Coda (Led Zeppelin album)

Coda is the ninth and final studio album, as well as the first compilation album by English rock band Led Zeppelin. It is a collection of rejected and live tracks from various sessions during the band's twelve-year career. The album was released on 26 November 1982, almost two years after the group had officially disbanded following the death of drummer John Bonham. In 2015, a remastered version of the entire album with two discs of additional material appeared.

Background
The fifth Swan Song Records album for the band, Coda was released to honour contractual commitments to Atlantic Records and also to cover tax demands on previous monies earned. It cleared away nearly all of the leftover tracks from the various studio sessions of the 1960s and 1970s. The album was a collection of eight tracks spanning the length of Zeppelin's twelve-year history. Atlantic counted the release as a studio album, as Swan Song had owed the label a final studio album from the band. According to Martin Popoff, "there's conjecture that Jimmy [Page] called 'We're Gonna Groove' a studio track and 'I Can't Quit You Baby' a rehearsal track because Swan Song owed Atlantic one more studio album specifically."

Guitarist Jimmy Page explained that part of the reasoning for the album's release related to the popularity of unofficial Led Zeppelin recordings which continued to be circulated by fans: "Coda was released, basically, because there was so much bootleg stuff out. We thought, "Well, if there's that much interest, then we may as well put the rest of our studio stuff out". As John Paul Jones recalled: "Basically there wasn't a lot of Zeppelin tracks that didn't go out. We used everything."

The word coda, meaning a passage that ends a musical piece following the main body, was therefore chosen as the title.

Songs
Side one

"We're Gonna Groove" is a BB King cover that opens the album. Most of the track was recorded live at a concert held at the Royal Albert Hall in January, 1970 while Page added new guitar parts to the recording. The unedited version can be heard in the complete recording of the original Royal Albert Hall concert of 9 January 1970. The original album notes incorrectly state that the track was recorded at Morgan Studios in June, 1969. This song was used to open a number of concerts on the band's early 1970 tours and was originally intended to be recorded for inclusion on Led Zeppelin II.

"Poor Tom" is an outtake from Led Zeppelin III, having been recorded at sessions held at Olympic Studios in June, 1970.

"Walter's Walk", a reject from Houses of the Holy, was recorded at sessions during April and May, 1972.

"I Can't Quit You Baby" is taken from the same January, 1970 concert as "We're Gonna Groove" but was listed as a taped rehearsal in the original liner notes. The recording was edited to remove the crowd noise as well as the beginning and ending of the song. The crowd sounds were muted on the multi-track mixdown, as was done with "We're Gonna Groove".

Side two

Side two contains three outtakes from the band's previous album In Through the Out Door, plus a Bonham drum solo.

The uptempo "Ozone Baby" and the rock 'n' roll styled "Darlene" were recorded at that album's sessions at Polar Studios, Stockholm in November, 1978.

"Bonzo's Montreux" was recorded at Mountain Studios, Montreux, Switzerland in September, 1976. The track was conceived as a showcase for Bonham's drumming, which Page added various electronic effects, including a harmonizer.

"Wearing and Tearing" was recorded at Polar in November, 1978. It was written as a reaction to punk, and to show that Led Zeppelin could compete with new bands. The track was scheduled to be issued as a promotional single for the audience at the 1979 Knebworth Festival, headlined by Led Zeppelin, but the record was cancelled at the last minute. The song was first performed live at the 1990 Silver Clef Awards Festival at Knebworth by Plant's band with Page guesting.

Other tracks

The 1993 compact disc edition has four additional tracks from the box sets, Led Zeppelin Boxed Set (1990) and Led Zeppelin Boxed Set 2 (1993), the previously unreleased "Travelling Riverside Blues", "White Summer/Black Mountain Side" and the "Immigrant Song" b-side "Hey, Hey, What Can I Do" from the former and the previously unreleased "Baby Come On Home" from the latter.

In 2015, a remastered version of the entire album with two discs of additional material appeared.

