52 years on from their third album's release, Zeppelin's visionary guitarist and producer gets candid: "People were saying, ‘Oh, Led Zeppelin’s gone acoustic’. Well, what happened to your ears on the first album and the second album? Ha ha. It’s just variations on a theme, really. There were so many ideas put into the first album, but they were able to grow and be developed."
"With the third album, we had a break from touring and it gave us a chance to work on more of the acoustic stuff."
"Right at the early stages of rehearsing, when I think it was just John Bonham and myself, I had Immigrant Song, Out On The Tiles, and also Friends. If you say straight away you’ve got Friends and Immigrant Song, already it’s got the yin and yang. And there’s all this other stuff that’s going to go in.
"We’d already played Since I’ve Been Loving You before, that was written just before the third album. So we knew we had that as well. There were all these textures coming up, and I was keen to do Gallows Pole because I thought it was quite curious the way that song had started off in England and gone all the way around the States and come back, so then we were going to do it and send it back to the States again as a folk song."
It has now been certified 6 times Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for US sales in excess of 6 million copies.
Recorded between January and July 1970, Led Zeppelin III was released in October 1970. This album was regarded on release as representing a move towards a greater emphasis by the band on folk and acoustic sounds, and perhaps a step too far. However, this was not a correct analysis of Zeppelin's music to date, since at least a third of the content of Led Zeppelin and Led Zeppelin II could be said to be acoustic-based, and the album is now agreed to be one of Zeppelin's finest.
I think we produced something really good: a courageous album, a band standing up for its convictions, doing what felt natural without being at the beck and call of record labels or A&R men. We were able, without any hindrance, to keep pushing the boundaries. (Jimmy Page)
I had already written Immigrant Song, and came up with Friends a day or two before we got together at Robert [Plant]'s house in the West Midlands. I was keen to do Gallows Pole because I had an arrangement I wanted to try, and I had Tangerinefrom a number of years beforehand – before Led Zeppelin.
Then Robert and I went to Bron-yr-Aur, a cottage in Snowdonia. I think Robert had been there on holiday with his mum and dad and knew it was a great place to get away from everything. He had his daughter Carmen and his wife there, and my girlfriend came, too. We had a couple of roadies staying, then the families went home and we carried on. We just had cassette recorders, and That's the Way came out of there as a complete song.
I met a Belgian girl who was giving out leaflets at Piccadilly Circus. I had a place in Scotland and was keen to take her up there: I was a pretty impulsive fellow. So I thought I might have to let her know who I was. I started to talk about being in Led Zeppelin and she said: "Did you go to that cottage in Wales?" I said: "Yeah." And she said: "You can't be Jimmy Page – he's gay."
Robert Plant: I had no idea what I wanted Zeppelin to be at that point. I hoped we could combine acoustic and electric, which was not that easy to do live, and also lean towards that North African thing. I felt we started getting there with Friends.
