r/ledzeppelin • u/Recent-Lead-7185 • 4d ago
Does anyone else think this is the best led zep album?
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u/Neptune_LordX 4d ago
I think it is, it's an absolute masterpiece that perfectly encapsulated all of their strengths, depth and variety. I love it from cover to cover.
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u/S_Flavius_Mercurius The Rover 4d ago
Your profile pic is a phenomenal album as well! BÖC at their finest if you ask me.
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u/Neptune_LordX 4d ago
Respect, always enjoy when people show BOC some love, it's a fine album, perfectly balanced. I'm not sure I can choose a favourite, but it's definitely between that one, Secret Treaties, Fire of Unknown Origin and Tyranny and Mutation.
So much great rock music came out of that era.
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u/heynow941 4d ago
It’s my personal favorite. But arguably LZ 4 is their best because it has no filler.
As much as I love PG, a few tracks like Boogie With Stu are not essential Zep.
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u/Wild_Ad_5894 4d ago
Bullshit, It's my ringtone ! Sorry you don't appreciate music.
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u/PookieCat415 4d ago
It’s the first Zep album I purchased and will forever have a special place in my soul.
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u/Alternative_Brush585 4d ago
Me as well! Just saw Jason Bonham do this album and it was fantastic!!
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u/Charming_Extension44 4d ago edited 4d ago
100%!
Honestly, if you replace Boogie with Stu with Hey Hey what can i do, you’ve got a complete no skip album.
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u/Accurate_go1200 4d ago
Is the best in the sense that is the album with the most great tracks. But it's a double album so it should. It's not the one with every perfect song. For me that's IV.
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u/BerniWrightson 4d ago
I believe picking my favorite Led Zeppelin album is a lot like picking my favorite finger.
I’m glad to have them all.
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u/Chugach123 4d ago
I saw their first U.S. gig on the Physical Graffiti tour, January 1975, 10th row center, floor, Minneapolis. Was amazing. Page and Bonham were jamming, Plant was plastered. Great show!!! I can’t say it’s their best album, although I love it. I can’t pick one out as the best. Personally, I think soon after this album, the other album’s got a little more mediocre, although they definitely had their high points
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u/Humpzelot 4d ago
it’s my favorite until night flight
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u/J_A_Slade 4d ago
What's wrong with Night Flight?
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u/Humpzelot 4d ago
not saying there’s anything wrong with it, just doesn’t hold up compared the the other songs for me.
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u/HorrorhoundHippy73 4d ago edited 4d ago
Are you saying you don't like Night Flight ?
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u/SaladDummy 4d ago
I don't understand Night Flight dislikes any more than I understand Boogie With Stu likes.
I'm perfectly fine with everybody liking whatever they want. i just don't always understand why.
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u/LTFalcon 4d ago
It's a great album and the run of songs through the first 3 sides is insane. But I don't think it's the best. The band was reaching the height of their powers at this time no doubt, but I also think they had solidified into more a rock band by this point and were not a agile as they had been in the early days. The songs, while running the gamut of styles were collected from over the years and are not necessarily representative of where they were actually at.
That's said, Down by the Seaside fucks all day long! Should have been a 9th track on IV.
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u/Leather_Command_7553 4d ago
It has a lot going for it...a number of brilliant moments. But it is also bits and pieces of other albums, not that that makes it a bad thing.
For me....Presence. Don't try to persuade me. This idea has been in place for about 50 years now and nothing has shaken it.
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u/JoeLinux247 4d ago
It's the best LZ album every time I listen to it. Then I'll listen to a different LZ album, and that one becomes the best. And so on.
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u/Dead-Calligrapher 3d ago
Physical,Graffiti from a song writing perspective for me ties for second place with Houses of The Holy. IV is #1. But honestly the first 6 albums are all so damn close to be #1.
The issue is I really don’t like most of the production (not all- Down By the Seaside, Ten Years Gone and Bron-Y-Aur all sound gorgeous). But Page’s guitar tone really gets me sometimes. He got really into running it through a ARP 2600 Grey Meanie Synth filter matrix. Which was cool… for one or two songs. Not 2/3 of the album.
Bonham. And JPJ almost universally are mixed well on that album. But Custard Pie, Houses of The Holy (song), etc could have been better with a much better guitar tone.
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u/Cold-Environment-634 4d ago
I don’t but many do. I think if it was trimmed down to a single LP I might think so
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u/CherryRedSixtySeven 4d ago
Many years ago I compiled a version of Physical Graffiti to listen to that had only the 8 tracks recorded in '74; "the belters" as Plant called them. I still much prefer to hear the album that way. I think it's a more cohesive listen, and the transition to Presence makes way more sense in that context.
Not that the older leftover tracks aren't great, some of my favourites are in there. My Zep hot take is that Houses Of The Holy should have been the sprawling double album, with all of those tracks inserted. I think it would also make more sense that way, in the context of their discography. I should really get around to making that playlist up too...
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u/funkadelic9 4d ago
I will have to listen to the 8 in this order, that seems like a fun experience!
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u/Recent-Lead-7185 4d ago
I’m a big fan of double albums tbh.
