About

This page has been written as a companion to a set of tapes I compiled, this set covers: demos, rehearsals, outtakes and recording sessions between 1968 and 1978. At the time of writing, it is the most complete collection of such material available..... an Anthology.

The project was born out of a love of Led Zeppelin's music and a desire to hear and understand how some of their greatest recorded achievements were devised and put together. It was originally inspired by a chapter in a Dave Lewis book, ’A Celebration’. The title of the chapter is ’Led Zeppelin In The Studio - Shall we roll it Jimmy? ’' and it describes four "reels" of material from four of the nine albums released between 1968 and 1978. Further inspiration came when The Beatles released their Anthology series in 1995, and when I began drafting up a possible setlist during the train ride home one evening, I realised that I already had quite a large portion of the material in my collection (and nearly all of it was from great sounding sources too!).

However, I still had to hunt down the remainder of known tapes to fill in the holes and call it a truly complete collection. I managed this through a series of trades with some great folks and while I was doing it, a new tape surfaced - the now famous ’Physical Graffiti’ outtakes. It must have been fate because they fit into the setlist quite neatly.

Completeness was important to me for these tapes, and it was something I strived for (although I didn't neglect sound quailty by any means!). Once I was satisfied that I had what most people considered the best sounding sources, I compared the content of the dubious tracks from the different sources I had to reveal any differences between them, and to help determine which source contained the most complete version of a particular song. After completeness had been established, I went back and ensured that the most complete version of each track was also the best sounding version. In some cases this didn't happen, and in such cases a recording from a better sounding source was also included.