Headley Grange: Home of Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti
Headley Grange: Home of Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti
Headley Grange is the birthplace of many Led Zeppelin albums including Led Zeppelin III, Led Zeppelin IV, Houses of the Holy and Physical Graffiti. According to faroutmagazine.co.uk, Headley was a former workhouse built in 1795 and turned into a recording studio.
Headley Grange was a workhouse used by the poor and over the next 30 years, garnered a bad reputation. Riots and general neglect persisted until it was changed into a recording studio in the 60s. The atmosphere of a bad reputation hangs over the location. Some of which may have led to Jimmy Page’s strong interest in the occult.
Fleetwood Mac, and Genesis used it as a recording studio in the 60s. And Led Zeppelin called it home from 1970-1975.
The escape to Headley Grange allowed the band to concentrate on the music, far removed from distractions. Jimmy Page had this to say about the location:
“The reason we went there in the first place was to have a live-in situation where you’re writing and really living the music,” he said. “We’d never really had that experience before as a group, apart from when Robert Plant and I had gone to Bron-Yr-Aur. But that was just me and Robert going down there and hanging out in the bosom of Wales and enjoying it. This was different. It was all of us really concentrating in a concentrated environment.”
Led Zeppelin recorded three albums and then returned in 1975 to Headley to work on Physical Graffiti. Many doubted that Led Zeppelin could create a successful double LP (Why would anyone doubt Led Zeppelin?). They returned and started recording in a mobile studio.
Pit of Our Stomachs
Headley Grange allowed for some extremely optimal musical opportunities. For instance, Bonham’s drums were a unique audio experience as his drum set was fixed in the main hall and the sound reverberated from the walls. Page had the engineers mic the walls to capture the sound.
Ideas spawned from everywhere within this foreboding and remote location. Jimmy wrote “Stairway to Heaven” while sitting in front of the roaring fire in the sitting room. This fire being the only source of heat in this frigid environment. Page had this to say about returning to Headley:
“We had just gone through a real lengthy leg of touring. And we had a bit of a break, time for people to go on holiday and that with their families, and then the recording date was put in the schedule, and what it was, was actually to return back to Headley Grange where we had done the fourth album and have a mobile recording track – a multi-track truck.”
Physical Graffiti was a culmination of ideas floating around that came together at Headley Grange. And Page knew this about the album:
And that was it, before going in there, we sort of knew instinctively, in the pit of our stomachs that it was going to be great, that wonderful things were going to happen,” Page added.
Of course, the icing on the cake of what is Physical Graffiti is the creation of “Kashmir”. Jimmy said that the ideas were a riff that kept going and going and round and round. What is called a “rond” musically.
February 24th, 1975
One week from today is the anniversary of the release date of Physical Graffiti, February 24th, 1975. A day Led Zeppelin put all doubts to shame as the album still blows away minds today.
Did you notice too, we’re having a “Get Your Led Out” weekend where you can win a copy of this album? Check it out.
Check out Led’s record-breaking show at the Silverdome:
Led Zeppelin At The Silverdome - The 1977 Record-Breaking Show
