Episode 48 – Led Zeppelin’s 'Ten Years Gone'

This week on Mandatory Music, we take a deep dive into Led Zeppelin’s 'Ten Years Gone.' But before we get into the heart of Zeppelin, we briefly revisit Black Sabbath’s final show. From there, we break down the emotion, composition, and songwriting behind 'Ten Years Gone' and touch on Zeppelin’s live performances. Unfortunately, we ran into some audio issues, so the episode ends abruptly—but hey, that’s rock and roll! Tune in and enjoy the ride.

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Transcript

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(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Good evening and welcome back to, I don't know if it's episode 47, 48. 48? I think it's 48 overall. Flash or, well let's, you know what, let's call it 48 because in these times seems like anybody can call anything what they want and embellish numbers to whatever they want. So it's episode 48. Good evening everybody. Seb, my illustrious pal, how are you? I'm well, how are you? Ah, you know, I'm good. I'm, you know, just made some muffins and doing the, doing the, the old baking thing. The kids, the kids actually call me the Muffin Man, so that's, that's Muffin Man. Muffin Man. And this time only because he makes muffins. And this is the only time. I don't know, who knows. But a few weeks ago I made like four dozen muffins in a row so they call me the Muffin Man. And people were like, these are good. I do have one comment about us right now is we both seem to be growing a beard at the same time. We do. Which is completely not planned. Look at you. Yeah, man, I didn't even notice. Let it go. Let it go, baby. Elsa said in Frozen, let it go. Just let it go. Let it go. Let it go. I think you should. It's looking, it's looking snappy. There's, you know, you don't have, well, you got some gray hair. At the beginning, oh yeah, there's lots. At our age, brother, there's lots. He's hiding it very well. Yeah. So I've decided about shaving till mid-July. So I'm going to see how this goes. I'm going to. For anyone that's been following this podcast from the beginning, that comment has no weight behind it because he might change his mind in about four and a half minutes. I almost shaved a couple of hours ago. See, there you go. But again, you got to get past the itch and I'm going to do my best. I'm much more patient than I used to be. So I'm going to just, I might trim the mustache a little bit because that's where it, that's for me, facial hair, that's where it's annoying. I don't know for all the dudes out there. Even if you have a mustache, I don't understand. I just, they're not fun. They are, the stuff gets caught in them and it's just, I don't know. I don't get it. But if I shave off the mustache, then I might get questioned if I go over the border saying, sir, why are you coming in this country? You can't shave the mustache off. You need it. No. Actually, I think my passport photo is me with no mustache and a gigantic, like full on, like, uh, I would say this nicely, you know, like the guys in the UFC, like Islam Makhachev and those guys. Yeah. The Muslim Russians. Yeah. Like the guys from Georgia, they basically, yeah, I, I had that for my passport photo and then I like shaved my beard like the next week and I'm like. You got a bottom loaded beard with no top layer. Yeah, that's it. That's right. So, um, as I scratched my face, but, um, yeah, your week's been good and all that mumbo jumbo. I have some news for you. I'm not sure you're aware, um, for, uh, real quick to start off the top of the show, the Black Sabbath last concert added three bands. Oh, I did not know this. So we know that Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne are performing. Yes. We know that Metallica is performing. We know that Slayer is performing, Pantera, Gojira, maybe Mike doesn't know all this, uh, Alice in Chains, uh, Lamb of God, Anthrax and Mastodon are all playing. And the three bands that they've added is Rival Sons. Tool and Guns N' Roses. Oh, that's interesting. Cause I think I read an article, uh, Slash and Duff were basically asking permission from Axl if they could, you know, take a stop off the tour to go play with Sabbath and Ozzy. So the rumor is that all of Guns N' Roses are going to be there to play. Oh, good. Like including Axl. Good. I hope so. Yeah. So it's Saturday, July 5th in Birmingham, obviously, cause Birmingham is where Black Sabbath is from. Yeah. But it's the final Ozzy, uh, performance, Black Sabbath performance ever with the original lineup. Yeah. So I read stuff today about that, about how long, how much Ozzy's going to perform. I heard he's not performing with Black Sabbath at all. Or just like. No, he's just doing a couple songs probably. He's probably going to do, yeah. And same with his solo stuff. He'll do a couple. And then