Coda

After Led Zeppelin decided to disband, following the death of drummer John Bonham, they were left with a contractual obligation to produce one more album (and not, as many suspected, an appointment with the tax man). This obligation resulted in the 1982 release of the album Coda – a short collection of outtakes and oddities from the band’s career. I bought it not long after its release and I must have played the entire album no more than half a dozen times since. When I finally got round to replacing my old vinyl Led Zeppelin albums with their remastered CD equivalents, I didn’t bother with it as it really wasn’t worth spending out again on a collection that really wasn’t that good - at least I hadn’t bothered replacing it until this week.

Over the last year, Jimmy Page has been re-releasing the Led Zeppelin studio albums in a newly remastered form with additional material supplied on a companion disk – usually either alternative mixes of the originally released songs or “works in progress”. I’m always a bit suspicious of the whole remastering exercise as it is often merely a ruse to coerce obsessive fans into buying the same recordings yet again. In the case of Led Zeppelin it was a project that was not only worthwhile but which the discerning listener deserved given that the original vinyl albums contained many glaring production errors. At least that would have justified the original remasters – surely after that it merely becomes persistent electronic noodling?

Remasters aside, the companion disks seemed to me to be the most intriguing element of this exercise. Even back in the pre-internet age there were dozens of Led Zeppelin bootlegs that offered an insight into a wealth of cutting room detritus that was often obviously left out for a reason but occasionally offered a glimpse of a stillborn single or embryonic classic. The series started quite well with the live companion material on Led Zeppelin I providing a document of the raw energy that the band possessed in the late 1960s. The later albums also included occasional outtakes but many of them merely proffered “alternate” mixes which could only be differentiated from their previously released versions on close inspection.

In a way, many of these companion disks have been a disappointment although with occasional intrigues: The instrumental La La from Led Zeppelin II, Jennings Farm Blues and Key to the Highway from III, a radically different early take of Physical Graffiti’s In The Light and some evidence that John Paul Jones did take his keyboards to the Presence sessions with the oddly titled 10 Ribs & All/Carrot Pod Pod (Pod): a piano based piece very much at odds with the rest of that album. All of interest but not in themselves a strong case for purchasing an expensive re-release for all but the most determined completest. However that brings us to Coda – the album that was actually meant to be the outtakes collection.

The first disc in the set contains the remastered version of the original UK released Coda album. In terms of the sound quality it is brighter and, having listened to the whole collection for the first time in years , it’s actually far better than I remember it with the highlights being We’re Gonna Groove – a great Ben E King cover, Poor Tom a pleasing acoustic outtake from Led Zeppelin III  and Wearing and Tearing a superb hard rocker from the 1978 sessions at ABBA’s studios. The other tracks are reasonable salvages from the cutting room fodder including a decent live version of I Can’t Quit You Baby and some indulgent bashing from Bonham.

The subsequent discs are where it gets really interesting. Baby Come On Home  was previously released on a box-set only collection and Travelling Riverside Blues was a single from the superior BBC sessions. Hey, Hey, What Can I Do  was the B-side of the Immigrant Song single that has never been officially available in the UK (I bought my copy whilst on holiday in the USA). Also on the first companion disk is Sugar Mama, a track which I have previously heard on a bootleg album but the difference here is that the sound quality is superb. It really shows up the comparison between a badly copied third hand recording and what can be achieved from the original tapes in Page’s vaults.

The second companion disk starts off with the two recordings that Page and Plant made in India. Again, this was material that I had heard before but never with this clarity. The two recordings are of Friends and Four Sticks and are effectively a pre-cursor to the No Quarter project that they would produce for MTV in the 1990s. Also on this was St. Tristan's Sword – an outtake from Led Zeppelin III that was new to me although it seems to contain familiar elements used elsewhere (similar to the manner in which The Yardbirds’ Little Games contains the genesis of many early Led Zeppelin songs). Aside from these there are other rough mixes and early versions of well-known tunes (an early take of When The Levee Breaks is particularly intriguing as well as a killer version of Bring It On Home). It also contains another worthwhile interpretation of Physical Graffiti’s In The Light – similar but at the same time very different from the familiar version that was released back in 1975.

So has Coda now been transformed into the album it always should have been? To a great extent I believe it has, but it is also nagging that there are recordings that are known from the bootlegs that have been passed over. Possibly the top of this list would be Swan Song which was recorded as an instrumental but never saw the light of day on Physical Graffiti. However, that song was eventually completed as Midnight Moonlight from Page’s mid 1980s collaboration with Paul Rogers (The Firm) and releasing an instrumental outtake with long pauses where vocals were required would seem to be a disservice to what was a great vocal performance by Rogers. Ultimately, I think Page has chosen the right point to put the Zeppelin legacy to rest – unless, of course, he was planning a new compilation called “Scraping the Barrel”.