Led Zeppelin "Led Zeppelin II"

Led Zeppelin II is the eponymous second studio album by the English rock band Led Zeppelin, released on 22 October 1969 in the United States and on 31 October 1969 in the United Kingdom by Atlantic Records. Recording sessions for the album took place at several locations in both the United Kingdom and North America from January to August 1969. The album's production was credited to the band's lead guitarist and songwriter Jimmy Page, and it also served as Led Zeppelin's first album to utilise the recording techniques of the engineer Eddie Kramer. Incorporating several elements of blues and folk music, Led Zeppelin II exhibited the band's evolving musical style of blues-derived material and their guitar riff-based sound. It has been described as the band's heaviest album.

Led Zeppelin II was a commercial success, and was the band's first album to reach number one on charts in the UK and the US. In 1970, the album's cover designer David Juniper was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Recording Package. On 15 November 1999, the album was certified 12× Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for sales passing 12 million copies. Since its release, various writers and music critics have regularly cited Led Zeppelin II as one of the greatest and most influential rock albums of all time.

Led Zeppelin II was conceived during a hectic and much-travelled period of Led Zeppelin's career from January through August 1969, when they completed four European and three American concert tours. Each song was separately recorded, mixed and produced at various studios in the UK and North America. The album was written on tour, during periods of a couple of hours in between concerts, a studio was booked and the recording process begun, resulting in a sound with spontaneity and urgency through necessity. Bassist John Paul Jones recalled that "We were touring a lot. Jimmy [Page]'s riffs were coming fast and furious. A lot of them came from onstage especially during the long improvised section of 'Dazed and Confused'. We'd remember the good stuff and dart into a studio along the way."

Some of the recording studios used by the band were not the most advanced. One studio in Vancouver, credited as "a hut", had an 8-track set up that did not even have proper headphone facilities. The group's lead singer Robert Plant later discussed the writing and recording process, stating "It was crazy really. We were writing the numbers in hotel rooms and then we'd do a rhythm track in London, add the vocal in New York, overdub the harmonica in Vancouver and then come back to finish mixing at New York."


"Thank You", "The Lemon Song" and "Moby Dick" were overdubbed during the tour, while the mixing of "Whole Lotta Love" and "Heartbreaker" was also done on tour. Page later stated "In other words, some of the material came out of rehearsing for the next tour and getting new material together."

The album sleeve design was from a poster by David Juniper, who was simply told by the band to come up with an interesting idea. Juniper was a fellow student of Page's at Sutton Art College in Surrey. His design was based on a photograph of the Jagdstaffel 11 Division of the German Air Force during World War I, the famed Flying Circus led by the Red Baron. After the picture was tinted, the faces of the four members of the band were airbrushed on from a 1969 publicity photograph. Other faces added, according to Juniper, were either Miles Davis or Blind Willie Johnson, a friend of Andy Warhol (possibly Mary Woronov) and astronaut Neil Armstrong, although it is actually fellow astronaut Frank Borman. The cover also pictured the outline of a Zeppelin on a brown background (similar to the cover of the band's first album), which gave the album its nickname "Brown Bomber".