NIGHT FLIGHT: “Physical Graffiti”: Led Zeppelin’s 1975 double-LP magnum opus gets the “Under Review” documentary treatment

Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti — their sixth studio album, released as a double-LP magnum opus on February 24, 1975 — gets the “Under Review” treatment in this 2008 UK documentary, which features rare and classic performances (including their epic masterwork, eastern-influenced orchestral rocker “Kashmir”), rarely seen photographs and expert analysis by a few of their critics and colleagues. Watch it now on Night Flight Plus.

This one hour and thirty minute doc tells the complete story behind what whatRolling Stone writer Jim Miller called “their Tommy, Beggar’s Banquet and Sgt. Pepper rolled into one.”

Physical Graffiti was an incredible album that mixed heavy rock blues, acoustic finger-picked folk, 50s-influenced rock ‘n’ roll (a la Little Richard and Ritchie Valens) and other styles, and contained both the longest and shortest studio recordings by Led Zeppelin (“In My Time of Dying” clocks in at eleven minutes and five seconds, while “Bron-Yr-Aur” is just two minutes and six seconds). It is considered by many, including Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, to be the band’s highwater mark.

Each of the fifteen songs on the two-LP set is examined and discussed in-depth by a host of contributors, including: Ron Nevison (who engineered recording sessions at Headley Grange); Chris Dreja (former Yardbird and bandmate of Jimmy Page’s); Maggie Bell (Swan Song recording artist); Nigel Williamson (author of The Rough Guide to Led Zeppelin; Dave Lewis (Tight But Loose editor and Led Zeppelin archivist); Malcolm Dome (Classic Rock Magazine); Rikky Rooksby (renowned guitar tutor and author); and, Neil Daniels (Robert Plant biographer), along with narration by the BBC’s Nicky Horne.

Of these, Chris Dreja — who originally played rhythm guitar with the Yardbirds before switching over to bass, so that Page could become the band’s once and future guitar god — provides the keenest insights as to how Led Zeppelin were formed; Page who had wanted to take the band into a heavier direction (originally they were to be called the “New Yardbirds,” but Dreja says they“would have never been Led Zeppelin.“)

Dreja:

“… The Yardbirds were a wonderful breeding ground of crazy ideas and free form, and of course Jimmy absorbed all that from us. I don’t blame him for taking them into the Zeppelin and making them tight and rock and heavy. It was an obvious thing for him to do, and he was lucky enough to find one of those rare things in the world. It’s like the Beatles. There are so few bands that have that mix of players that just feed off each other and create [such a] unique sound. It’s really rare, and I think Jimmy really hit the jackpot there.”

Dreja would end up dropping out of Page’s new Yardbirds project — he pursued photography instead — and John Paul Jones joined up on bass and keyboards.

From the documentary we learn that Stevie Wonder may have influenced “Trampled Under Foot,” Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young may have influenced “Down By The Seaside,” and we’re treated to a performance of “Ten Years Gone” at the Knebworth Festival in 1979 (one of the live concert performances that didn’t get released on Led Zeppelin’s official DVD in 2003).

Physical Graffiti originally began as a single album, with the band writing and recording eight songs at Headley Grange, a 3-story stone mansion (originally a workhouse for the poor, infirm and orphaned in Headley, Hampshire, England), where the band had previously recorded tracks that had ended up on Led Zeppelin III, Led Zeppelin IV and Houses of the Holy (we told you about how Page and Plant had also written several of the album’s tracks at Bron-Yr-Aur cottage in Wales in this post).

They used Ronnie Lane’s Mobile Studio at Headley Grange, and according to engineer Ron Nevison, the eight tracks recorded were “belters,” meaning Plant was really belting out the blistering rock vocals for these tracks.

When the band realized they had already surpassed the available album length (approximately 40-minutes)— and they didn’t want to cut any of these great heavy rock tracks they’d already recorded — they decided to pad it out with tracks compiled from tapes recorded at many of the band’s previous recording sessions — beginning in July and December 1970, then January thru March 1971, May 1972, and then multiple sessions recorded in January and February 1974 — although the material was so good it can still hardly be considered “padding.”

Nevison:

” “I never knew that Physical Graffiti was going to be a double album. When we started out we were just cutting tracks for a new record. I left the project before they started pulling in songs from Houses of the Holyand getting them up to scratch. So I didn’t know it was a double [album] until it came out.”

The album’s cover artwork — an intricate die-cut sleeve designed by Peter Corriston — was created from a photograph taken of two five-story brownstone tenement buildings side-by-side in the East Village in New York City, at 96 and 98 E. Eighth St. at St. Mark’s Place (the fifth floor of the building had to be cropped out to fit the 12-inch square album cover format).

Inside the little windows of the building were images of American icons — like W.C. Fields and Buzz Aldrin — along with a self-portrait by Marcel Duchamp and other images. The concept and design was created by AGI/Mike Doud (London) and Peter Corriston (New York). Photography was by Elliot Erwitt, B.P. Fallen, and Roy Harper. “Tinting Extraordinaire:” Maurice Tate, and window illustration by Dave Heffernan. The design was nominated for a Grammy Award in the category of best album package.

When the album was released on February 24, 1975, Led Zeppelin had already begun their tenth concert tour, and immediately shot to number one on both theBillboard album charts in the U.S. and also #1 in the UK. It was the first album to go platinum on advance orders alone, a colossal achievement, and upon its release, each of the previous Led Zeppelin albums also simultaneously entered top-200 album charts again.

