Studio Legends: The Untold Stories Behind Iconic Albums

if you set a drum kit at the bottom of a cold stone stairwell in hampshire you might just summon thunder mhmm i tell you what last week we were looking at brian wilson chasing harmonies in los angeles with electro harpsichords and barking dogs but this winter of nineteen seventy one was a whole different breed of cat a world away entirely earl pull your chair in closer to the fire now because the rain is lashing the pain tonight four lads packed their gear into a drafty three story poorhouse called headley grange with damp crawling up the walls and grease on the kitchen floor headley grange no proper studio no plush carpets just the rolling stones mobile

truck parked outside in the mud cables running through the parlor window like snakes in the grass jimmy page didn't want the comfort of london you see the critics had given their third record an awful hiding calling it light and acoustic and jimmy was furious so they took themselves off to the middle of nowhere to see what the house itself had to say well the house had ghosts john bonham had a brand new set of ludwig drums now i know how that sounds dragging drums into a front hallway but bonzo sat right there beneath that high vaulted ceiling three stories up andy johns hung two ribbon microphones way up near the chandelier compressed the daylights out

of them through an old limiter and hit record when bonham laid into those skins it didn't sound like a snare drum earl it sounded like the roof was coming down on their heads louder than a freight train slamming through a mountain tunnel that opening stomp to when the levee breaks that wasn't clever mixing at board in town that was stone walls cold air and five seconds of natural slapback delay that nobody could ever fake pure accident pet and pure patience that was the magic of the place john paul jones was sitting there freezing yet he comes up with that wicked twisting bass groove for black dog a rhythm so naughty they say bonham couldn't find

where the beat turned it was in five four time over a straight four four shuffle i watch folks try to tap their foot to that down at the depot and they trip right over their own boots bonzo finally threw his hands up and said just play it straight and let the guitars do the tumbling we should now listen then comes robert plant shouting his lines into the empty room with no music behind him like a town crier losing his mind before the instruments crashed back in like a cart down a stony borine that whole place was a pressure cooker jimmy page was producing running on cold tea and pure stubborn will sleeping on an old iron cot upstairs he knew what folks were saying about him he wanted an answer that couldn't be argued with and that answer was born beside the hearth in that drafty living room jimmy sat on a stool with a harmony acoustic guitar piecing chords together finger picking over and over while the peat smoke gathered near the ceiling robert

was sitting in a corner with a notepad and pencil the weather turned sour outside wind howling through the chimney page played that descending intro and plant's hand just started flying across the yellow paper swear on my tackle box he wrote about 80% a stairway to heaven right there in one sitting god rest him he was possessed by something older than himself that night but when they brought the tape to the record label the boss is near choked eight minutes long with no single edit and not a word of the band's name on the cardboard sleeve just four strange little symbols stamped in black atlantic records told them it was commercial suicide set a record with

no title and no faces would sit on the shelves and rot but page told them if the music can't sell itself we don't care to sell it at all a proud gamble earl a terrible wonderful gamble and that friend is why you check the record it sold 37,000,000 copies sherlock what can you do when the house itself decides to sing the coals are turning gray now earl time to bank the fire and let the quiet have its turn