Led Zeppelin III by Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin III hit the shops on October 5, 1970, and anybody expecting another round of Led Zeppelin II's thunder got a curveball. After a songwriting retreat at the Bron-Yr-Aur cottage in Wales, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant came back with a fistful of acoustic tunes, and the band cut much of the album at Headley Grange, a country house, using the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio, with more sessions at Island and Olympic Studios in London. Page produced, as always, and Andy Johns and Terry Manning handled the mixing.

There's still a Viking raid on board: "Immigrant Song" charges in with Plant's war whoop and Bonham's pounding. But then the record wanders off into the countryside. "Gallows Pole" takes an old English folk song, by way of Fred Gerlach, and whips it into a frenzy; "That's the Way" and "Tangerine" are gentle and wistful; "Bron-Y-Aur Stomp" is a foot-tapping hoedown; and "Since I've Been Loving You" is a slow blues so heavy it practically sags. John Paul Jones shines brightest of all, turning up on mandolin, double bass and synthesizers alongside his usual bass, with no hired hands anywhere on the record.

Even the sleeve was a gimmick worth waiting for, a volvelle wheel you could spin to flash pictures through holes in the cover, and it held the release up. It went straight to the top of the charts in Britain and America, even as plenty of critics scratched their heads at the folky turn. Time has been kinder: it's now heard as the moment Led Zeppelin proved they could be more than just loud.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.