that's why, like, if you see the set, the, the, the, the band list underneath, there's all those like solo singers who are there, like Billy Corgan, Sleep Token 2, all that. I think they're going to fill the void for the rest of the show. And Ozzy will come out, probably open the show maybe, and he'll close the show. So, yeah, so it, it, it, it's got me thinking it's the last performance and, you know, there was that tribute show to Led Zeppelin, which we will segue into pretty quickly, that Heart performed and a lot of bands performed for them. So I wonder if it's kind of going to be in that vein where all these bands are going to just perform. Sabbath songs. You know, some Sabbath or some Ozzy songs with all these singers, right? And it'll just be a big mix of bands playing tribute to Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne, right? So. I think that's a better way to go out than just, okay, we're going to go play for an hour and a half. And Ozzy's going to struggle mightily. And he even knows it. Everybody knows it. Yeah. And then, and then they might come out and play a handful of songs and to close the show basically. Sure. Or open and close the show or who knows. Open, play Paranoid. He completely, he could probably still do Iron Man just fine. Maybe War Pigs. And then that's. Let me see your cigarette lighters. Yes, exactly. Did I say that in the worst accent I've ever done in my life? That was the greatest English accent I've ever heard in my life. I, you would definitely have a future son. Don't stop doing that. Wait, wait, I know what to say in this situation. Bottle of water. Oh. Bottle of water. Okay. Now I got to find a, where is it? It's too, I'm too late now. It's already too late. Yep. There it is. Yeah, it was. I missed the mark. I'm not, I'm not quick with the buttons yet. Um, before we went on steps, Seb was all over with the buttons. I told a story and then it was like, it was like, it was perfect. It was just. There's sound effect buttons. Hopefully that picks it up on the recording. We'll see. Yeah, let's, let's hope so. Um, but tonight we are talking about Led Zeppelin for their first time. I'm a huge Led Zeppelin homer diehard. I love them. I still love them. I've always loved them. Um, like a lot of the records, I like some more than others. And sometimes I like the opposite. Naturally, if you've been a fan for 30, 40 years, of course, you're not going to stick with, uh, this, the same two, three. You're going to wax and wane probably like you're going to have your favorites and then things are going to shift throughout the years. Right? Absolutely. I can remember back in the day Led Zeppelin one was, I couldn't get enough. Same with two, one and two were just awesome. And now that's the one with stairway on it, isn't it? Yeah, it is. And, and now I, I struggled to listen to two, especially two. Two's just kind of just overdone. Um, I love three because it's different and I love physical graffiti because it's different. And all the different, the mixes of, so physical graffiti, which we're talking, we're going to talk about 10 years gone off of physical graffiti. Yes. Um, a really interesting record because they only wrote six songs for it and it turned it into a double record cause they just sort of emptied the vault. They just kept going. Yeah. They, they had a ton of songs that like they wrote the rover was recorded during the Led Zeppelin three, which was 1970 so there was songs throughout their whole discography that they just left off and they decided to throw it all into physical graffiti. From what I've read in part, cause Robert had some vocal surgery in 1974, late 74. And he was, his voice, he was struggling mightily with his voice. So they figured, cause the cashmere voice was like the new Robert, that sort of deeper, deeper voice. Not that he couldn't do the high stuff anymore. And fair enough. So they thought the shrill, the high, no, and I think, yeah, and I think the mid seventies Robert voice is much better than any of the Led Zeppelin iterations, even in, in through the outdoor, their early stuff, I'd prefer that sort of not growly, but that deeper resonating, just got more power. Yeah. I guess in, in, in some way, because he probably wasn't singing healthy in the early part of his career, which is a lot of like, you know, James Hedfield to reference Metallica famously took vocal lessons between the injustice for all recording and the black recording and had that vocal tape and exercises. And so, you know, a lot of singers just start off singing, but they don't learn the technique to keep your voice healthy through a career. And so you have to kind of shift a lot of your styles to, or just wreck your voice, right, because, you know, there's certain techniques to all sorts of types of music that you sing. And Robert plant is no exception to that, to have a long career. You need to have a healthy voice and to have a healthy voice. You need to practice healthy habits in terms of voice and singing. And I don't think there was like vocal warmups or, okay, let's not smoke and drink a lot back in the seventies. So they definitely smoke and drank a lot in their early part of their career. Right. And they, they, they toured a lot and they just played and they gave 110 every night. So it just, it wears on you after a while. Right. It just, it is what it is, but. So, yeah, we're talking about 10 years gone today. 