Entertainment For Lively Minds
Taking a critical red pen to "Physical Graffiti"
I hope this subject does not result in me getting too much of a kicking as my intentions are fairly innocent. Well,here goes:
In my relatively fresh history of enjoying Led Zeppelin I have found it dificult to aquire a fondness for their sixth album, Physical Graffiti. At first I had attributed this dislike to the rather unpleasantly nasal and scuzzy tone to a lot of the guitar parts and the prominent use of slightly dated 70s keyboard sounds throughout. I just could not agree with most reviews that claim it to be their career summit. Something just did not feel right.
Whilst doing a bit of research using, gulp, Wikipedia (that bastion of hard facts) I found out what is probably common knowledge: that a lot of the songs on the album were “studio outtakes” (a phrase which often inspires dread in me) from III, IV and Houses Of The Holy. I then created a Phisical Graffiti playlist on my computer ommiting the songs recorded prior to the “official” 1974 album sessions. I was left with:
Custard Pie
In My Time Of Dying
Trampled Under Foot
Kashmir
In The Light
Ten Years Gone
The Wanton Song
Sick Again
I find this edited version has a faster pace, a hightened intensity and has a significant musical consistantcy that the standard Physical Graffiti lacks. The things that bothered me about the album before just do not stand out so much anymore…. basically the songs sound like they belong together and the “filler” has been trimmed. I understand that just because an album is shorter it does not always mean it will feel shorter, however the original extra seven tracks just seem to weigh the whole thing down to the point that sometimes, when I played it, the album felt like it was wheezing on the floor.
Most of the songs cut are absolute gems on their own and I do miss “Bron-Yr-Aur” and “Down By The Seaside”, but in the context of the album they just did not seem to work for me. Plus, let’s face it, on Disc One (or Side Two for all you vinyl copy owners out there) you want to get to Kashmir as quickly as possible.
Are there any albums you find tricky to enjoy that would benefit from a little judicial cut here and there or a complete re-arrangement of the tracklisting? I often feel guilty when I tamper with the intended flow of an album (no matter how much I disagree with it), but in this instance it just feels right.
Let It Be… Naked? Physical Graffiti… Rubbed Out!!!
James
(Sheffield)
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Il Miglior Fabbro
The entire output of Prince could do with with judicious editing (As could Sign of the Times), a lot of Ryan Adams who I suspect is a genius but has musical incontinence issues - could go - as could much of Elvis Costello.
Don't get me started on The White Album. Exile on Main Street would benefit from a snip or two as could London Calling.
The version of Physical Graffiti left above is better in my view than the original - although I would bring in "Houses of the Holy" and hurl "In The Light" into the nether regions of the cosmos.
The only perfect double album I have ever heard is Manassas by Stephen Stills.
The Wasteland is perhaps the greatest piece of modernist poetry and the the flowering of T.S Eliot's genius. It was much longer when initially conceived. He showed the manuscript to Ezra Pound - who took a literary Black & Decker strimmer to great swathes of poetic foliage and left a perfect and ever-flowering hedgerow. No bustle.
In thanks, Eliot dedicated the work to Pound - "il miglior fabbro" - the better craftsman.
If only popstars were as ruthless with regard to their own work as T.S Eliot.
Exile
Exile and London Calling would benefit from a snip or two? Are you mad sir?
That Manassas record is pretty handy though
Exile
The image I get from listening to Exile On Main Street is that of a rather rowdy, drug and drink fuelled jam that has been accidentally recorded and was never meant to be released. This view has probably mutated from the various acounts I have read about how the record was partially made in (if I remember correctly) a decadent French villa by the name of Nellcote. I like that it is a bit rough around the edges and a bit too long, it all seems to form part of this rather dishevelled canvas. The end product has a nice lo-fi feel to it, which rubs me up the right way. Perhaps it is their nod to (as at that point un-released) The Basement Tapes. I always find it a strange experience when the Rolling Stones play an Exile track live as I think: "oh wow, they have actually listened to those poorly recorded bootlegs too and learnt the songs".
James
(Sheffield)
I'm not sure
the world would be a sorrier place without "Turd on the Run"
Be Here Now!
Noel's got some time on his hands. Remove some guitar tracks, chop down the intros and outros and you'll be left with a righteous knock-down motherfucker of a rock record
Yes.Yes. YES
Plus I'd take off a couple of the 39 layers of guitar too.
4m 10 sec version of It's Getting Better, Man would be the best thing they ever committed to tape.
Fillers
The only track I actually felt like shuffling around (as opposed to simply cutting) was The Wanton Song, which sounds like it should either start the album or kick off the second side, but the vocal delivery by dear old Bobbie just is not immediate enough and sort of just sinks into the song almost unnoticed.
I recently had a crack at cutting out all the "mucking about" tracks from The White Album and it rocked along quite nicely, however over the next few days I found myself humming all the songs I had cut out. I’m not too bothered by supposed filler tracks when they are meant to be part of the experience and create a continuity bridge between tracks (as with most of the Guided By Voices output or even like Terry Gilliam’s animated shorts inbetween Monty Python sketches), but it is annoying when a band just chucks in cutting-room floor shavings to pad things out.
