Heart - Heart Plays Led Zeppelin - Selected Cover Versions (1975-2017)

I'm proud to present this album, because I think it's really good. If you're a fan of Heart and/or Led Zeppelin at all, you should give this a listen. It kind of plays like Led Zeppelin's greatest hits, but with a famous kickass female vocalist.

A few days ago, while looking for some Led Zeppelin material for the BBC series I'm currently posting, I came across an album a fan created called "Heart Plays Led Zeppelin." (Unfortunately, I couldn't find the name of the person who did it.) I liked the idea, but the problem was that pretty much all the songs on it came from average sounding audience bootlegs. I've redone it with totally different sourcing. It's all live performances, but some are from official albums and all the others are from excellent sounding soundboard bootlegs. So the entire album sounds as good as an official release, in my opinion.

The reason this album is possible is because Ann and Nancy Wilson, the sisters who lead the band Heart, absolutely love Led Zeppelin. From the start of their career, they've been called "the female Led Zeppelin," and with good reason. Except for the 1980s, when they went for a slick pop sound, their music has closely followed the Led Zeppelin model, with their band capable of writing and playing everything from mellow acoustic songs to hard rock songs, just like Led Zeppelin does.

So it's no surprise that they've played covers of Led Zeppelin songs in concert. What is surprising is how many different ones they've played, and what songs they've chosen. Generally speaking, they've boldly played Zeppelin's most famous and best songs. Who would dare cover legendary songs like "Stairway to Heaven" and "Kashmir?" Heart, that's who.

Does Heart try to put their own unique spin on these songs? Not really. They pretty much follow the original arrangements. But what's great about these is that Ann Wilson has one of the best female voices in rock (and Nancy Wilson is no slouch either), and she can belt these out in a way that probably even impresses Zeppelin's lead singer Robert Plant. In fact, it turns out that the members of Heart and Led Zeppelin have been friends since the 1970s, as a kind of mutual appreciation society.

I really love how this album came out, because I was able to find virtually every song I was looking for at a really good sound quality. The only one I found at lesser quality is "Four Sticks." I left that off so the sound could stay at a high level throughout.  Heart has also played "Whole Lotta Love" and "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You," but only a few times at most, and I couldn't find any of their versions of those songs at all.

The first five songs come from 1975 and 1976. Heart played some of these songs lots of times, especially "Rock and Roll," which they've done hundreds of times, and still do. But it wasn't until the 2000s when they decided to go bazongas and cover many more Zeppelin tunes. In 2013 and 2014, they toured with Jason Bonham, a drummer who is the son of Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham. After John died in 1980, Jason has been the drummer for most of the brief Led Zeppelin reunions, and his ability to channel his father's drumming style is uncanny. Five of the songs here feature him on drums. For those two years, they played entire sets of up to an hour with him, doing just Zeppelin tunes.

One other song here, "What Is and What Should Never Be," feature former Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones.

This ends up being an unusually long album. At 120 minutes I could have easily split it into two albums. But I liked it better as one long album. I generally ordered the songs chronologically, except I made a couple of slight tweaks to have fitting starting and ending songs.

"You Shook Me" comes from the 1977 Heart album "Magazine." It's from a concert in 1975, and was performed as part of a medley with "Mother Earth Blues." However, the "Magazine" album was released without the band's permission, and it was quickly withdrawn. It was rereleased that same year with some band-approved changes, and that's how it's been ever since. "You Shook Me" was only on the early withdrawn version, so it's very rare. I've edited the medley to remove the "Mother Earth Blues" section, which started the song.

My only other comment is that while Heart has played "Immigrant Song" a lot since the 2000s, I found a version of Ann Wilson singing it with Gov't Mule that I like much better. Wilson did a version of it for a 2007 solo album that made the hard rock song more mellow, and Heart generally followed that version. It was an interesting experiment, but I much prefer it in its original hard rock style, which is how Gov't Mule plays it.

Oh, one more thing. Thanks to an excellent comment by Uncle Dan, one day after I first posted this, I've decided to include Heart's 2012 Kennedy Center Honors version of "Stairway to Heaven" as a bonus track of sorts at the end. It's different than the 1976 version also included here in that it features a full orchestra and choir, as well as Jason Bonham on drums. You should check out the video of it on YouTube, which has over 20 million views. It's touching to see the reactions of famous people in the audience, including Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, President Obama, and more.

01 Rock and Roll (Heart)
02 You Shook Me (Heart)
03 Stairway to Heaven (Heart)
04 The Rover (Heart)
05 The Battle of Evermore (Heart)
06 What Is and What Should Never Be (Heart with John Paul Jones)
07 Black Dog (Heart)
08 Misty Mountain Hop (Heart)
09 Going to California (Heart)
10 The Ocean (Heart with Jason Bonham)
11 Kashmir (Heart with Jason Bonham)
12 The Rain Song (Heart with Jason Bonham)
13 The Song Remains the Same (Heart with Jason Bonham)
14 Immigrant Song (Gov't Mule with Ann Wilson)
15 No Quarter (Heart)
16 Stairway to Heaven [Orchestral Version] (Heart with Jason Bonham)

https://www.imagenetz.de/c5YpQ

For the cover photo, I used a publicity photo of Ann and Nancy Wilson from around 1976. Nancy is the blonde in front.