Led Zeppelin-In Through the Out Door-LP-1979-USA-1st Press-SS16002-NM.

In Through the Out Door is the eighth and final studio album by the English rock band . It was recorded in three weeks in November and December 1978 at 's in , Sweden, and released by on 15 August 1979. It was the last album released before drummer died in 1980, leading the group to disband.

The album was a huge commercial success; it went to No. 1 on the in just its second week on the American chart. It also went to No. 1 in the UK, Japan, Germany, Canada and New Zealand.

Background

The album was named by the group to describe its recent struggles amidst the death of 's son Karac in 1977, and the the band took from the UK. The exile resulted in the band being unable to tour on British soil for over two years, and trying to get back into the public mind was therefore like "trying to get in through the 'out' door".

The group began rehearsing material in September 1978. After six weeks, they travelled to in Stockholm to begin recording. In contrast to previous Led Zeppelin albums, In Through the Out Door features much greater influence on the part of bassist and keyboardist and vocalist , and relatively less from drummer and guitarist , who often failed to show up on time at the recording studio. Bonham was struggling with alcoholism and Page was battling heroin addiction. Jones later said, "there were two distinct camps by then, and we [Plant and I] were in the relatively clean one." Many of the songs were consequently put together by Plant and Jones during the day, with Page and Bonham adding their parts late at night. Jones was inspired by the synthesizer he had recently purchased, and he was "working closely with Robert, which was something that had not happened before".

After the recording sessions at Polar, the album was mixed at Page's personal studio at in . "", "" and ""—the latter a based song credited to all band members—were recorded during sessions for this album, but were dropped because of space constraints. All later appeared on Coda.

Songs

The music on In Through the Out Door is dominated by Jones. Two songs from the album—"South Bound Saurez" and ""—were the only two original Led Zeppelin songs that Page had no part in writing.

Bonham received no writing credits for any of the songs on In Through the Out Door, the group's only studio album for which this is the case.

Side one

"" was planned as the opening track for the album as "a full-blown epic", in order to show that Led Zeppelin could still make good music. In an interview, Page explained that he used a violin bow and a effect on his guitar to create the droning sound in the opening section of the song. The track features a contrast between the powerful riffs in the main part of the track, against a relatively quiet middle section.

"South Bound Saurez" starts with a "rollicking piano intro" played by Jones; author Dave Lewis calls it a "track that conjures up the New Orleans bar room feel of the sleeve." Credited to Jones and Robert Plant, it is one of only three officially released original songs by the band not to bear a Jimmy Page composition credit (along with this album's "", also credited to Jones and Plant, and "" from , whose composition is credited only to John Bonham).

"" was an attempt to combine a samba rhythm with a basic rock tune, resulting in a part way through the song. The idea was inspired by Plant explaining that the group must explore new musical territory in order to remain current.

"Hot Dog" grew out of the band's pre-production rehearsals, where they warmed up by playing a series of old and covers. Dave Lewis calls it a "rockabilly country hoe-down" that "owes much to the state of Texas and to the state of a particular female in Texas."

Side two

"Carouselambra" is a ten-minute track, dominated by Jones' keyboards and covering a variety of musical styles. Page played his double neck guitar, which was normally only used for live performances. The group had intended to play the song live for the planned 1980 US tour, which was cancelled after Bonham's death.

"All My Love" is a love song composed by Plant and Jones when they were the first to arrive at the studio. Jones played a classically inspired synthesizer solo in the middle of the track.

"I'm Gonna Crawl" is a relaxed blues track. Plant arranged the track to be in the style of mid-1960s such as and . Jones contributed a string synthesizer arrangement.

Packaging and artwork

The original album featured an unusual gimmick: the album had an outer sleeve which was made to look like a plain brown paper bag (reminiscent of similarly packaged sleeves with the title rubber-stamped on it), and the inner sleeve featured black and white line artwork which, if washed with water, would become permanently fully colored. There were also six different sleeves featuring a different pair of photos (one on each side), and the external brown paper sleeve meant that it was impossible for record buyers to tell which sleeve they were getting. The pictures all depicted the same scene in a bar (in which a man burns a ), and each photo was taken from the separate point of view of someone who appeared in the other photos. The photo session in a London studio was meant to look like a re-creation of the Old Absinthe House, in , .

The album artwork was designed by ' . In 1980, Hipgnosis was nominated for a in the category of for In Through the Out Door.

Release and promotion

The album was intended to be released before the band's twin , but production delays meant that it was released shortly after their performances at this event, on 15 August 1979. Plant jokingly referred to the delays at times during the performance on 4 August 1979.

The album reached No. 1 on the in its second week on the album chart, reportedly selling 1.7 million copies within weeks of release. Subsequently, Led Zeppelin's entire catalogue appeared in the Billboard 200 between the weeks of 23 October and 3 November 1979, an unprecedented feat, topping their own record in 1975, when all their albums up to were on the chart. The album remained on the US top spot for seven weeks and sold three million copies by the end of September 1979. It was credited with helping to revive the US record industry, which had begun to struggle. In January 1980, "Fool in the Rain" was released as a single to further promote the album, but it narrowly missed the top 20 of the singles chart. It was the band's final studio release to reach the top of the charts in the United States.

In Through the Out Door is the Led Zeppelin album that has spent the most weeks on the top of the charts (tied with ).[] To date, the album has sold six million copies in the US.