Led Zeppelin’s Led Zeppelin IV (33 1/3 #17)
Erik DavisStripping Led Zeppelin's famous name off the fourth record was an almost petulant attempt to let their Great Work symbolically stand on its own two feet. But the wordless jacket also lent the album charisma. Fans hunted for hidden meanings, or, in failing to find them, sensed a strange reflection of their own mute refusal to communicate with the outside world. This helped to create one of the supreme paradoxes of rock history: an esoteric megahit, a blockbuster arcanum. Stripped of words & numbers, the album no longer referred to anything but itself: a concrete talisman that drew you into its world, into the frame. All the stopgap titles we throw at the thing are lame: Led Zeppelin IV, [Untitled], Runes, Zoso, Four Symbols. In an almost Lovecraftian sense, the album was nameless, a thing from beyond, charged with manna. And yet this uncanny fetish was about as easy to buy as a jockstrap.
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Erik Davis has been writing about music, subcultures, & technoculture for fifteen years. His cult book Techgnosis: Myth, Magic, & Mysticism in the Age of Information (1998), was translated in 5 languages & is being republished with a new introduction by Serpents Tail. He is a regular contributor to Wired, & lives in San Francisco.