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Conflicted thoughts on Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy

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I’ve recently been pondering Houses of the Holy, maybe because it’s 50 years old this year (same age as me!). What do we all think of it?

I definitely have conflicted thoughts about it.

On the negative side:
– Even the most ardent Zep fan would admit it was a bit of a stumble after the increasingly perfect I, II, III and IV albums (the mighty IV perhaps being the Best Rock Album Of All Time, but that’s another argument)
– The Crunge is catastrophically, hilariously poor. What were they thinking??
– That Jamaican pastiche (I can’t even bring myself to type the oh-so-funny joke title) is also hideous. What were they thinking??
– Other tracks like Dancing Days and The Ocean just sound like filler: Page on auto-riff, and Plant just wailing mystic bobbins. The Ocean in particular ends the album on a damp squib, which is always a big turn-off for me. I prefer a strong closer that leaves you on a high (hello, When The Levee Breaks).
– The cover (although technically and compositionally excellent, the usual Hipgnosis quality) is a bit dodgy looking, and would’ve been rejected in these more sensitive days.

But then there are the pluses:
– The Song Remains The Same is an astounding album opener, and perhaps three of the most stirring, adrenaline fueled minutes in rock history. (It sounds a bit like The Who to me, especially Tommy, but actually better and tighter). With the speeded up vocal Plant sounds a little like a muppet at times, but who cares when the overall thing feels so good.
– The Rain Song! Zep’s best ever song? I wouldn’t argue with anyone who said that. The dueling between the electric guitar and mellotron strings is perfection, and Plant is on a high plateau of celtic, soulful, romantic style. Page wrote this using George Harrison’s Something as a starting point (same initial chord changes), and I think he surpassed it.
– Over The Hills And Far Away! Page at his pickin’ best in that unmistakable acoustic guitar style.
– No Quarter! A might mystic masterpiece.
– It’s a real shame such fine material feels (to me) buried in an overall weak package. The whole is definitely less than the sum of its parts on this occasion.

Any thoughts? Is this anyone’s favourite Zep album? Do you agree with me this was a watershed and they were better before this? Or did they get better, with Physical Graffiti and all that?

We don’t actually talk about Zep all that much on here apart from mocking them for ripping off other artists, and it would be good to discuss them without that particular elephant in the room (although maybe that’s impossible!).

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Comments

  1. Given the comment below, I shouldn’t be commenting here but what the hell….
    First two albums were most excellent. After that a mighty fall into overblown, pompous and self-indulgent twaddle.
    Retires to Safe Room, locks door and loads Glock.

    • Love it! Call it like you see it.

      I think they reached their true stride on III, when they moved away a bit from the blues jams and fully embraced the twiddly celtic twilight side of things. Then the mighty IV is their monument, their masterpiece.

    • I’m probably going to regret saying this out loud, not wishing to piss on anyone’s chips, but I’m with Lodey on this one. Except that I don’t much rate the first two, either. I have a real blind-spot with White Men Playing The Blues. My loss, I know.

      I have a best-of CD from 15 years ago (when they all went onto iTunes) and 4 (which was in a neighbour’s LP collection I acquired). But I can only handle one track at a time.

      As Moosey says down there, contains some great source material for De La Soul.

  2. the good:

    TSRTS,
    TRS
    NQ,
    Dancing Days”
    _________________
    the pretty acceptable to weak, depending on my mood:

    Over the Hills and Far Away”
    The Ocean”
    ____________________
    the bobbins:
    DM
    The Cringe
    _______________________
    Could do without having that cover in my life, but I hear Gareth Glitter was a big fan of it. And it’s not as bad as that Scorpions one or Blind Faith, which are staggeringly poorly judged, even accounting for the “standards of the day”.

    I actually had the Song Remains the Same vhs as my first LZ purchase as a teenager so, for me, those versions of TSRTS and TRS are the best versions that I identify with. I could never really get into the album-studio versions as much when I did get the cash to buy them years later.

  3. Didn’t someone here (Saucecraft perhaps?) reprogramme HotH a while back? Chucked out the filler and brought in a couple of songs that were from the same sessions but which ended up on other albums? I even saved it as a Spotify playlist – and I’m pretty sure I didn’t come up with that cover myself.

