves some credit for this infusion, but it was obvious that they were both a bit out of their league. Oddly though, Page recieves full production credit on the album which was recorded in Abba's Polar Studios in Stockholm Sweden of all places.

The album opener " In The Evening ", which sounds like a watered down " In The Light" from their 1975 "Physical Graffiti" album, pretty much infers the uncertainty of the record with the line " it's lonely at the bottom man,it's dizzy at the top " which is more directly referring to the loss of Plant's son 2 years earlier. While Page's emphatic main riff is unmistakable Zeppelin, any hopes of more of the same are dashed on the rest of side one as it evaporates into pop dribble, psuedo Afro-Cuban rave ups and a rockabilly catastrophe that would have Elvis convulsing in his grave. The 10 minute " Carouselambra " could have been Zeppelin's next "Kashmir" but gets marred by overstated keyboard phrases that, although having some catchy changes, still sound like something like Keith Emerson or Rick Wakeman would think up on a bad day. A pity because all the ingredients were in place particularily in Plant's romantic lyrics and Page's 12 string shading, one of the few occasions where the Gibson SG double neck was employed in the studio. "All My Love" was a ballad with some lovely string arrangements and seemed like a monkey wrench tossed into the works and loses any of it's potential signifigance in this muddle especially after the montonous bluesy ballad finale " I'm Gonna Crawl " which is devoid in any of the fire and balls of Zeppelin's early blues blowouts.

When "In Through the Out Door" was released in the summer of 1979 nobody was really raving about the new music itself and it wasn't received very well in the press either and although tracks like "All My Love" and "In The Evening" received airplay they were heavily reinforced with tracks from their back catologue which was re-entering the charts. Fans were more interrested in collecting the alternate covers which could be identified by coding on the spine that sometimes showed through the paper wrapping. In other words the legends were back albeit in form only. The more I listened to "In Through The Out Door" the more it sounded like a Robert Plant solo album and when "Pictures At Eleven" and the Honeydrippers EP were released a few years down the line it became evident that a good part of "In Through The Out Door" would have been more comfortable in those environs. Plant sounded like the only focussed member on In Through The Out Door and if you're a fan of his eighties solo career I would say go for this one, but as a Led Zeppelin album it pales and is the Led Zep album album that I play the least. It lacks modernity and doesn't hold up to contemporary sensations such as the Police, Blondie or The Talking Heads that had started to appear on the scene. Even prog-rock dinosaurs Yes were turning up new ground on their coeval album "Drama". Stick to the early jewels that created the glory and you'll be OK.