In Through The Out Door

Zeppelin’s last one, 1979. You can tell Page and Bonham weren’t driving it anymore. This is John Paul Jones’s record. Synths and keyboards all over it, which is not what you reach for when you want Zeppelin to sound like Zeppelin.

“In the Evening” opens heavy enough. After that it goes somewhere else. “South Bound Saurez” is basically a piano tune. “Fool in the Rain” is the one everybody knows. Half-time shuffle, then it breaks into a samba halfway through that nobody asked for, and somehow it works. “All My Love” is Plant singing about his son, who had died two years earlier. It lands differently once you know that.

It isn’t IV and it isn’t Physical Graffiti. Some nights that’s the point. Bonham was gone within a year and so was the band, so this is where the studio records stop.