10 years, 10 years gone, which for me is in my top three. That's up in songs of all time. It's just, it's so good. It's and I, I, I, I had this sort of epiphany last week, actually the day we recorded the last episode, I'm like, we need to do 10 years gone because it's, it's, it's quintessential. That's really adamant about doing that immediately. Yeah. And it's, and it's, it's different. It's a deep cut. Sure. But it's, it's not like it's a, no, we'll get more into it, but it's to me. It's like this, this wall of sound that comes at you, but in such a soothing and mature and just sort of breathtaking way, as opposed to something even like stairway or, or if you want to go crazy, like rock and roll or black dog, it just. There's a sensuality about it that Led Zeppelin never really, they didn't get into much, like they were nothing was personal, like, especially as some of the songs off of physical graffiti, custard pie, gee, I wonder what that's all that song's about. Um, you know, like night and night flight and trampled under foot is, you know, it's a very metaphor, heavy song about sex. And this, all the songs are, a lot of them are about sex and this, this song is not about sex at all. So, I don't know, it's, it's a, it's, do you want it? Do you know what it's actually about? It's about a relationship. Robert had 10 years prior and the lady in question basically ultimatumed him saying, okay, it's me or the, or your sort of your quote unquote music career. And he said, it's me or the music. Yeah. And he's like, okay, see you later. Yeah. Bye-bye. And then he was just sort of reflecting on it. And it's such a, it's a tender lyric too, because this song was originally written as an instrumental. And there was not supposed to be that as well. Yeah. And which, cause the vocals, like, it's not like they're forced in there, but they come in and such a odd, like they don't come in normally. It's not normal. There's okay. There's an inherent, like the song, it's a great song for sure. It's like Mike is right. It's very tender. There's a lot of cool little guitar licks and stuff that play through it. But there's an inherent problem with this song because it's, it's almost impossible for them to reproduce it live. You can't. There's so many overdubbed guitar parts that play at the same time. So I've listened to the live recording of it and it sounds hollow. It does. It needs that, that extra guitar riffs for it to really harmoniously ring out. Yes. So it's, it's a, I can understand why they don't play this live ever. If, I mean, they have played it a couple of times cause you can find live recordings on YouTube. A couple of, yeah. Played it a number of times and they played it in 77, but they were in no condition to play much of anything in 77 cause they were just a mess. Um, but I did read that there were 14 layers of guitars. You just kept layering guitar over layer, over layer, over layer. Yeah. Like, do you know the song all my love by Led Zeppelin? It's off of, okay. So you know how that's like, so synth heavy and it's just, this is like that song, but it's just like a wall of guitars in your face. Like it's just, it's like an orchestra of guitars as opposed to like an orchestra of synth and piano and all the strings is just, you know, you get the whole orchestra, take all the strings and the piano players and everybody else out and just have a full orchestra of guitar players and that's what this song is. It's like, and it's. Well, when you go to, when you go to songster.com, it's got seven guitar parts. Yikes. Like in the tab, like, I mean, obviously, you know, one is a guitar, one's this distortion lead. So it separates the parts into different styles, but some of them play over top of each other at the same time. Right. So at any given time, there's one, two, three different guitar parts happening at the same time. And if anyone knows Led Zeppelin, they only have one guitarist. Yeah. And it's like, I watched the 79, like you were saying, it's hollow. I watched the 79 version live. It's missing. It's missing the other part. It wasn't like Robert's vocal was the best part of the song. Like the guitar was just, and of course Jimmy's improvising, you know, like what he does, like he always does. And you're like, oh dude, seriously, can you, maybe