They're taking us to Marrakech

I am struggling to take my mind back to 1994 and recall my reaction to hearing that Jimmy Page and Robert Plant had reunited. Was I drooling at the chance of hearing more Led Zeppelin-esque riffing & wailing? Or did I hope for something new? Songs that didn't just mimic their work in the 1970s, but rather music that reflected where they were then, some 15 years since they'd done an album together.

As it turned out, No Quarter: Jimmy Page and Robert Plant Unledded gave us lots of Led Zeppelin, but also a few new songs. However, it was more keen on fulfilling the world music promise of "Kashmir" and the October 1972 recording sessions the 2 rockers had in Bombay, India. This was no simple hard rock album. Instead it featured songs recorded in Marrakech, Morocco with local musicians, songs recorded in London with the Egyptian Ensemble led by the legendary Hossam Ramzy, and even more tunes recorded with a group featuring members of Plant's solo band. This last configuration didn't produce straight-ahead rock, though. The usual rock instrumentation was abetted by banjo, mandolin, hurdy-gurdy, and bodhrán. The result was that some Zeppelin classics were given a Celtic makeover.

I bought the album and soon found out that various additional songs were available as b-sides to singles. But, even buying the U.S. CD singles didn't get me everything as I learned that one song was only available on versions of the album outside of North America. It's stunts like this that made me happy to see record companies scared as hell and taking a beating when Napster was introduced.

Hearing "Wah Wah" got put onto a lengthy list of other songs to seek out but was way down. As with Page's Lucifer Rising soundtrack, time went by, and the Internet became accessible and popular. But it wasn't until just a year or so ago that I decided to make a Youtube playlist of the original material on No Quarter which meant I'd be able to hear "Wah Wah" for the first time. Assuming it was actually on Youtube, of course.

Of course it was.

Although the song was not on any domestic release of the album, it was readily available on the DVD of the same name, which is where the Youtube videos I've found are sourced from.

As it turned out, a song I waited somewhere on the order of 28 years to finally listen to ended up being the best of the bunch of new songs on No Quarter. Recorded in Marrakech, it features for local musicians that contribute voice, a frame drum that looks not unlike a bodhrán, what I think are tablas, and a stringed instrument that may be a guembri. These in addition to Page's acoustic rhythm guitar and Plant's singing.

The drums provide a restrained but steady beat for the guitar to play over while the guembri doubles Page's line but in a bass register and in something akin to a lead role. The guembri has this mercurial, hollow kind of sound that is instantly alluring.

Plant sings English lyrics while the Moroccan players add what I presume is some Arabic singing, including, "wah wah", in response to his words. I don't know if "wah" means anything in Arabic or is used for its sound but their singing is a highlight of this song. I also don't know the backgrounds of the Moroccan musicians but here their playing has a homespun feel. It sounds wonderful yet ragged. Tight but loose, perhaps. I can't find anything to indicate whether these guys were street musicians that Page and Plant met or if they're some of the most accomplished recording artists in all of Morocco.

Whatever the case, this song just locks into a groove right away and doesn't let up. It even quickens towards the end for a fantastic finish.

Before There Was Throbbing Gristle

In a previous post, I wrote about my love for a couple of Led Zeppelin songs that have endured over the years for me even though I don't care for other tunes of theirs as I once did. Here I want to talk up a Zeppelin-adjacent piece from the days of yore but one that I didn't discover until fairly recently.

As I noted earlier, I listened to a lot of Led Zeppelin in my younger days. I believe that I was in high school when I read Hammer of the Gods, Stephen Davis' notorious account of Zeppelin's career. It built up and kept alive for a whole new generation of fans all of the rock mythology surrounding the band. Salacious, if apocryphal, tales of booze, drugs, and general Dionysian debauchery were given pride of place in the history of the group. Also played up was Jimmy Page's love of the occult and his fondness for occultist, "magician", etc., Aleister Crowley.

By reading the book I learned that Page had recorded a soundtrack for the film, Lucifer Rising, directed by experimental filmmaker and fellow Crowley devotee, Kenneth Anger. However, the music was never used after Page and Anger had a falling out. My understanding is that the soundtrack emerged on a bootleg sometime in the 1980s but I never got a hold of it despite having an interest in hearing just what Page had composed to accompany a film which is an exercise in esoterica.

Years go by and Led Zeppelin drops out of my musical diet. Meanwhile, all kinds of thing happen including the rise of the Internet and the official release of Page's Lucifer Rising soundtrack and associated recordings. Then it occurs to me one day just a few years ago: I wonder if it's on Youtube.

And it was.

While I had probably read some descriptions of this music back in the day, they were long forgotten by the time I hit play on that Youtube page and I really had no idea what to expect going in.

It begins with a gently pulsing drone that is sitar-like and it slowly wends its way along for a few minutes before some indistinct, though surely blasphemous, chanting enters. A woodwind sound emerges from the scene only to slowly fade away as if it had been sucked into the void.

Onto the foundation of that sitar-like pulse are laid synthesizers that sound like they're heralding the arrival of something menacing as well some of the most ominous sounding Mellotron strings I've ever heard. As the song progresses, Page throws in some guitar effects straight out of the live "Dazed and Confused" playbook.

Just as the gloominess threatens to become oppressive, Page eases back on the sinister and slightly atonal synths by throwing in some tablas that give a stuttering rhythm for the listener to latch onto. A bit of acoustic guitar joins the hellish chorus towards the end and eases us back into the ethereal drone and the song into denouement.

What a fantastic piece of music! The drone is entrancing and Page throws all manner of sounds on top of it that evoke things esoteric and evil. There's such interesting sonic variety here and a heightened sense of drama throughout. Just great music to get lost in. I wouldn't have been surprised to see a large, hellish fiend sporting wings and tentacles around its mouth emerge outside of my window as this piece played in the background.

The video above includes, to the best of my knowledge, all of the associated recordings from the sessions that yielded the soundtrack that have been released to date. In addition to the 20 minute piece meant for the film, there's other snippets that went unused. Most sound like Page experimenting with his guitar and tape effects. Of greatest interest is "Lucifer Rising - Percussive Return" which sounds like the opening of the soundtrack but with some metallic percussion sounds that give the song a proto-industrial feel which was wholly unexpected.

I think it was all done in 1971-72 as I've read that Anger had finished shooting his film in '72. So this stuff dates to the period between Zeppelin's untitled 4th album and Houses of the Holy. Listening to it, I can't help but wish some of the ideas here found their way into Zeppelin's music beyond live versions of "Dazed and Confused". It would have been fascinating to hear them play with the metallic abrasiveness of "Percussive Return" or a pulsing drone.