Led Zeppelin - Born in Darkness - Non-Album Tracks (1969-1970)

I must say, out of the five stray tracks Led Zeppelin albums I've made, I'm happiest with this one. I think it holds up very well as an album. It mostly covers 1969, with the last two songs from 1970. If you're a Led Zeppelin fan and you don't have this, you're missing out.

The centerpiece to this album has to be the lead song, "As Long as I Have You." This requires some explanation. The song was a minor soul hit originally written and performed by Garnet Mimms. Led Zeppelin played it in concert at least 80 times (only in 1968 and 1969), which makes it one of their most frequently performed covers in their career. They totally transformed the song, turning it from a light soul song to a heavy rocker, and using it to go into a long medley of other songs.

As chance has it, most of the performances of the song were never bootlegged, or were only recorded poorly. But luckily, there's one pristine soundboard recording of it from April 1969 that's extraordinary. The song is 18 minutes long, and it's a medley with "As Long as I Have You" for a few minutes at the start and about a minute at the end. Unfortunately, I felt the medley was so long that it loses coherence as an actual song. So I decided to split it in two.

I did some editing, and created a ten minute version of "As Long as I Have You" with the start and the end parts joined together, while also including some other parts of the medley, namely instrumental versions of "Fresh Garbage" by Spirit and "Bag's Groove" by Miles Davis. I think this now holds together as a very solid song. Then, what remains becomes another solid song of the blues classic "I'm a Man" in a medley with the Chuck Berry hit "No Money Down." It too is done in a very different and interesting way, so much so that the "I'm a Man" part is almost unrecognizable.

Maybe it's a sacrilege to break the song in two like that, but I think it works better musically that way. I've inserted a cover of the blues song "Sittin' and Thinkin'" - from the same soundboard concert - between the two songs to help make them sound like individual entities.

By the way, it's incredible to me that no version of Led Zeppelin's "As Long as I Have You" has been officially released. The bonus tracks that have been added to deluxe editions of their official albums in recent years make it seem like they're scraping the bottom of the barrel, with most of them the same songs on those albums but with some minor differences. Meanwhile, some of the band's greatest musical performances remain unreleased and obscure. It's very strange.

The rest of this album contains quality songs too. All the songs are in chronological order. The next three songs are from "BBC Sessions." "La La" is an instrumental which is an officially released bonus track. The last three songs are solid cover versions done live in concert with the audience noise removed.

I was tempted to call this album "Led Zeppelin II and a Half," because if you like "Led Zeppelin II," you should like this. It has a very similar sound, and it's a few minutes longer. The sound quality is top notch all the way through.

01 As Long as I Have You - Fresh Garbage - Bag's Groove - As Long as I Have You (Led Zeppelin)
02 Sittin' and Thinkin' (Led Zeppelin)
03 I'm a Man - No Money Down - I'm a Man (Led Zeppelin)
04 The Girl I Love She Got Long Black Wavy Hair (Led Zeppelin)
05 Somethin' Else (Led Zeppelin)
06 Travelling Riverside Blues (Led Zeppelin)
07 La La [Instrumental] (Led Zeppelin)
08 The Train Kept a-Rollin' (Led Zeppelin)
09 Long Tall Sally (Led Zeppelin)
10 C'mon Everybody (Led Zeppelin)

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By the way, I normally use a song title for the album title if no other obvious title presents itself. But in this case I used "Born in Darkness," which is the starting lyric of "As Long as I Have You," because I thought it sounds better as an album title than any of the song titles do.

Peter from the Albums I Wish Existed blog made the cover art.