It irks me when an album is fourteen tracks long and there are clearly two filler tracks present. Funny old thing, that. I can only assume that the accountants are waving budget reports at the artist demanding an explanation as to why they booked and paid for studio time for songs that would not be on the album.
Nobody likes an overspend.
James
(Sheffield)
Why does everybody always blame the accountants?
If there's filler on an album it's ALWAYS there because a member of the band wouldn't let the rest of them leave it off.
and
it's often not because they're labouring under the delusion that it's a great track, but because it's the one that ensures the songwriting royalties are whatever has been decreed/agreed to be 'fair'.
Accountants
I suppose it is because of my six years of working in finance. I know what they are like.
Help me!!!
RE The White Album
I feel the same about TWA. It surely contains some filler, but in a way those songs are what makes it what it is. Why Don´t We Do It In The Road, Rocky Raccoon, The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill, Savoy Truffle and such may not be up to their usual standard. But without them it´s just another ridiculously brilliant Beatle album and we already have enough of those, right? Hail to the fillers!
PG is all killer
no filler. Let It Be
and to quote Macca about you 'it'd be a better single LP' types
"it's the bloody Beatles, it's the White album, shut up"
PG
I do not think the songs I cut from my Physical Graffiti playlist are filler by nature, they are very good songs, but they just do not seem to belong on the album. Perhaps they would have suited Coda.
I guess I am looking more at the facts: they started off with an eight track album of healthy length but decided to go back to songs deemed not good enough to be on previous albums and add them to a record that was already bursting at the seems. What else is one supposed to think?
The album just seems to make sense to me now.
But that is just my opinion.
Agreed, it's a classic and
Agreed, it's a classic and represents everything that was great about LZ. You can quibble with the order of the songs, and personally I could do without Down by the seaside and Boogie with Stu, but that's the nature of a double album. It's all about variety, allowing the group to show themselves fast and slow, tight and loose, intense and (as with the White Album) goofy.
Plus, most of these records were made when people had more time to just sit and listen. Most us spend too much time, doing what I'm doing now, to just sit and listen to an album all the way through.
Tight & Loose
But surely isn't that what live albums are for? I go to a gig to be entertained by the band, whether they play magnificently or not, in fact the more things that go wrong the better. That's all part of that experience. But that's not the way with a studio album, surely?
Hail To The Bloated Thief
I first encounted this sort of awkward listening experience when I purchased Radiohead’s 2003 release Hail To The Thief, which felt like a very linear record played on shuffle. Although having only recently converted to the magical world of rock/alternative/indie music at the time (and before I could even spell “iTunes”) I broke the album down, took out a few tracks and tried to reassemble it in a more comfortable running order.
I still do not think I have figured that one out, though.
Other albums I have recently been tempted to meddle with have been Radio Wars by The Howling Bells, Absolution by Muse (which just requires two clean cuts), Humbug by the Arctic Monkeys and Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division. I would love to get my grubby little hands on the master tapes for the latter record and re-wire Martin Hannett’s glossy patina. Even the band were not too keen on his detached take on their punk sound.
James
(Sheffield)
PS
I just tried to eat a ham salad from the shop up the road which was almost a week out of date. I think I will check before I buy next time, sheesh.
Where to start..
some classic albums where quality control was not a priority, I think, are
Pink Floyd-The Wall (could lose three sides, quite frankly)
Simon & Garfunkel-Bridge over Troubled Waters (at least four horrible clunkers)
The Doors-Soft Parade (at least half)
Chicago Transit Authority (great album but you know which two tracks)
Ted Nugent (everything after the first track)
Aphrodite's Child-666 (that whole pointless overture side)
George Harrison-All Things Must Pass (obviously)
The Who-Quadrophenia (gets repetitive)
and generally most Stones albums after Exile, most Lennon albums ever, likewise The Eagles, The Clash, Queen, Muse.
Oh, and you probably need to be Irish to (not) get Finbar & Eddie Furey (think proverbial pub crooner clutching the mike for dear life, lips wrapped around it, making about six syllables out of the mere word ever, why (oh why) were they ever let near a studio?)
Nice thread.
They should have released 'Kashmir'
as a single and just ditched the rest.
The cover was good though.
PG cover
I think if I were ever to make my way to New York on holiday I can imaging I would probably take half an hour out to go and find 96 and 98 St Mark's Place, squinting furiously at them to pretend the only had four floors.
My Good Loving Girlfriend (GLG) would undoubtedly like to take part in this, surely!!
They are all at it
Even the hallowed RT has the annoying habit of putting at least one throw away piece of garbage on each album. Psycho street is one example, dont sit on my Jimmy Shands is another although strangely this is somewhat of a crowd favourite at his solo shows - God knows why as it is drivel.
The strangest one however was Dire Straits with the Making Movies album - great songs (of their time) ruined by the Les Boys filler at the end. Mark Knopfler hasn't to my knowledge done anything so perversely naff since (discounting the headband of course).