This week on the Vinyl Crusade we feature the 4th Installment of the show dedicated to the cultural revolution and esoteric magnificence of Led Zeppelin IV. Tune in Fridays at 6.00pm EAST and Saturdays and Sundays at 9.30am EST and 6.30am PST on Megazine Radio.
It was in a mystic way that the strange world of Led Zeppelin IV began to open itself to me. The album conjured up a world of forests and magic and spirits, of gods and fertility rites and the dark secret powers of the earth. There was a kind of “wayward Tantric Magic” evident in the lyrics, melodies and intentions illuminated in their music. We were invited to enter into the mysteries of primitive ritual, to “dance in the dark of night and sing to the morning light.” The songs invited us to re-imagine a long forgotten world, to turn away from the dominance of Christian-Western rationality towards the sensual pagan magic of another time and place: “Tired eyes in the sunrise, waiting for the eastern glow.”
The songs promised a deep synthesis of the erotic and the religious, a convergence of drugs and mysticism, the awakening of a strange but authentic “reason” which transcends the stifling limits of distorted modern escapism, so dominated by technology and utility. As the majestic nature inspired ode to all humanity “Stairway to Heaven” so aptly puts it:
And it’s whispered that soon
If we all call the tune
Then the piper will lead us to reason
And a new day will dawn
For those who stand long
And the forests will echo with laughter.