Led Zeppelin

The untitled fourth studio album by the English rock band Led Zeppelin, commonly known as Led Zeppelin IV, was released on 8 November 1971 by Atlantic Records. Produced by guitarist Jimmy Page, it was recorded between December 1970 and March 1971 at several locations, most prominently the Victorian house Headley Grange. Led Zeppelin IV was a commercial and critical success, featuring many of the band's best-known songs, including "Black Dog", "Rock and Roll", "Going to California" and "Stairway to Heaven". The album is one of the best-selling albums of all time with more than 37 million copies sold. It is tied for third highest-certified album in the United States at 23x platinum. Writers and critics have regularly cited it on lists of the greatest albums of all time.

With their first six studio albums not containing a single dud track, trying to neatly assemble a Led Zeppelin 'best of' must have been quite a daunting task. All in all, the folks at Atlantic did an admirable job when the first-ever, single-disc Zeppelin 'best of's' were issued in 1999 (Early Days) and 2000 (Latter Days), covering most of the essentials. For fans that wanted to buy both discs in one shot, both were packaged together in 2002, under the title of Early Days and Latter Days…

Whole Lotta Blues: The Songs of Led Zeppelin gathers blues artists young and old to either a) perform the original versions of classic blues songs later adapted to fit the Led Zeppelin repertoire, or b) cover Zep originals in traditional blues style…

Led Zeppelin's reunion for an Ahmet Ertegun tribute concert in November 2007 (pushed back a couple of weeks due to a finger injury Jimmy Page sustained during rehearsals) seemed like a spur of the moment thing – but how spontaneous could it have been if it just happened to coincide with the release of an expanded The Song Remains the Same on both CD and DVD, the debut of their catalog as digital downloads, and the new two-disc compilation Mothership as a sampler of the whole shebang? Considering this full-scale, multi-prong assault – which also included a new album by Robert Plant, after all – it was probably not all that spontaneous. Such a precise attack suits this most mythic of classic rock groups, who always benefited from an enormous sense of scale.

Led Zeppelin built their reputation on their live show. Their studio recordings were, as Jimmy Page stated many times in interviews, a springboard for further live improvisation and exploration. Many songs (“The Rover,” “The Song Remains The Same” and “In The Light” among others) began as riffs discovered on the stage…