Led Zeppelin
Physical Graffiti
(Swan Song)
More than three decades after its release Physical Graffiti is perhaps not the best known of Led Zeppelin's albums.
It is, however, arguably their finest offering and best illustrates the sheer range of their performances. It includes, in singer Robert Plant's, opinion the band's definitive recorded performance, the 81/2-minute Kashmir.
Physical Graffiti was originally planned as a single disc, but the sessions found the band in an expansive mood. With the exception of Led Zeppelin II, all of their preceding albums had featured one or more tracks that clocked in at more than seven minutes, but this time almost everything they recorded played out at epic length. When the sessions wrapped, although they had cut only eight tracks they had recorded far more music than a single LP record could accommodate.
Fortunately there were surplus tracks left over from the sessions of their previous three albums, and the decision was taken to use some of the stockpiled additional material to stretch Physical Graffiti to a 15-track double album.
