The Fat Angel Sings

Led Zeppelin are undoubtedly one of the greatest live acts of the 1970s, but their only live album from the era — the soundtrack to 1976’s The Song Remains The Same — captured them on a rather limp night. This situation was finally resolved in 2003 when Jimmy Page combed through hours of tapes from the band’s 1972 tour and cobbled together this killer 18 track set. There are tons of Zeppelin bootlegs floating around, but none of them sound this crisp and alive, even though they occasionally cheated and combined multiple versions of a song into one. Highlights include a ferocious “Immigrant Song,” a 25-minute “Dazed and Confused” and a 23-minute “Whole Lotta Love” jam. “It’s Zeppelin at its best,” Page said in 2003. “Every single member of the band is in tip-top form. It’s the magic point where it takes on a fifth element.”

Fifteen years ago, Led Zeppelin issued How the West Was Won, premiering performances from the band’s June 25th and 27th, 1972 concerts at the Los Angeles Forum and Long Beach Arena.  Now, those seminal tracks have been newly remastered under the supervision of Jimmy Page for a surprise addition to the band’s Super Deluxe library – as well as in a variety of formats, all of which are due from Atlantic/Swan Song on March 23rd including the first-ever Blu-ray Audio and vinyl editions.  The remastered How the West Was Won arrives in advance of the band’s official 50th anniversary celebration, which will kick off this September.

How the West Was Won (a No. 1 album in the U.S. and a No. 5 in the U.K.) sequenced material from the Los Angeles and Long Beach concerts to replicate a single concert from start to finish as the band introduced songs from its then-unreleased fifth album, Houses of the Holy (which would be released nine months later), and looked back on its already-storied catalogue.  Among its 18 tracks are a 25-minute version of “Dazed and Confused,” a 21-minute blues medley built around “Whole Lotta Love,” and fiery takes on “Rock and Roll,” “Moby Dick,” “Immigrant Song,” “Black Dog,” and of course, “Stairway to Heaven.”

The remastered How the West Was Won will be available in the following versions:

• CD – Remastered audio on three CDs;
• Vinyl – Remastered audio on four 180-gram vinyl LPs;
• Blu-Ray Audio – 96kHz/24 bit 5.1 (DTS-HD Master Audio Surround) and stereo mixes (PCM Stereo and DTS-HD Master Audio Stereo);
• Streaming & Digital Download – Remastered audio; and
• Super Deluxe Boxed Set:

o Remastered audio on three CDs and four 180-gram vinyl LPs.
o DVD of album in Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround and PCM Stereo, plus photo gallery.
o High-def download card of all stereo audio content at 96kHz/24 bit.
o A book filled with rare and previously unpublished photos of the band at each of the concert locations, plus memorabilia and ephemera.
o High-quality print of the original album cover, the first 30,000 of which will be individually numbered.

Look for all formats from Atlantic/Swan Song on March 23rd, and watch this space for information on further Led Zeppelin releases as the band’s  50th anniversary approaches!

Led Zeppelin, How the West Was Won (Atlantic/Swan Song 83587-2, 2003 – reissued 2018)