Pretty much the whole idea behind the "JHO Hall Of Fame" is a fictional cabinet to place my favorite albums of all time in with some kind words and past experiences to back up their placement. The idea was to get either fifty or a hundred and they try to sort them out for my favorite albums of all time. A slight problem that comes up from time to time is making sure I'm placing the correct album from a band I admired or still admire. So I was looking at Led Zeppelin this past week as I continue to nurse some dreaded bronchitis and getting back to feeling 100%. I guess you could say..."It's just what the doctor ordered"...oh, that was horrible. No, that was really bad. Cough, hack, um, Physical Graffiti. Yes, the double album from probably my favorite AOR band of all time. Look, we all know that the first six albums Zeppelin released are fantastic. And even "In Through The Out Door" merits some good material (I'm never denying an album with "South Bound Suarez", "Fool In The Rain" and the unbelievable synth workout epic of "Carouselambra".) But I've only got so many spots in my own Hall of Fame to fill.
Why Physical Graffiti? What did it ever do for me? For starters, my beloved father, a man whose vinyl collection was a basis for my love of music contained an abundance of Zeppelin albums (even "Coda"). So when I went through my Zeppelin phase, a phase every kid goes through, these albums were like grabbing Twizzlers to hear my favorite radio tunes along with the other ones they weren't playing as much on the local AOR radio stations. But here's the thing. He had no "Physical Graffiti" in his collection. So in the back of my mind, "Physical Graffiti" was the first Zeppelin "cassette" I ever bought via 1985-86. It was mine. I could do what I wanted with it. I played the hell out of it.
That's my background. Twenty five years later, I'm putting it into my favorites of all time for another good reason. Its Zeppelin's most ambitious album. So much ambition it just couldn't be packed into a single album. All the songs on "Psychical Graffiti" cover a lot of ground. Because of this ambition, it's the one album I'm most prone to picking out of my own music collection if I truly need to get the Led out. Even if I've heard it a thousand times, there's something jolting about how the album sways from genre to genre effortlessly as I listen to it. I'm not even concerned there are several throwaway tracks from past albums littered throughout "Physical Graffiti", it's the different forays they tackle that keeps the thing still exhilarating to listen to.
There's the straight up raunchy rock of "Custard Pie" (with Plant singing "Chewin' a piece of your custard pie") and "The Wanton Song". There's nods to acoustic instrumentals "Bron-Yr-Aur", country music with the underwater guitar of "Down By The Seaside", and barroom honky-tonk "Boogie With Stu". There's straight up rock numbers including Jimmy Page's excellent workout on "The Rover" and there's hipster funk numbers with John Paul Jones working a clavinet through the foot shuffling "Trampled Under Foot". There's touching ballads such as Robert Plant's take on what life would've been like if he hadn't chosen music in "Ten Years Gone"' And then there is the tight pop like joy of "House Of The Holy", a song that for some odd reason was left off the previous titled album by the band. Starting off as an innocent song "Let me take you to the movies..." it shows itself more naughty as each verse goes on "Let me wander in your garden, and the seeds of love, I'll sow." One of my favorite straight up rock songs of all time.
And then....there's the epics. Arguably, the best epics in Zeppelin's catalog. "In My Time Of Dying" is eleven minutes of Zeppelin jamming in every way possible, from Page's excellent slide guitar work to the shifting rhythm changes from Paul Jones and Bonham. There is the fantastic keyboards that untangle mysticism during the intro of "In The Light" before breaking down into one of the most uplifting choruses in the band's repertoire. And then there are those majestic strings arranged by John Paul Jones, that wonderful guitar of Page, the mystical lyrics of Plant "Oh, let the sun beat down upon my face, stars to fill my dreams", and the always fantastic drums laid down by one of rock's best drummers John Bonham all wrapped into the excellent "Kashmir." It's one of the very few times you can call a song a monster. "Kashmir" is a monster of a song.
To see when "Physical Graffiti" was released, right before the explosion of disco and punk rock and years removed from the explosion of heavy metal at the beginning of the decade, makes it stand as an oasis in the middle of the seventies. It's a time when all four members had hit a creative stride, lyrically and musically. It was the first album released on their own label "Swan Song". There is so many special things about "Physical Graffiti" that I have no choice but to enshrine it in the JHO Hall Of Fame. Even if classic rock stations tend to play some Zeppelin material to a point of supersaturation, this is the one album you can step back and get lost in anytime you want to get away from that over saturation. It's an aural pleasure every time. The question will be if there's room for one more Zeppelin album in the hall before it closes for business. In the meantime, I'm moving through "Kashmir" (Oh that was horrible too. Someone get me a comic. Stat.)
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