Led Zeppelin IV – Riffs, Myths, and the Stairway to Everywhere

Artist: Led Zeppelin · Album: Led Zeppelin IV (untitled) · Year: 1971 · Label: Atlantic · Rank: 58 / 500

No band has ever squeezed more myth out of eight tracks than Led Zeppelin did here. The “untitled” fourth album is basically a greatest-hits EP disguised as a studio record: “Black Dog,” “Rock and Roll,” “Stairway to Heaven,” “When the Levee Breaks” – it reads like a hard-rock starter kit and still doesn’t cover all the good stuff.

From Pub-Rock Swagger to Celtic Mist

Side A is a masterclass in dynamics and groove. “Black Dog” keeps tripping over its own time signature, all stop-start riffs and Robert Plant yowls, but John Bonham and John Paul Jones glue it together so hard you barely notice the trickiness. “Rock and Roll” is three and a half minutes of Chuck Berry energy pumped full of stadium steroids.

Then “Stairway to Heaven” quietly walks in on acoustic guitar and recorders, slowly stacking verses, electric layers, and emotional tension until Jimmy Page’s solo explodes like a dam giving way. You’ve heard it a thousand times; it still knows how to land the punch.

Deep Cuts That Aren’t Really “Deep” Anymore

“Misty Mountain Hop” turns Tolkien and youth culture into a funky, almost danceable stomp. “Four Sticks” is Bonham in mad-scientist mode, playing with – yes – four sticks, driving a complex, Middle Eastern–tinged groove. “Going to California” strips everything back to mandolin and acoustic guitar, Plant sounding surprisingly fragile as he chases a California dream and a girl who might or might not be Joni Mitchell.

“When the Levee Breaks” – The Sound of a Building Collapsing in Slow Motion

The closer deserves its own chapter. “When the Levee Breaks” is built on one of the most sampled drum sounds in history: Bonham’s kit recorded in a stairwell, thunderous and echoing like the footsteps of some giant coming up behind you. Slide guitar, harmonica, and delay-drenched vocals swirl around that beat like floodwater.

It’s blues, but exploded – the Delta channeled through British rock excess and studio experimentation.

Legacy and How to Listen

This record became heavy rock’s Rosetta Stone. Metal, hard rock, stoner rock, epic prog – they all treated IV as homework. The trick is to forget the posters and T-shirts for a moment and hear how weird it actually is: the folk interludes, the odd time signatures, the production choices that still sound huge.

Put it on front to back and try to imagine being the kid who brought this home in 1971, dropping the needle, and realizing the playing field had just moved.