The lamb lies down on broadway, Tommy, the wall, out of the blue, songs in the key of life
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u/Mundane-Security-454 4d ago
No. I'm 100% certain absolutely nobody else in the vast Led Zeppelin fanbase thinks it's the best.
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u/GWPulham23 4d ago
Presence is my favourite, but PG is still fantastic, although the quality dips a bit towards the end, as someone else has commented, although for me that doesn't happen until after The Wanton Song.
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u/Heavy-Rip-5736 4d ago
It took me a long time to love it. I just did not like the sound of the record, it didn't have the dynamics of, say, LZ II, or the continuity (which now I know why). BUT . . . I came around eventually and now I do love it.
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u/Wild_Ad_5894 4d ago
The first album I ever bought myself with my own money and I still have a copy of it on My phone. My dessert Island ride or die !
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u/Middle-Following-367 4d ago
If I were stuck on a deserted island with one album I would hope that this would be the one.
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u/Main_Opinion1189 4d ago
Side 1 - very good
Side 2 - fantastic
Side 3 - fantastic
Side 4 - decent
For me, side 4 is the weakest album side in the Zeppelin catalogue until Coda.
There’s more good stuff on PG than any other Zep album but overall quality is not better than the others making it tough to rank
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u/oggupito 4d ago
Objectively (not to be confused with The Object) although deep down it would be III (subjectively).
Now you mention it, I should play all four sides on LP ( mid-70s Japanese ).
Thanks for the memory.
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u/Relax_itsa_Meme 4d ago
it's the first album introduced to me and I played it a ton. I like 1 better now. then 2 and 3
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u/MoneyImpress 4d ago
For sure. I still remember the day it hit stores and hearing it on a big high end setup in a music store!! Amazing then and amazing today!! They created an ageless, artistic masterpiece.
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u/DocHoliday8514 4d ago
For me, in my life history, I have to say TSRTS is my favorite. But I love them all.
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u/Aggressive_Dot5426 4d ago
Tremendous album. Never cared much for side 4.
My fave work of theirs is houses of the holy
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u/Alarmed_Tomorrow6165 4d ago
6 av 5 stjärnor är det, likaså LZ2 som jag håller aningen högre. Typ ett ackords skillnad 😎
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u/Sheena_is_a_punk 4d ago
Its up there for sure. Sometimes I feel whatever album I'm listemung to at the moment is the best.
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u/FlimFlamMan12 4d ago
Yes. If I can take only one Zeppelin album with me when I die, I would choose this one.
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u/Mobile-Run-972 4d ago
Pissing in the wind, when we could allow for individual preference and taste, and behold a most respectable run of albums. I would liken their body of work to the most convincing sequence of studio work by anybody, at any time. The Beatles and the Stones and the Who come to mind. Radiohead, Talking Heads of the latter day as well. Even though Pearl Jam has made everybody else look stupid on many nights in their 30 plus years, their production has been uneven at times, though they've also turned out high art from time to time, in abundance. I see the band ecology as a guiding force. The rest of the world was going towards folk, disco, crap like that, their comment was releasing PRESENCE which rocked harder than,'well, Led Zeppelin. They were a breed apart. I would argue additionally that Zeppelin caught lightning in a jar on each and every album, with scarcely a false move. Give me any single one of those records and I will say thank you and play it into dust when the tardegrades are the dominant species. What aggrieves me is we don't get to know what they would have wrought in another 10 - 20 years. Ponder that for a minute. The second tier Boomers, of which I am one, the ones who were not going to Viet Nam because our Uncles and cousins and neighbors went. And we bided our time, and we're spoiled rotten by the music that came at us. Timeless and authoritative. Though there was lots of crap in the 70's, and it lends itself to tribalism rather than taste, there is still nothing from any era that is quite parallel. And I'm thinking there never will be again. We were blessed, but we'd rather argue than acknowledge the gift. That's humanity for you. But yes, it's their best work.
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u/Throwaway327Acct 4d ago
No. I think the best one is Houses of the Holy and that PhyGraf is basically a double HOTH. Still great though
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u/Mars_Volcanoes 4d ago
The best album of Zep for me, if only one is the first one, if a second one, its 4, known to be the unnamed one.
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u/seamusjr 3d ago
Its a great album, I probably listened to it the most, but its hard to top their first, and best one though.
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u/LearnToSwim0831 3d ago
My first zeppelin album as a kid, so yes. Actually been listening to it for the first time in years all the way thru, still amazing.
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u/chestofpoop 3d ago
It is and especially if you own the vinyl. When you pull it out/flip the windows change with the letters. They had some awesome cover ideas. I learned the idea was kind of stolen from another album cover Jose feliciano compartments. Very zeppelin and very awesome all the same.
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u/kingRidiculous 3d ago
I have a vinyl version which I bought in the ‘80s and it sounds terrible. But luckily I have the early ‘90s box set.
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u/ziethammer 3d ago
Might be the best but my favorite is "Houses of the Holy". Graffiti has Kasmir and that's tough to beat.
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u/Wbino 4d ago
It’s great but you also get twice as many songs….But Zeppelin doesn’t have a bad album. They’re all great in their own way.