The 25 Best Live Rock Recordings - No. 18: How The West Was Won --OR-- Four Blocks In The Snow
No. 18 - Led Zeppelin - How The West Was Won (Atlantic, 2003) --OR-- Led Zeppelin - Four Blocks In The Snow (The Chronicals of Led Zeppelin, 2008)
Sometimes it begins with the greatest band of any popular era releasing a poorly conceived and produced live recording without apparent regard to the studio album releases surrounding it. Such was the case with the original 2-LP set release of Led Zeppelin’s The Song Remains The Same (TSRTS, Swam Song, 1976). The music for the LP was culled from performances at New York City’s Madison Square Garden on July 27-29, 1973. Houses Of The Holy (HOTH, Swansong), had been released a few months before on March 28, 1973. The band’s masterpiece, Physical Grafitti (PG, Swan Song) was yet to be released eventually hitting the streets on February 24, 1975, with TSRTS following on October 22, 1976, and the release of Presence (Swansong) shoehorned between these latter two on March 31, 1976.
The setlist assembled for TSRTS was in support of the release of HOTH. The original 2-LP release included nine songs, three of which appropriately came from HOTH (“The Song Remains The Same,” “The Rain Song,” and “No Quarter.” The untitled album (Led Zeppelin IV (LZIV), Atlantic Records, 1971) contributed two selections, (“Rock And Roll” and “Stairway To Heaven,”) with Led Zeppelin III (LZIII, Atlantic, 1970) providing “Celebration Day.” Led Zeppelin II (LZII, Atlantic, 1969) donated “Moby Dick” and “Whole Lotta Love,” while the group’s eponymous debut recording (LZI, Atlantic, 1969) added only "Dazed and Confused." I found the original release bloated and self-indulgent, equaled only by the flappy and boring concert film of the same title (Warner Bros, 1975).
A brief detour…
I have already written about TSRTS, receiving quite a bit of pushback for my criticism of the recording. Led Zeppelin’s musical evolution can be divided into two periods resting on the transitional fulcrum of HOTH. The first four recordings were by Led Zeppelin before becoming LED ZEPPELIN with PG. These recordings were from a band experiencing a steep popular accent, particularly with how it expanded the blues as a genre and incorporated blues into rock more effectively than its peers. This was the band that fathered a thousand bastard children, from Whitesnake to the White Stripes, from Metallica to the Black Keys.
This was my Led Zeppelin.
HOTH and PG represented the Gotterdammerung of the band, where Led Zeppelin was fully realized, a pinnacle once achieved never to be repeated. These recordings were a departure from the first four where the band completed its transmogrification of the blues, turning into a new direction, one that appealed to a different group of fans. While “No Quarter” and “Kashmir” represent a creative apex for this group of fans, neither moved me like “You Shook Me” or “When The Levee Breaks.” This is neither good nor bad. It just is.
I should add that the band did have a third creative period, surrounding the release of Presence and In Through The Out Door (Swan Song, 1979). The latter recording contributed “Fool In The Rain” and “All Of My Love” to the corporate Classic Rock playlist (that also includes the crime against humanity, "D'yer Mak'er" (from HOTH), and “Black Dog”). The former provided nary a blip on the radar, save for the inclusion of "Achilles Last Stand" in the band’s final shows.
My bone to pick with TSRTS lay squarely in the absence of “Black Dog” (later added on reissue), “When The Levee Breaks (never a concert staple of the band), “Ramble On,” “I Can’t Quit You Baby” and “Good Times, Bad Times.” Heaven forbid the band would sacrifice the morbidly obese “Dazed And Confused” for any of the three above songs. Additionally, the late release of TSRTS after even Presence begs the question of why a minimum additional post-production time could not have been devoted to the live recording to include the PG highlights (“In My Time Of Dying,” “Kashmir,” or “Trampled Under Foot”). It is also odd that TSRTS could not have been expanded to a 3-LP set as this was not unheard of. The Grateful Dead released Europe ‘72 (Warner Bros, 1972) as a well-received 3-LP set. No, the powers that be could have done so much more with the original TSRTS.
TSRTS enjoyed a dusting-off and fortification with previously unreleased cuts from the concert when it was reissued as an expanded edition that added, "Black Dog," "Over the Hills and Far Away," "Misty Mountain Hop," "Since I've Been Loving You," "The Ocean," and "Heartbreaker." While improving on the anemic first release, the new material was still not of the same quality to save the recording as a classic (though many consider it so). TSRTS did not represent well the greatest rock band of its era. Robert Plant’s voice was shakey and Jimmy Page too high to reign in his famous imagination allowing for a less disciplined, more profligate performance.
Led Zeppelin’s commercial live recording catalog was expanded with the 2003 release of How The West Was Won (HTWWW), a generous three-CD accounting of Led Zeppelin’s 1972 Tour of North America taken from two Los Angeles appearances, at the L.A. Forum on June 25, 1972, and the Long Beach Arena on June 27, 1972. Immediately this set is superior to TSRTS due to the sheer amount of material performed as well as the fact that Plant’s voice was in good mettle in 1972. Moving from the original nine-selection double LP to the 15-selection rerelease in 2007 could not compete with the 18-song release of HTWWW. While compatible, HTWWW was more representative of the band’s typical set list, enduring less studio tinkering than TSRTS.