For much of 1975, Led Zeppelin were hammering gods of 70s rock, dominating sales charts and FM airplay, and towering over just about every other band in the land.

Check out Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti — A Classic Album “Under Review” over on Night Flight Plus.

ORIGINALLY APPEARED ON THE AMAZING NIGHT FLIGHT WEBSITE 

NIGHT FLIGHT: “O Superman”: Performance artist Laurie Anderson’s charting 1981 UK hit and video highlights NIGHT FLIGHT video profile

In her intro to Night Flight’s video profile on Laurie Anderson, which first aired in 1985, Pat Prescott says, “Laurie Anderson has brought the avant-garde into pop music’s mainstream. Anderson’s instrument is her body, and in 1982, the sculptor, violinist and multi-media artist hit the British pop music charts with a song called ‘O Superman.’ Using a Farfisa organ, tape loop and vocoder to manipulate her voice, Anderson — a self-confessed technocrat — parodied technology and ‘O Superman’ became new music’s first authentic sound sculpture.” Watch the complete 20-minute profile over on Night Flight Plus.

“O Superman” was actually extracted from a four-hour long musical performance art piece of Anderson’s called “The United States – Part 1-4,” which dealt with problems and issues involving communication and linguistics.

In the video, you can see that Anderson always adds a visual dimension to her performance art; during live onstage performances she also plays violin and small keyboards while singing/speaking in a playful, sing-songy voice which is often transformed with the use of a vocoder, an instrument that was originally developed as spy technology to disguise voices.

Behind her, a giant movie screen backdrop shows slides and presents an additional visual element to her unique way of storytelling mixed with performance art dance and music (the visuals are her own works, which often appear to have only a tangential relationship to the songs she’s performing).

Musically, she fuses electronics and simple melodies with sustained exercises in wordplay, using repetition as a device to sustain monotonous backgrounds over which she vocalizes  (“O Superman” features a tape loop of Anderson murmuring “ha, ha, ha” over and over, sounding like a Greek chorus run through an Eventide Harmonizer).

The full title of the half-sung, half-spoken minimalist piece that brought Laurie Anderson to everyone’s attention is actually “O Superman (For Massenet)” — the parenthetical dedication refer to French opera composer Jules Massenet whose composition “O Souverain” — an aria which begins as a prayer to an authority figure, which one can presume means God, from his 1885 opera Le Cid — which had inspired Anderson, who has said it reminded her of Napoleon’s fall at Waterloo.

Anderson apparently started to get the idea for “O Superman” after listening to African-American tenor Charles Holland’s recording of the beautiful 19th century aria from Le Cid, which begins “Ô Souverain, ô juge, ô père” (O Sovereign, O Judge, O Father).

She has also said it was at least partially inspired by the bungled attempt by the U.S. army to rescue the Iran Hostages being held in Tehran, claiming further that “O Superman” is a song of military arrogance and failure and ultimately about the price we all pay as citizens of a country who occasionally watch how their government fails to communicate for them, on their behalf.

In June 2008, Anderson talked to MOJO magazine about the song’s beginnings (perhaps confusing the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages deal during President Reagan’s presidency with the aborted Iran Hostages rescue attempt, which happened during President Carter’s four-year presidency), saying:

“In this case it was the Contra affair and defeat as we were experiencing a series of techno disasters- helicopters trying to rescue hostages and crashing in the desert. Oh, and as well as now, yet another war that is endless-or as the same war. The same conflict with Islam.”

Anderson got the idea to juxtapose images of “arms” — in this case meaning weapons — with a mother’s arms (“Hold me, Mom, in your long arms, your petrochemical arms, your military arms.” )

Anderson says the image of “Mom” is meant to imply the Motherland, meaning the United States.

Anderson recorded the song with installation artist Perry Hoberman playing the drums, flute and sax, and Roman Baran on Farfisa and Casio, and also using a walkie-talkie. Anderson herself provided the vocals, and played violin and wood blocks.

The original 8-minute plus track was initially released as a 7-inch vinyl single during the first week in June 1981 on 110 Records, in a limited-run of 5000 copies, funded with a $500 grant she’d received from the National Endowment of the Arts. 110 Records was named because of its location at 110 Chambers Street in New York City.

“O Superman” became a huge hit in the U.K., however, climbing all the way to #2 on the UK Singles Charts in 1981, after Warner Bros. Records bought and released it as a 12-inch vinyl single (with the same picture sleeve), pressing up 80,000 copies in its first run.

Anderson scored an amazing eight album recording contract with Warner Bros., no doubt because the 12-inch single got picked up by BBC deejay and tastemaker John Peel, who played the song so frequently on his show that it seemed she might be on the verge of a hugely successful recording career.

Today, “O Superman” — which spent six weeks on the UK Singles Chart, reaching a peak position of #2 in October 1981 — remains the only hit song to chart by a performance artist.

Anderson toured to support her first album for Warner Bros., Big Science(released on April 19, 1982) which saw her performing at rock venues on a tour of the U.S., culminating with eight days at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in Brooklyn, NY, where her art opus “The United States, Part 1-4″ was performed live in its entirety during a two-night stand on February 7–10, 1983 (the performance that night was called “United States Live (1984),” after which she took ”United States” on a 16-city tour of Europe and the United States.

See and hear the music video for Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman” — which is now on permanent exhibition at MOMA in New York City — as well as other videos, and watch an exclusive interview with the artist as well, it’s all part of our 1985 artist video profile, and can be found over on Night Flight Plus.

originally posted on the amazing NIGHT FLIGHT website.