An often-overlooked song by Led Zeppelin turned out to be an omen of disaster, and it's all there in the lyrics of the song.
Led Zeppelin had a number of epic songs: In My Time of Dying, Stairway to Heaven, Kashmir, When the Levee Breaks, and Achilles Last Stand. But there is another near-epic song that is often overlooked and has been mostly forgotten by many rock fans. The name of that song is Carouselambra, and within the lyrics of that song, you will find a deeply troubling snapshot of where the band was at the time it was recorded.
Alas, the song also proved to be a harbinger of doom for Led Zeppelin.
Carouselambra: The lyrics of a near-epic song
Carouselambra appeared on the last Zeppelin album (I’m not counting Coda since that was unreleased material that came after Bonham’s death) In Through the Out Door. There is an air of tragedy about Carouselambra for two reasons:
The lyrics indicate deep fissures between band members and also a destructive time bomb that was ticking within the band that culminated in the death of John Bonham.
The mixing of Carouselambra was deliberately botched and done in a way that buried Robert Plant’s vocals and made it very difficult to hear what he was saying in the lyrics. The song was ruined by instruments that were too loud and that completely overwhelmed the vocals.
First, we must examine the lyrics of the song, and they are some of the darkest, heaviest lyrics Robert Plant ever wrote. There is deep emotional anguish in these lyrics, and I found them to be shocking the first time I read them.
Here are the lyrics in their entirety so you understand where I am coming from:
Sisters of the way-side bide their time in quiet peace
Await their place within the ring of calm
Still stand to turn in seconds of release
Await the call they know may never come
In times of brightness, no intruder dared upon
To jeopardize the course, upset the run
And all was joy and hands were raised toward the sun
As love in the halls of plenty overrun
Ah, ah, ah, ah
Still in their bliss unchallenged mighty feast
Unending dances shadowed on the day
Within the wall, their daunting formless keep
Preserved their joy that kept their doubts at bay
Faceless legions stood in readiness to weep
Just turn a coin, bring order to the fray
And everything is soon no sooner thought than deed
But no one seemed to question in anyway
Ah, ah, ah, ah
How keen the storied hunter's eye prevails upon the land
To seek the unsuspecting and the weak
And powerless the fabled sat, too smug to lift a hand
Toward the foe that threatened from the deep
Who cares to dry the cheeks of those who saddened stand
Adrift upon a sea of futile speech?
And to fall to fate and make the 'status plan'
But no one there had heaven within their reach
I said yeah
Ah, ah, ah, ah
Where was your word, where did you go?
Where was your helping, where was your bow, bow?
Dull is the armour, cold is the day
Hard was the journey, dark was the way, way
I heard the word, I couldn't stay, oh
I couldn't stand it another day, another day
Another day, another day
Touched by the timely coming
Roused from the keeper's sleep
Release the grip
Throw down the key
Held now within the knowing
Rest now within the peace
Take of the fruit
But guard the seed
They had to stay!
Held now within the knowing
Rest now within the beat
Take of the fruit
But guard the seed
Take of the fruit
But guard the seed
The meaning of the lyrics in Carouselambra
So what the hell was Plant getting at with these lyrics? I can only offer you my interpretation, based on the fact that Plant himself said that they were a reflection of where Zeppelin was as a band at the time of the writing of the song.
Pay close attention to the lyrics, and you can see that the song was a lament of sorts about where the band had come from, the success it had reached, and the steep decline that was in full swing at the time In Through the Out Door was being recorded. Plant could see the handwriting on the wall, and he could document it, but he could not stop it. Zeppelin was doomed, and Plant sensed it, consciously or unconsciously, when he wrote those lyrics.
By 1980, Jimmy Page was deep into heroin addiction, and John Bonham was being slowly destroyed by alcoholism. The two of them were mostly MIA when In Through the Out Door was being written. Thus, creative control of that album was mostly in the hands of Jones and Plant. It was an unlikely collaboration since Plant and Jones were not known to be friends. However, had Zeppelin continued, Jones and Plant might have become the musical leaders of the band. Unfortunately, with the death of John Bonham, we only got a glimpse of what other things might have come from the Plant and Jones combination.
It is important to note here that only Bonham attended the funeral of Robert Plant’s son after his untimely death. Page and Jones did not show up to support Plant, and I think that left some bitterness and anger in Plant’s heart when he wrote the lyrics. There is a visceral disillusionment in Plant’s voice and lyrics in Carouselambra, and I believe a great deal of it stems from the loss of his son and the lack of support from Page and Jones.
This section of the lyrics is aimed right at Jimmy Page:
Where was your word, where did you go?
Where was your helping, where was your bow, bow?
And the preceding part speaks of Plant’s grief and desolation and sense of abandonment by his band mates:
How keen the storied hunter’s eye prevails upon the land
To seek the unsuspecting and the weak
And powerless the fabled sat, too smug to lift a hand
Toward the foe that threatened from the deep
Who cares to dry the cheeks of those who saddened stand
Adrift upon a sea of futile speech?
And to fall to fate and make the ‘status plan’
But no one there had heaven within their reach
So, as you can tell, Plant’s lyrics are deeply personal and emotional. Yet, if you listen to the song, it is almost impossible to hear what he is saying. I had heard the song hundreds of times and never had a clue about any of it until Plant mentioned something in an interview. I thought he was full of crap until I looked the lyrics up and read them.
The mixing of Carouselambra
Now we come to the most interesting part of the story of Carouselambra: the mixing of the song. Who, you might wonder, decided to mix the song in such a way that the lyrics were buried for many years until the Internet came along?
Jimmy Page.