Cover
The album cover was designed by Hipgnosis, the fifth album cover the design group designed for Led Zeppelin. It was also the last album cover Hipgnosis designed before disbanding in 1983. The main four letters CODA are from an alphabet typeface design called "Neon Slim" designed by Bernard Allum in 1978.

Critical reception
Reviewing for Rolling Stone in 1983, Kurt Loder hailed Coda as "a resounding farewell" and a "marvel of compression, deftly tracing the Zeppelin decade with eight powerful, previously unreleased tracks, and no unnecessary elaboration". Robert Christgau wrote in his "Consumer Guide" column for The Village Voice:

"They really were pretty great, and these eight outtakes—three from their elephantine blues phase, three from their unintentional swan song—aren't where to start discovering why. But despite the calculated clumsiness of the beginnings and the incomplete orchestrations of the end, everything here but the John Bonham Drum Orchestra would convince a disinterested party—a Martian, say. Jimmy Page provides a protean solo on "I Can't Quit You Baby" and jumbo riffs throughout."

According to Julian Marszalek of The Quietus, however, "Coda has always been regarded as the band's weakest release. Made up of eight tracks that spanned Led Zeppelin's lifetime, it refused to flow as an album. Devoid of a coherent narrative, it felt tossed together to make up for contractual obligations." In a retrospective review for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine said while it did not include all of the band's notable non-album recordings, it offered "a good snapshot of much of what made Led Zeppelin a great band" and featured mostly "hard-charging rock & roll", including "Ozone Baby", "Darlene", and "Wearing and Tearing": "rockers that alternately cut loose, groove, and menace".

2015 reissue
A remastered version of Coda, along with Presence and In Through the Out Door, was reissued on 31 July 2015. The reissue comes in six formats: a standard CD edition, a deluxe three-CD edition, a standard LP version, a deluxe three-LP version, a super deluxe three-CD plus three-LP version with a hardback book, and as high resolution 24-bit/96k digital downloads. The deluxe and super deluxe editions feature bonus material containing alternative takes and previously unreleased songs, "If It Keeps On Raining", "Sugar Mama", "Four Hands", "St. Tristan's Sword", and "Desire". The reissue was released with an altered colour version of the original album's artwork as its bonus disc's cover.

The reissue was met with generally positive reviews. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 78, based on 8 reviews. In Rolling Stone, David Fricke said it is "the unlikely closing triumph in Page's series of deluxe Zeppelin reissues: a dynamic pocket history in rarities, across three discs with 15 bonus tracks, of his band's epic-blues achievement". Pitchfork journalist Mark Richardson was less impressed by the bonus disc, believing "there is nothing particularly noteworthy about the 'Bombay Orchestra' tracks".

Original release
All tracks written by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, except where noted. All tracks produced by Jimmy Page, except for "Travelling Riverside Blues", produced by John Walters, and "White Summer"/"Black Mountain Side" produced by Jeff Griffin.


 * The CD edition with bonus tracks was also included in the career-spanning boxed set Complete Studio Recordings (disc ten), and the subsequent Led Zeppelin Definitive Collection (disc twelve).

Deluxe edition bonus discs
The CD edition mistakenly lists the running time of "Bring It On Home" (rough mix) as 4:19, which matches the duration of the finished version on Led Zeppelin II, not the intended time for the rough mix.

Personnel
Led Zeppelin


 * John Bonham – drums, percussion
 * John Paul Jones – bass guitar, piano, keyboards
 * Jimmy Page – acoustic and electric guitars, electronic treatments, production
 * Robert Plant – lead vocals, harmonica

Production


 * Assorted Images – design
 * Barry Diament – mastering (original 1988 CD release)
 * Stuart Epps – engineering
 * Peter Grant – executive production
 * Jeff Griffin – producer on "White Summer/Black Mountain Side"
 * Hipgnosis – design
 * Andy Johns – engineering
 * Eddie Kramer – engineering
 * Vic Maile – engineering
 * George Marino – remastering (1994 edition)
 * Leif Mases – engineering
 * John Timperley – engineering
 * John Walters – producer on "Travelling Riverside Blues"