Led Zeppelin III (1970)
1. The Immigrant Song
2. Friends
3. Celebration Day
4. Since I've Been Loving You
5. Out on the Tiles
6. Gallows Pole
7. Tangerine
8. That's the Way
9. Bron-Y-Aur Stomp
10. Hats Off to (Roy) Harper
When Led Zeppelin III landed in 1970, it caused no small amount of bewilderment. Critics were puzzled, some fans were outright furious, and the band—perhaps for the first and last time—seemed content to ignore the weight of expectation entirely. In retrospect, the so-called "radical departure" now appears merely as the next, logical step in an already mercurial ascent. And yet, even today, this remains the band’s most misunderstood record.
Often (and somewhat lazily) dubbed their "acoustic album," Led Zeppelin III certainly leans away from the pulverizing riffage of its predecessors, but it never fully abandons the electric mayhem that made them famous. The band themselves bristled at the label, protesting that they’d “done acoustic things before.” True enough, but never to this extent, and certainly never with this level of intention.
For those seeking familiar ground, the opening blast of The Immigrant Song offers an immediate jolt—two minutes of war-cry vocals, fuzz-drenched guitar, and thundering percussion. It remains one of their most iconic cuts, and rightly so. Celebration Day and Out on the Tiles follow in similarly electric fashion, both solid if less immortal, and collectively form a hard-rock triad up front—perhaps a deliberate sop to nervous listeners worried the band had traded in their Les Pauls for lutes.
The standout, though, is Since I’ve Been Loving You—an epic blues lament that may well be their finest expression in that idiom. Plant howls, Page burns, and Jones swells beneath it all with ghostly organ textures. It’s nearly perfect, save for one recurring distraction: John Bonham’s notoriously squeaky bass drum pedal. A minor blemish? Perhaps. But in its way, the squeak is emblematic of the band’s ethos—raw, unfiltered, unapologetic.
From there, the acoustic curtain lifts. Tracks like Friends and the delightfully unhinged Hats Off to (Roy) Harper don’t just feature acoustic instruments; they flirt with psychedelia, Eastern drones, and studio wizardry. The former leans on string arrangements and an unsettling modal scale; the latter devolves into an echo-laden blues hallucination, name-dropping the British folkie of the title and sounding like it was captured during a séance.
Then there are the quieter moments: That's the Way is almost whisperingly beautiful, a pastoral ballad of rare fragility in the Zeppelin catalog. Bron-Y-Aur Stomp, meanwhile, offers a back-porch, stomp-and-clap delight, complete with Page’s acoustic dexterity and Bonham’s percussive playfulness. This isn’t just unplugged Zeppelin—it’s reimagined Zeppelin.
The one relative misfire, at least for this listener, is Gallows Pole. An adaptation of an old folk tune (not an original, and it shows), it’s brisk and banjo-laced but lacks the cohesion and emotional weight of the surrounding material. It’s fine. But this album is more than fine, and the contrast is palpable.
If nothing else, Led Zeppelin III should have put to rest any notion of the band as mere riff merchants. Yes, they were “hard rock gods,” but they were also sonic alchemists—folk revivalists, proto-proggers, and blues traditionalists all rolled into one. They would never again devote an entire album to such acoustic introspection, which makes this one a singular gem: delicate, deliberate, and defiantly against type.
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