    Hold on a minute… https://theafterword.co.uk/holy-houses/

  4. I think all their albums are a bit of an odd mix of material and thereby patchy, except maybe the first and last. Not that I like Presence but if you like one song on there you probably like them all. They are as bad as The Beatles. I suppose it was like that in those days, more free and easy, do what you like, try something out. That probably led to more interesting tracks and some rather ill-advised forays. Rain Song and No Quarter – fabulous. I don’t like those stomping riffy songs that everybody seems to rave about like Black Dog and I’m not so fussed about them here. D’Yer Maker I do like. Catchy tune, great drumming. The Crunge is skippable though.

  5. Apart from the pedo sleeve there’s fk all wrong with House of the Holy. There’s a received opinion on it, perfectly reproduced above. D’Yer Maker works if you forget that they’re trying to play reggae (see also Hey Negrita). And if the Crunge was good enough for Prince Paul and De La Soul… do you know better than they do? Spoiler alert: you don’t!

    • UB40 can justly say “It was like that when we got here”. Think Dreadlock Holiday. The Eagles. And two words calculated to send a chill into the very marrow of all good men: Paul Nicholas.

      • I have it on good authority* that Paul Nicholas is an absolute cnut.

        *A good friend who used to tour musical theatre, who is also very tolerant of most bad behaviour. Everyone has their limits.

        • On that subject-ish, I just read Hanif Kureishi’s latest post (for those who don’t know, he’s going through an awful time in a Rome hospital after a fall left him paralysed) in which he talks about Peter O’Toole, who starred in the film Venus, which Kureishi wrote.
          He says “I considered O’Toole a bit of a cunt despite his fine acting. He said to me, “The only Paki I ever liked was Omar Sharif”. I said, “It’s a bit of a stretch to consider Omar Shariff a Paki but at least one of you was probably a gentleman”. On set O’Toole was known as Florence of Arabia.”

    • Mmmm, maybe a sweeping statement but I would stand by that it’s one of the few Truly Great Albums of all time. Definitely at the top of the canon for me. I suppose when I say “rock” I mean “hard rock”, not “rock” in the wider sense, if that helps. I think of its peers (off the top of my head) as for example Electric Ladyland, Tommy, Sticky Fingers, Back in Black, A Night At The Opera… and I think it’s better than all those.

      As with everything, I’m biased because it was one of my first great music loves, and I totally absorbed those eight tracks until they became part of my DNA. I don’t even cringe at the Lord of The Rings lyrical references. It’s all good to me.

      • I think your thoughts on this matter are misgiven. I am a champion of II, well not really, I think it’s the best. Page mastered the dynamics on this one, light and shade, loud/quiet which makes the blasts of guitar sound all the more powerful and dramatic when they come, whereas by IV it’s tending to become the same noise level throughout the song. Not Stairway but that’s unlike anything else they did. Almost like someone else’s song. Not sure why. The first album also has the dynamics working like on Dazed And Confused. The guitar has space to take off. After the first two albums things aren’t really as good again. Hopefully this isn’t considered received wisdom and thereby invalid.

  14. I would go with 3,1,2,4.
    3 has since I’ve been loving you which is Plant’s best vocal and Page’s best guitar. It also has Gallows Pole which is marvellous and Tangerine too which is really good. Shame about Hats off to Roy.
    Stairway has not aged at all well.
    Re HOTH I do really like D’yer maker which is just a bit of fun.

      • I would place PG among the top five along with I, II, III & IV. Not sure what order I’d put them in. I considered myself a huge Zep fan in the late seventies but I never got around to buying HOTH. I’d heard it and wasn’t too pushed. Presence and ITTOD I bought but not among my favourites.
        Knebworth in ’79 was my first ever gig – probably not the best place to start. At the time I loved it, but I was very uncritical of LZ at the time. When I see clips of it now I can see that it probably wasn’t that great.

  15. SURVEY UPDATE

    Upthread, I posted a survey to let people vote for their favourite Led Zeppelin album. Well, I checked back on it today and… I’ve screwed it up, haven’t I? Those blighters at SurveyMonkey (the app I used) are demanding I upgrade and subscribe, otherwise they will only show me the first ten results. HUGE amounts of people have responded (well, 15), but I can only see the vote of the first ten.

    I’m loathe to “upgrade” and end up with some other stupid little £2.99 subscription I forget to cancel or something, so I’ll just have to draw a line there. The results as they stand are (drumroll)….

    I – 1 vote
    In through the Out Door – 1 vote
    Physical Graffiti – 4 votes
    IV – 4 votes

    Make of that what you will! I’m just worried about the madman in our midst who thinks In Through The Out Door was Zeppelin’s peak.

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