Yes, it was Page who deliberately drowned out Robert Plant’s lyrics. Do you see now why Carouselambra is one of the most dramatic songs Led Zeppelin ever recorded? I don’t mean dramatic in a musical sense, though the song has some great moments. I mean that there was some seriously heavy stuff going on behind that song that goes right back to Robert Plant’s loss of his son and the grief and anguish he suffered because of it, and his sense of being betrayed by Page and Jones during his hour of need.
Plant shared his frustrations about the song in a 2003 interview with Mojo magazine:
“I thought parts of ‘Carouselambra’ were good, especially the darker dirges that Pagey developed,” Plant reflected in a 2003 conversation with Mojo, showing that while he may have taken aim at his friends in the song, in truth, without them, he couldn’t have brought it to fruition. “And I rue it so much now, because the lyrics on ‘Carouselambra’ were actually about that environment and that situation. The whole story of Led Zeppelin in its latter years is in that song… and I can’t hear the words!”
Page, of course, began using heroin around 1975 or 1976, and he had faded considerably by the time Carouselambra was written and recorded. He also apparently used cocaine, and it was obvious that he had begun a massive decline, slowly but surely, from the early days of Zeppelin’s glory. The Jimmy Page of 1980 was a far cry from the Jimmy Page of 1969-74. His songwriting and playing were never quite the same, though he managed to pull it together for the O2 show in 2007. But if you listen to early Page versus Page at the end of Zeppelin’s reign, you can see that the drugs made him sloppy, and he mostly stayed sloppy afterward.
Looking back at Carouselambra, it seems obvious now that Page deliberately mixed the song in a way that buried Plant’s lyrics. Jones’ keyboards and the other instruments drown out Plant’s vocals in a way that was never done in any other Led Zeppelin song. Don’t believe me? Go through Zeppelin’s catalogue of songs, and you will not find Plant’s vocals overshadowed by the band’s instruments in the way that it was done in Carouselambra.
What was the cumulative effect of what was going on with Zeppelin on Robert Plant?
I believe that Page and Jones failure to show up for the funeral of Plant’s son contributed to Robert Plant’s desire over the years to separate himself from the legacy of Led Zeppelin and his refusal to do a stadium tour after the O2 show back in 2007. Over the years, Plant has demonstrated a great deal of ambivalence toward the legacy of Zeppelin and has made a concerted effort to move past Zeppelin by doing many different projects. All of it likely goes back to the loss of his son and his disappointment that Page and Jones did not support him in his time of grief.
It’s all there in the lyrics of Carouselambra, but the culmination of those lyrics did not occur until John Bonham died. Once Bonham passed, that was it for Led Zeppelin. The band ended, and there was never another original album created by the surviving members as a band. They bombed in the first couple of reunions (see my earlier post about their disastrous performance at Live Aid). The 02 show, as good as it was, was simply a greatly diminished echo of what once was but could never, ever be again.
Why doesn’t somebody remix Carouselambra?
One thing puzzles me: why hasn’t somebody done a remix of Carouselambra? Oh, I know that doing such a remix might draw the wrath of Page or Zeppelin’s record company. But that has never stopped people from doing such things and then quietly releasing them for people to find on the Internet. And one could also do such a remix and then claim it was just a parody or something like that to throw off potential legal consequences.
I mention this because we now have software like GarageBand, etc. So I’ve always wondered why nobody has tried to remix the song to increase the sound of Plant’s vocals forward and lower the volume of the instruments. It seems like a doable thing to me, but I lack the musical editing ability to try it myself, though I have thought of trying it to see how the song would sound with a different mix.
Of course, Jimmy Page, JPJ, and Robert Plant could do a remix if they wished, but none of them has expressed any interest in fixing the song. Frankly, I think Carouselambra was a missed opportunity. Technically, it is an epic song, the same as Stairway, In My Time of Dying, or Kashmir. But the mixing of the song has prevented Carouselambra from truly attaining the status it deserves. The instruments, especially the keyboards, are simply too loud.
Well, perhaps someone out there can take a stab at it, or maybe the remaining members of Zeppelin will finally get around to it. I do not know if it will happen, but I know that it should happen. Carouselambra should be remixed so that Plant’s vocals can be heard, and so that the song can take its rightful place alongside Zeppelin’s other epic songs.
What do you think of Carouselambra? Share your thoughts in the comments.
UPDATE: Apparently, there is a rough mix of the song that made it onto the deluxe version of In Through the Out Door in 2015, and it sounds a LOT better than the mess that was the final version. If I were Zeppelin, I'd use this version to replace the other one and call it a day.
Here it is for your enjoyment:
UPDATE 2: As much as I like the rough mix above, I think Robert Plant should have used the lyrics in Carouselambra for another song entirely. An acoustic song, with a much slower pace and more somber mood would have worked so much better with the sad and reflective poetry of his lyrics. They are lost in the speed, energy and sound of Carouselambra, even when you can hear his voice better in the rough mix.
One option might be to do an acoustic version of Carouselambra on another Robert Plant album (if he does one) and then just put that out there as an alternative to the song that was on In Through the Out Door. There's just too much going on with the instruments in Carouselambra for Robert's lyrics to be fully absorbed and processed by the listener.
If you are out there and see this, Robert, please do an acoustic version with a different arrangement with your lyrics. If you do it right, I think you could come up with a song that is much better, given the heavy emotional subject matter in the lyrics.
UPDATE 3: Somebody posted a great comment in the YouTube comments section of the Rough Mix of Carouselambra, so I'm including it here. I wish he'd used paragraph breaks, but I think it's worth reading through anyway. BTW, I had forgotten Peter Grant in all of this, but it's good that the commenter mentioned him.
