Coda

November 19, 1982

Jimmy Page

After we’d tragically lost John Bonham in September 1980, I was told by Peter Grant that Led Zeppelin owed another album. I found that really hard to take on board under such difficult circumstances, but I wanted to try and do the best I could. I knew it would now be the opportunity to showcase a drum instrumental called Bonzo’s Montreux, which I had worked on with John in 1976 in Montreux, Switzerland. From my point of view, that track would be the backbone of Coda. Making the album was a very tough process, but I wanted to do justice to it, and especially that track. It also meant revisiting the multi-tracks across the albums for some of the music that hadn’t gone on our previous albums, particularly outtakes from the In Through the Out Door sessions.

A

  1. 1We're Gonna Groove2:36
    We opened Coda with 'We're Gonna Groove', because it's one of the first songs that we played in the early days, at the Fillmore in 1969, and as the opening of our January 1970 show at the Royal Albert Hall. But it was a live track and I wanted to make it sound like a studio track, so I overlaid various layers on it using a really quirky guitar effects unit called a Synthi Hi-Fli. It was made by a company called EMS (Electronic Music Studios). The guitar processor didn't actually sound that convincing, but it had the most incredible sub-octave divider, which I used on the chorus of 'We're Gonna Groove'. It added a totally new character to the song.
  2. 2Poor Tom3:03
  3. 3I Can't Quit You Baby4:16
  4. 4Walter's Walk4:24

B

  1. 1Ozone Baby3:35
  2. 2Darlene5:04
    'Darlene' was written after taking a couple of hours out of our In Through The Out Door studio schedule and seeing Jerry Lee Lewis in a concert in Stockholm.
  3. 3Bonzo's Montreux4:15
    At the initial recordings at Mountain Studios, which was situated inside Montreux Casino, I took along my Eventide Harmonizer. I discovered that I could get something like a steel drum sound from it. What I had in mind was a drum orchestra but using the extra colour of the harmonizer. John was really keen to use it when he heard it. For Coda, I revisited the tapes at my new studio, the Sol, and added another harmonizer keyboard part at the end of the song as an overdub.
  4. 4Wearing And Tearing5:27

Info

A posthumous collection assembled by JP from recordings spanning 1970-1978 with overdubs added in 1982 at Mountain Studios in Montreux and The Sol in Cookham, Berkshire. Released 19 November 1982 in the US and 22 November in the UK on Swan Song, the band’s final release on their own label.

Discography