not just play the song. He keeps the general theme of like the lead work stuff, but he'll do all sorts of exploratory drills and experimental stuff that it'll go up and down the front board with. Yeah. So, but I did have a question for you. Yeah, sure. Um, do you like the one guitar bands or do you really feel like in the metal world, the rock world, that secondary guitar is really needed to bring volume and stuff to the song? Well, think of like the bands that we, that we idolize, Guns N' Roses, two guitars, Metallica, two guitars, Black Crows, keyboards, Black Crows, two guitars, keys. Well, I can just reference the concerts that we've been to. Sure. Uh, one right off the top of my head is Black Label Society. Right. Two guitars, yeah. Yeah. But you know, yeah, they did have two guitars, didn't they? They do. Yeah. Dario's the other guitar player. That's right. Um. Jimmy. There's not many, like even like. Jeff Martin, Tea Party, one guitarist. But then the songs don't, they're different. They use a lot of other instruments too, right, to, so it's not really, I mean, they are guitar based, but Tea Party uses so many other instruments to layer it in and they use backing tracks too, I believe for some of their songs. Yeah. And then, so you can't create that, recreate that live, so. Okay. Well, Iron Maiden, three guitars. Look how full their sound sounds when you go see them live. Yeah. You've got so much dynamics that you can put in there, right? So yeah, it's almost mandatory to have a second guitar, in my personal opinion. I'm just trying to think of more modern bands that would have one like this, the White Stripes, not my, not my style. Cause it's just guitar and bass, right? It's just guitar and drum, so it's missing the bass, but even the Black Keys, let's take the Black Keys, for instance, they're, you know, they're a guitar drummer duo, but they, they add in, well, they add in other stuff in their songs too. It's not just a straight one. I don't think any band, well, not even Nirvana did, because Nirvana overdubbed everything too, live, and then it doesn't sound as good live. But here's my, here's my issue, right? So you have a song in this one, 10 Years Gone, which has so much overdubs, you can't recreate it live, really, unless you backtrack all the overdubs while you play it, but at that, at the time when they would be performing it in the seventies, no bands would backtrack anything, but you could feasibly do it today, you know, or you just get that second guitarist. And then the internet would go crazy and give whoever the band is shit for, you guys are using backing tracks, blah, blah, blah. Um, but John Paul don't have a, he had a, uh, a triple neck guitar, um, during live performances, it was six string, 12 string mandolin, which I don't think he used the mandolin on the song, but, um, yeah, he would have added texture and flavor to those types of songs and allowed Jimmy to do more of the solo stuff for sure. And funny enough, Jimmy played a Telecaster live on this song, which everybody, we all picture Jimmy with the, the standard Les Paul. Um, I have the tab book for Physical Graffiti right in front of me. I'm going to see how many guitars are in this, because the internet says one thing, this book will say another. I just got to probably has two guitars. Maybe there's one. No, it's got more than that. If I was a gambling man, if you're a gambler, man, um, they combine a lot like the way right before it goes into the chorus, the individual pick parts or two guitars, everything's layered into, uh, um, it's hard to read. It's in drop D too, which is fascinating because they barely use the D string. That's lowered. Yeah. Like if you look at the tab, it's only specific parts. Yeah. There's a, there's a couple of chords, a couple of D chords that he just gives full body, like the whole six, the strum, like the D major, D major seven, seven. Man, my eyes are bad. Uh, D major seven in here. And, uh, yeah, which I've, I learned how to play the intro and the chorus on my guitar yesterday. I haven't picked up my guitar in, I don't know, months. And I'm like, well, I got the book. I'll see if I can even do it. And I did, I can't play it as fast, but it was fun to play. It's serviceable, right? It's serviceable. Some really neat, uh, which my, my knowledge of chords are very, very, very, uh, limited, I guess would be the, the, the polite word to say, but some beautiful chords that are just that some of the chords that Jimmy plays are just absolutely amazing. Um, yeah. What else you got? Yeah. So just musically, I do like the chord structure in it. It's very sing songy. It's like, you know, it has this thing where it comes into the beginning of the riff and it plays like fast at the beginning and then it slows down and pauses and it just breathes after every time they play the riff, there's just, they