The Freedom of Music: In Through The Out Door
One likes to believe in the freedom of music.Rush – Spirit of Radio.
Thirty years seems like a long time. Long enough that if you fight for that long, they’ll call it the 30-year war, unlike, say WWII, which they don’t call the 6.002 year war. No, in warfare, thirty years is a long time. Not so many years ago, 5 times 30 or so, 30 years was pretty much a human lifespan, much less if the Germanic countries are in the middle of 30 years of killing each other. Yes, thirty years seems a long time.
Then I woke up yesterday and check my e mail to find out it’s a thirty year anniversary. On August 15, 1979 Led Zeppelin released their final studio album, In Through The Out Door. It’s not just their last album, however, it is also the only one I have a direct reference to it’s release. Being sixteen in the summer of 1979, I was a huge Led Zeppelin fan and had spent the last two years loving learning their catalogue. In Through The Out Door I waited for anxiously all that summer, as the release date was more a suggestion, and nobody knew for sure when it would hit the stores. I was in London at the time, where Led Zeppelin was in the middle of their triumphant return to English soil and were kings (or despised aristocrats who weren’t fit to lick the boots of the punks like the Sex Pistols and the Clash: sometimes point of view is everything). I bought extra copies because rumour incorrectly suggested the album would be released in Europe before America, and how cool would it be to be the first on the block to have a copy of the new Led Zeppelin album?
Can it really be thirty years? Suddenly thirty years doesn’t seem like such a long time.
In Through The Out Door is a much maligned Led Zeppelin album, undeservedly so. Even Jimmy Page has disparaged it, citing All My Love as not a very Zeppelin song. However, the music world was changing leading into the 1980’s, and whether Jimmy Page likes it or not, the long solos and extended jams where not going to cut it much longer. The three to five minute song was back, and Led Zeppelin let it be known with In Through The out Door that they were ready to face the new decade. All My Love may not have been a very Zeppelin song, but was very much a song of it’s time.
Besides, the album also had Fool in the Rain and In The Evening on it. For all their great music through the years, Fool in the Rain belongs among the top few. A great song that sound so unlike something Zeppelin would do, and yet was immediately identifiable as Zeppelin. And it’s not just Robert Plant’s voice that gave the game away, John Bonham is recognizable as the drummer on Fool in the Rain within a few bars of the opening. Not many drummers have such a unique sound, but not many drummers back a band as good as Led Zeppelin.
As for In The Evening, When Guitarist Jimmy Page and vocalist Plant got together in the 90’s for a couple of albums and tours In The Evening was one of the songs they played. How bad can it be if they still considered it worthwhile fifteen years later, especially when you have Zeppelin’s catalogue to pick through.
In the world of rock and roll, however, a good to great album is not in the hits, not in the top three songs, it’s in the filler. Sometimes, the filler is just that, throw away music that had negligible impact on your listening life. In better albums, the filler is almost as good as the top songs. In Through The Out Door has some very effective fill. South Bound Saurez, full of honky tonk piano and vocal hooks. Hot Dog, the mock-country song that you can’t help but laugh along with.
In Through The Out Door is not one of the seminal Led Zeppelin works, although it ranks among my favourites. Historically it is important because it was Led Zeppelins last. But in truth, it’s anniversary is a big deal because I will never be sixteen again, never be that excited because band is releasing new music.
It can’t really have been thirteen years, can it?
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