In the collective imagination of the enthusiasts, or at least the connoisseurs of the Dirigible, this elephantine and rousing expedition into Middle Eastern territories and moods holds the third absolute position in the hierarchy of the many gems in their catalog, according to the majority, preceded only by the invoking, urgent, psychedelic riff of “Whole Lotta Love” and, in the very first position, by the pastoral and visionary electro-acoustic crescendo of “Stairway To Heaven”.
The song is, as many know, contained in their sixth and double album "Physical Graffiti", the last sensational leap upwards and towards glory, at the peak of an unrepeatable seven-year period of supreme variety and qualitative constancy, on the brink of a last five-year period full instead of problems and relative decline until the unfortunate halt in September 1980, following the disappearance of the indispensable, irreplaceable engineer John Bonham.
The main framework of this hard rock delight comes, as is customary for the Zeppelin, from the priceless musical alchemy between guitarist and drummer. Jimmy Page, wielding the guitar tuned to the Celtic way, meaning three out of six strings playing a D in open, even adds a fourth by pressing the A string at the fifth fret, thus creating a resonant drone, a D ostinato on which to embark on a chromatic ascent (that is, half a tone at a time) on one of the two remaining strings, with a vaguely Arabian flavor. This means that (almost) all of “Kashmir” can be played on a suitably tuned guitar by pressing two strings at a time and letting the others ring freely: an admirable example of excellence in simplicity.
Page brings this ascending riff in three-fourths, but his drummer pays no heed and brilliantly marches on with his four-fourths… no worries because 3x4 is like saying 4x3 so every twelve beats they meet up again, and it starts anew. The rhythmic/harmonic result is of disarming effectiveness and beauty, perceived as exotic and at the same time fascinating by anyone with ears attuned to good music, but also by those who aren't.
When it's time for the change, the chorus, the modulation, the brave Bonzo pays no heed to that either and marches right through with unheard-of genius! Page's guitar, but even more the fanfare organized by John Paul Jones's mellotron and the accompanying orchestral musicians, harmonize with descending scales and pim and pam in a triumph of emphasis, but the drums proceed like a truck, disregarding accentuation or displacement, with Jones's bass consciously following along with the same riff as the verses.
It is, in short, the old school of making good music... it's what Bonham does NOT play that makes the already excellent melodic and harmonic intuition of his guitarist unique, compelling, and priceless. Bonzo wasn't a drummer of this world... he was a kind of rhythm god capable of drawing feeling and joy and glory both through the unparalleled, explosive sound he managed to extract from his drums and from the celestial perfection, the too-right way he had of spreading bass drum and snare in the rhythmic path… a magnificent brute force combined with complete and sublime surrender to rhythmic intuition.
The verdict then is that there's no contest, even thirty-five years after his death: the best. There is no drummer in the world with the heart in the right place who isn't impressed by John Bonham's art, the Mozart of skins and cymbals.
But let's get back to the song: wanting to last beyond eight minutes, it needs additional variations beyond the verse/chorus succession (Plant is also absent in these, ousted by the grand fanfare of strings). The Zeppelin organize a couple: the first is an imperious staccato in the key of A, fertile ground for Plant's wails and some Bonham's offbeat fills, the second is a melodic opening stretched over a couple of chords, conceived by the singer but where Jones also swoops in with his real and fake strings, both musicians focused on maintaining very tight Middle Eastern scales. This bridge appears twice… the first is in the middle of the song and its exhaustion and fall back into the immense drone/riff escorted by the last moan of the singer constitutes, in my opinion, the most exhilarating point of the track. The second constitutes the epilogue, with each turn increasingly swollen with orchestra and rolls of a Bonham who only at this point lets go, until the final fade-out.
Robert Plant conceived the lyrics during a crossing of the Moroccan desert, entitling it for some reason to an Indian region that neither he nor anyone else in the band had ever visited up to that point. Remarkable is his ability to melodically insert himself between the rhythm's cannonades and the rest of the instruments in a powerful staccato, describing a serpentine and fascinating singing path (in thirds, like the guitar and disregarding drum and bass) that wraps the martial cadence in exoticism and mystery.
In five hundred years, if the human race still exists, there will surely still be theaters and places where music is performed, and then inside one of them, we will certainly find an orchestra along with some guitar, drum, and bass players, as well as a singer with a suitably stentorian voice, all grappling, before an adequate and attentive audience, precisely with these eight minutes of rock excellence, presented as they were conceived and perfectly arranged in admirable musical cohesion by the four of the Zeppelin, forty years ago. This is classical music by now, and it will be increasingly so in the future.
