Led Zeppelin
Coda

The 1980 for rock is certainly one of those numbers to forget (a bit like 1970 with the deaths of Hendrix and Joplin), since it appears on the tombs of famous music stars to mark the passing of Bon Scott (February 19), Ian Curtis
(May 18), John Lennon (December 8), and Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham (September 25).

The evening of September 24, returning from rehearsals held in Windsor for yet another American tour, John Bonham downed several double servings of vodka and orange juice, which caused the vomiting that led to his suffocation.

Despite everything, about two years after the incident, record store windows can still display a new vinyl marked Led Zeppelin. Naturally, it cannot be considered a new studio release in every sense, but more of a transversal journey among outtakes and forgotten tracks (including a live version) that spans the full twelve years of this band's artistic life.

To start with, "We're Gonna Groove" (a cover by Ben E. King and James Bethea), which was supposed to be included in Led Zeppelin (II), is a good rock blues well-suited to warm the audience, enough to open concerts in the early months of '70. The leading roles are equally divided between the percussionist Bonham and the fresh singer Plant (let's not forget it's 1969), who already shows he knows how to expertly pilot the group's front line. The trend towards more cautiously sunny atmospheres represented by the third album chapter comes to the surface in "Poor Tom", where the harmonica and twelve-string help craft a track that stands out for instilling tranquility and serenity in the listener. To remind us that the roots of a great rock band also take off from the amazing ability to personalize others' tracks, the blues of "I Can't Quit You Baby" (the lyrics are not the same as Willie Dixon's) could not be missing, four minutes of excitement and euphoria tasked with encapsulating musicians and listeners in the same magical dimension. "Walter's Walk", which comes from the sessions of "Houses Of The Holy", unlike the painstaking refinement activity that the songs in that album benefited from, presents itself as direct and no-nonsense from the initial riff to the end, allowing the Bonham/Jones duo to emphasize the indispensable role they played, not secondary at all to that of Page and Plant.

The second half of the album contains the fruits of the sessions from which the last true studio work of Led Zeppelin, "In Through The Outdoor". Except for "Bonzo's Montreux", an instrumental conceived by the irreplaceable drummer with Page, on which the latter had fun playing with a harmonizer, one is pleasantly carried away by a vigorous succession of songs starting from the vitality of "Ozone Baby", where the riff-verse-chorus combination proves successful on all fronts. Jones' abilities as a multi-instrumentalist can be appreciated in that boogie setting given through the piano to "Darlene", which allows this restless rock 'n roll to leave Plant the chance (that he certainly doesn't let slip by) to pour out with enthusiasm an uncontainable vocal interpretation. "Wearing And Tearing" is clear proof that our guys on the eve of the breakup were still capable of kicking the butts of many of the new heroes of the end of the decade called punks, with a performance (beyond the limits of sound quality) that is stunning, reaching your ears with the same devastating effects that even today would have a punch thrown at the head by a world heavyweight champion.

"Coda" (which in musical language means END) remains a decent album certainly unable to compete with any of the previous works, which helped (while being aware it wouldn't have been necessary...) to prolong the discographic life of the Zeps even in the '80s, during
which far too often rumors of possible comebacks surfaced, leaving quite a bit of bitterness and much nostalgia for those controversial and unfortunate performances like the Live Aid of 1985 and three years later for the fortieth anniversary of Atlantic.