have that open space just to let it sit there and breathe. The song breathes is best way I can put it. Um, yeah, it's just, there's something about Led Zeppelin too, that is even in like their actual professional recordings from the album, just the context of their song is so almost like they're jamming, like when he comes in on the first line, he just comes in, right? It's not like on the one beat or the two beat. He just kind of like, oh, okay. I'll start singing now. And it's just, you can even, yeah. And it just, you just feel this dynamic quality of four people that are super tight together that they can just like hit the record button and go, right. It's, it doesn't seem complicated or pressured for them. They're just like having a good time playing guitar and they really capture the essence of that jam situation on their recordings. And some, some might say that the drums are, they could be interpreted as a little heavy handed in the song because the song doesn't really need John Bonham style drumming in it. It needs it, but he, he does, it's, it's still tender, but it was just sometime maybe, I don't know, maybe it's just me and the way they were mixed. It's just, it just, they just kind of punch you in the face and you're like, they do, they do just come in, right? They just, they just do like that John Bonham voice, here I come, I'm coming through, don't care what you guys think. I'm bashing the wall down. Um, did you want to listen to it? Just to, sure. You can throw it on. Let's throw, let's throw it on and we can just, uh, jibber jab over the top of it. And again, simple, nice, beautiful, simple little intro in the key of A. It's just, yeah, it's definitely a subdued song. Like there's nothing. Um, tender is the best word to use actually. You know, in a Led Zeppelin way. Yeah. Like shirt, stairways, tender. Okay. But, um, this takes it to like a completely other level. Cause it's just, yeah, it's just amazing. And it just, and then he, and it sort of goes through the whole song before. Even Robert started singing. Cause now you basically got pre-chorus and that's just, yeah, it's interesting. Yeah. It's, it's so yeah. You know what, the casual fan probably has no idea what the song is called. They might have heard it before, but it's definitely not in the vein of anything that would be on a greatest hits album, I don't think, or even something that they would consider putting on like a, you know, if they're, if they're back for one more concert, let's say, I doubt this is making the set list. Not even when they played that celebration day back and when was that now? Yeah, that was 2007. I was almost, that was 18 years ago. Um, this, this song never would have seen the light of day. You know what? I do have a comment about Led Zeppelin too. It's just like they're four of the four members of Led Zeppelin are masters, virtuosos of their instruments, but there's also not that much of an ego with them in their song structures because they could very easily say like, well, I need my drum solo, I need my bass solo. But they definitely walk into that space of like, well, what do we need to serve the song? Yeah. You know what I mean? Like there's, there's egos, obviously, cause it's Robert Plant, Jimmy, Jimmy Page, like there's some of the, just by proxy, there's have these massive egos because of what they've done with music. But I feel like they're super down to earth as well and listen to each other. And you know, when they craft a song together, everything's open. There's no ego about like, I need my, you know, ego ramp solo bit in this. Like, it's not about that. They understand what the song needs from each of the instruments. And sometimes like, cause there's not a lot of drums in the song. No. Like when John Bonham comes in, he comes in, but for the most part, it's very Jimmy dominant, right? Even the bass is subtle. Oh yeah. This song is all Jimmy. And I think when you say there's no ego, I think that's a perfect point. This is the perfect song to sort of talk about that because it was an instrumental and then Robert's like, no, I want to sing on it. Okay. Put lyrics to it and let's, let's do this. And they did. I could imagine. They're like, I have an idea for this song that we can use. And Jimmy was like, okay, let's hear it. Let's let's see. And they're like, okay, yeah, we're down for that. That would be fascinating to see what the voting process was like when they were designing songs, right? Cause it was, it was Led Zeppelin. One person writes all their songs or is it the whole band that writes all their songs? Do they all contribute to the lyrics or not? You know, I think, I think, no, I don't think there was any lyric contributions from anybody else. But Robert, it's pretty much Robert Plant. Yeah. I think maybe Led Zeppelin one, sure. Like there was, cause he was so young cause he's five years younger than everybody else. Um, so he was just a kid when he joined Led Zeppelin. Um, but this song I believe is just a Jimmy and Robert. Composition, I believe 10 years gone. Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. So yeah. So Jimmy probably brought the song in and then, yeah, it was his originally from what I understand, because he just had this huge instrumental with all these overdubs and then they just put stuff over top of it. So absolutely. And I don't want to knock Stairway cause I know you love Stairway, but you know, Stairway would be people have tried to, sure, but you know, the band who wrote the original opening riff to the song Spirit sued them many times. It's eerily similar. Led Zeppelin's known for borrowing. Okay. Sampling. Let's call it sampling. Let's be real here. It's an arpeggiated riff, which is very common. I know it's, I'm not, I'm not defending it, but I'm just sort of just pointing out that this song and 10 years gone sounds like nothing else ever, right? Like this is like, but Stairway is, if we go back to that, it's 10,000 times the Spirit song was. So it's really, so your intros are similar. Who cares? Like, come on. I understand what those guys were going for. They're going for a buck, whatever. But you know, this song is just pure. It's, it's just pure. It's pure genius from Jimmy. So that's an interesting point. Like you talk about the plagiarism of music, you know, you can't make anything that's 100% authentically new with music. You have only so many notes that you can combine with different, you know, tones and whatnot. So, and to be fair, Led Zeppelin was very blues heavy when they got, when they were becoming what they were. Blues is very much like, well, here's your blues riff. Every everybody borrowed the blues riffs, right? Like everyone borrowed. Stones did it, Beatles did it, right? Jimi Hendrix did it. Come on, man. Like, come on. Part of the magic is what can you do with a predetermined riff or, or pattern of notes and see how creative you can get with it, right? So yeah. Um, yeah. Um, but I think in Led Zeppelin's case with the plagiarism, like Robert would lift lyrics directly from other blues songs and call them his own. I think it was the fact that they, like, uh, when the levy breaks is not their song, like they made it amazing, but yeah, sort of like they got sued for it. And I think it was either Willie Dixon or Memphis mini or something like that. Sued them. And then they said, okay, fine. We'll put your name on it. But they were always sort of bad for, okay, well, we wrote this song. Well, but it sounds just like that other blues song over there. No, no, no, no, no. It's ours. But I digress. Yeah, that's interesting because they do like, I mean, that is a thing. People always comment on the fact that, oh, they stole this from this person and they use this riff that they never accredited for that, but so did the Beatles, so did the Rolling Stones, so did Elvis, so did so many bands during the sixties and seventies and fifties, not saying that you should do that, but like, I mean, if, if, if you and I were to write a riff in E minor with an open note, you know, with a palm muted six string, chances are we're going to emulate Metallica or any band from 19, like 78 until, you know, up until now. Yeah. So my question is how do you do anything organically raw and new? It's hard and it is virtually impossible right now. It's about the lyric and it's about a groove. That's sort of what it's all about. It's like you said, there's only so many notes on a guitar and there's only so many ways in different combinations you can play them. And I'll guarantee you every single say, even from 1960 until now, it every combination has been used more than once, twice, probably a thousand times. Yeah. But, and to be fair too, like sometimes when you come up with something that you think is organic, you may not even know that you're plagiarizing it. Yeah. Like the amount of music that flows through someone's mind in like, you know, when I was in music school, you just, or it's an onslaught of music constantly, constantly. And, um, sometimes you're not even realizing that you've borrowed it from something else. You know what I mean? Well, exactly. It'll sound like super fresh to you in the moment and then you'll play it for everybody else. And they'll be like, uh, that's just like, understand, man. You're like, ah, really? Okay. It's Wonderwall. Damn it. And, uh, yeah, I remember being, I remember being in bands and he writes something fun and you start jamming it. Then nobody knows, but you, you know, it sounds like something. It's like, God damn it. This sounds like something. And then once you figure it out, you're like, oh yeah, this song's awesome. No, it sucks. It's this, sorry guys. I remember, I remember that back in the day, just.