(Credits: Far Out / Open Culture)
Sun 11 January 2026 16:00, UK
By the time Led Zeppelin came to record their fourth album, they were essentially already confirmed to be the biggest hard rock band in the world, and it was anyone’s guess as to how they could top their previous efforts.
Back in 1971, there was seemingly no cap on the budget pumped into a band like Led Zeppelin, and anything they wanted to do would surely be funded by the executives at Atlantic, their record label throughout their existence. If Jimmy Page wanted to go to America to mix an album, then everything would be set up for them to do just that – no questions asked.
The only issue with this was that his time in Los Angeles at Sunset Sound Studios was a frankly disastrous affair, where everything that could have possibly gone wrong would hamper the band’s efforts to put together yet another masterpiece. Having written and recorded a large amount of material that they believed would eclipse the brilliance of Led Zeppelin I-III, the results of his time alongside engineer Andy Johns were a severe disappointment.
According to Page’s account of the process, the band had recorded virtually everything that would end up on Led Zeppelin IV at Island Studios in London and in the mobile studio at Headley Grange country house, which was previously owned by the Rolling Stones. Not only that, but they’d recorded a handful of songs that would end up on later releases, such as ‘Down By The Seaside’ and ‘Boogie With Stu’, both of which were included on Physical Graffiti four years later.
Things were all going swimmingly when it came to mixing the album, and Page headed to Los Angeles with the idea that the record would be finished alongside Johns, and while he was originally satisfied with what he heard back through the studio monitors, the copies that they received back in England weren’t a patch on what he believed he’d heard.
During a 2014 interview with Guitar World, Page put this down to the “colourful” monitoring system in the US, and claimed that because of the difference in quality, when it was played back in the UK, it sounded completely different.
“While we were mixing, everything sounded huge and the low end sounded especially massive,” he recalled. “But when we returned to England and played our work back, the sound was nothing like what we had heard in Los Angeles. It was deflated… a pale echo of what we’d heard in LA.”
However, there was one song which Page believed still exceeded what they were able to remix back home, and remains the only song from the Sunset Sound sessions that made it onto the final version of Led Zeppelin IV.
“There were exceptions,” he claimed. “The Sunset Sound mix of ‘When the Levee Breaks’ had a density that could not be replicated when we remixed it in England. It didn’t have that space – that black hole. So we put that one on the original album.”
Evidently, the band would end up able to salvage the rest of the material, culminating in what is widely regarded as one of their finest albums, but considering ‘When The Levee Breaks’ is one of the highlights of the album, it’s clear that this “colourful” system at Sunset Sound was exactly what they needed to bring that particular song to life.
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