Tracklist and Lyrics
01 No Quarter (00:00)
Close the door, put out the light
Know they won't be home tonight
The snow falls hard and don't you know
The winds of Thor are blowing cold
They're wearing steel that's bright and true
They carry news that must get through
They choose the path where no one goes
They hold no quarter
They hold no quarter
Walking side by side with death
The devil mocks their every step
The snow drives back the foot that's slow
The dogs of doom are howling more
They carry news that must get through
To build a dream for me and you
They choose the path that no one goes
They hold no quarter
They ask no quarter
They hold no quarter
They ask no quarter
They ask no quarter
They give no quarter
02 Tangerine (00:00)
Measuring a summer's day
I only find it slips away to grey
The hours, they bring me pain
Tangerine, Tangerine
Living reflections from a dream
I was her love, she was my queen
And now a thousand years between
Thinking how it used to be
Does she still remember times like these?
To think of us again, and I do
Tangerine, Tangerine
Living reflections from a dream
I was her love, she was my queen
And now a thousand years between
03 Kashmir (00:00)
Oh let the sun beat down upon my face, stars to fill my dream
I am a traveler of both time and space, to be where I have been
To sit with elders of the gentle race, this world has seldom seen
They talk of days for which they sit and wait and all will be revealed
Talk and song from tongues of lilting grace, whose sounds caress my ear
But not a word I heard could I relate, the story was quite clear
Oh, oh.
Oh, I been blind... mama, there ain't no denyin'
I've been blind, ain't no denyin', no denyin'
All I see turns to brown, as the sun burns the ground
And my eyes fill with sand, as I scan this wasted land
Trying to find, trying to find where I've been.
Oh, pilot of the storm who leaves no trace, like thoughts inside a dream
Heed the path that led me to that place, yellow desert stream
My Shangri-La beneath the summer moon, I will return again
Sure as the dust that floats high in June, when movin' through Kashmir.
Oh, father of the four winds, fill my sails, across the sea of years
With no provision but an open face, along the straits of fear
Ohh.
When I'm on, when I'm on my way, yeah
When I see, when I see the way, you stay-yeah
Ooh, yeah-yeah, ooh, yeah-yeah, when I'm down...
Ooh, yeah-yeah, ooh, yeah-yeah, well I'm down, so down
Ooh, my baby, oooh, my baby, let me take you there
Let me take you there. Let me take you there
04 Going To California (00:00)
Spent my days with a woman unkind
Smoked my stuff and drank all my wine
Made up my mind to make a new start
Goin' to California with an achin' in my heart
Someone told me there's a girl out there
With love in her eyes and flowers in her hair
Took my chances on a big jet plane
Never let them tell you that they're all the same
Oh, the sea was red and the sky was grey
Wondered how tomorrow could ever follow today
The mountains and the canyons started to tremble and shake
As the children of the sun began to awake
Watch out
Seems that the wrath of the Gods got a punch on the nose
And it started to flow, I think I might be sinkin'
Throw me a line, if I reach it in time
I'll meet you up there where the path runs straight and high
To find a queen without a king
They say she plays guitar and cries and sings, la la la la la
Ride a white mare in the footsteps of dawn
Tryin' to find a woman who's never, never, never been born
Standin' on a hill in my mountain of dreams
Telling myself it's not as hard, hard, hard as it seems
05 That's The Way (00:00)
I don't know how I'm gonna tell you
I can't play with you no more
I don't know how I'm gonna do what mama told me
My friend, the boy next door
I can't believe what people saying
You're gonna let your hair hang down
I'm satisfied to sit here working all day long
You're in the darker side of town
And when I'm out I see you walking
Why don't your eyes see me?
Could it be you've found another game to play?
What did mama say to me?
That's the way, oh, that's the way it oughta be, yeah yeah
Mama say that's the way it oughta stay, yeah yeah
And yesterday I saw you standing by the river
And weren't those tears that filled your eyes?
And all the fish that lay in dirty water dying
Had they got you hypnotized?
And yesterday I saw you kissing tiny flowers
But all that lives is born to die
And so I say to you that nothing really matters
And all you do is stand and cry
I don't know what to say about it
When all your ears have turned away
But now's the time to look and look again at what you see
Is that the way it oughta stay?
That's the way, that's the way it oughta be, oh don't you know now
Mama said, mama said that's the way it's gonna stay, yeah
Loading comments slowly