This release trajectory can be explained by money. Record Executives believed TSRTS could not commercially bear a larger set and it had to wait for a technology that could accommodate more music, ergo…the Compact Disc (and eventually mp3s and streaming). Time also had to pass for the industry to realize that dedicated fans would listen to sonically inferior recordings as long as it was Led Zeppelin. The band’s performances were widely bootlegged, two of these bootlegged shows comprising HTWWW. The Rolling Stones were to go on and do the same with their most bootlegged recordings resulting in Ladies And Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones (Universal, 2017 - from the 1972 Fort Worth shows), Brussels Affair (Live 1973) (Promotone, 2011), and Some Girls: Live In Texas ‘78 (Polydor, 2011).
Plant is in a much better voice during the 1972 LA shows than the 1973 New York shows and Page’s pacing of the show was more taut and orderly. These LA shows also included a medley of older music as part of “Whole Lotta Love” which featured John Lee Hooker’s “Boogie Chillin’,” Wanda Jackson’s “Let's Have a Party,” the Everly Brothers’ “Hello Mary Lou,” Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel,” and Jimmy Oden’s “Going Down Slow.” Plant liked to show off his expansive blues and early rock and roll knowledge, changing this medley from show to show.
But what if a listener wants something more: a simple recording of a concert, in proper setlist order, from beginning to end, warts and all? Good audience or soundboard recordings are available to fill the bill. In the case of Led Zeppelin, lurking in the legal shadows are recordings of the band’s final appearance at Madison Square Garden, on February 12, 1975, which is legendary and readily available for download from the Internet.
For my purposes, I favor the 1975 Madison Garden Show as best representing the band. Led Zeppelin – Four Blocks In The Snow (FBITS) was released as a six-CD set on the Japanese label The Chronicles Of Led Zeppelin – TCOLZ 015/016/017/018/019/020. Three discreet sources exist for this show and have been available and in constant circulation for the past forty years. These sources are two audience and one soundboard recordings which have been pressed and distributed many times. Four Blocks In The Snow assembles the two audience recordings into one package. The first three discs contain the first audience source and are one of the best-realized examples of the band’s complete live career. The second three discs document the second audience recording.
One of the beauties of these bootleg recordings is the lack of editing. The listener experiences the show as the original attendees did. The introduction contains the dialog naming the release with Robert Plant remarking to the audience between songs, “We came four blocks in the snow to get here, you realize that? Well, let me tell you something. People were calling me up on the telephone today saying is it gonna be on, is it gonna be on?”
The setlist reveals an energetic and well-paced show:
Introduction
Rock And Roll (from LZIV)
Sick Again (from PG)
Over The Hills And Far Away (from HOTH)
In My Time Of Dying (from PG)
The Song Remains The Same (from HOTH)
The Rain Song (from HOTH)
Kashmir (from PG)
No Quarter (from HOTH)
Trampled Underfoot (from PG)
Moby Dick (from LZII)
Dazed And Confused (LZI)
Stairway To Heaven (from LZIV)
Whole Lotta Love (from LZII)
Black Dog (from LZIV)
Heartbreaker (from LZII)
FBITS is the superior live recording here simply because of when it was recorded. Everything Led Zeppelin had to say as a creative force was said by the release of PG. Presence (Swansong, 1976) and In Through The Out Door (Swansong, 1979) have their admirers, but they do not contain music that stands up to the debut recording or PG. Perhaps they contain music of yet another evolutionary transition for the band, not unlike HOTH, but nature and history rendered the possibility of finding out moot.
Interestingly, no songs from LZIII were included in the FBITS. Of the first four albums, I always felt LZIII was the odd man out. I always thought it was more of a Viking pillage of Middle Earth than an investigation of the blues and all it had to offer (though “Since I’ve Been Loving You” would have fitted in well as a slow blues for the show).
It has to be said of these 1975 performances, that if Plant’s voice was questionable in 1973, he did a complete Billie-Holiday-Lady-In-Satin in 1975 on FBITS (“Rock and Roll” was especially unfortunate). But that quibble exists as a historical artifact. The rhythm section of Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham were in total command of the facilities only they had and before the end of the show Plant did rise to the occasion with blistering takes on “Black Dog,” “Heartbreaker,” and “Whole Lotta Love.”
Regarding studio-live performance fidelity: Live recordings should reflect what a band sounds like live in concert, not the studio. Creedence Clearwater Revival simply played their studio arrangments over and over again…Live At Woodstock (Craft/Fantasy, 2019), Live In Europe (Fantasy, 1973), The Concert (Fantasy, 1980), At The Royal Albert Hall (Craft/Fantasy, 2022), the same “Born On The Bayou,” the same “Green River,” the same "Keep On Chooglin',” what a bore. Jimmy Page is a studio wizard capable of performing miracles that more often than not translated well live, save for roughened edges and unpredictable execution.
It is the imperfect and unexpected that adds a thrill to a live recording. On FBITS, “No Quarter” enjoys an extended spoken introduction by Plant and then Jones playing the electric piano. The song unfolds over 20 glorious, organic minutes. Jimmy Page enters and pushes the performance into hyperspace. The band’s farthest evolution of the blues, “In My Time Of Dying” is splintered bones and blood, the music is so fresh and vital. These live performances are loose, inducing tension and fear of flying off the tracks only to remain sound in their intention.
It remains difficult not to mention the very well-received Celebration Day (Omniverse Vision, 2012) CD and video recorded as part of the Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert held on December 10, 2007, at the O2 Arena in London. This show was quite excellent and holds up better than any new-century live recordings made by the Rolling Stones (who seem to flood the market with recent live material every year. It was an event for the extant band members to come together with John Bonham’s son, Jason, and deliver such an all-encompassing Led Zeppelin Show.
“And if you say to me tomorrow
Oh what fun it all would be
Then what's to stop us, pretty baby
But what is and what should never be…”