‘Carouselambra‘ may appear to be a playful work of progressive rock. But beneath the lively synths and cymbal clashes is the story of a band breaking up. Though muffled beneath John Paul Jones’ playing, The words of Robert Plant chart the growing dysfunction that Led Zeppelin members experienced while recording their final full-length album, In Through the Out Door.
By the time Led Zeppelin entered the studio to record their eighth album, the band was struggling to get along. John Bonham and Jimmy Page had been seduced by rock stardom. They struggled with substance abuse and demonstrated a lack of dedication to their recording sessions. Jones and Plant became increasingly frustrated with their band members. They took on the majority of the work for their final album.
As the studio sessions exacerbated his growing personal differences, Plant wrote ‘Carouselambra’ to express his frustration. The sprawling ten-minute track may impress with its synths at first. But Plant claims that it reveals information about the band’s final years.
The song tells this story in particularly literary language. It sounds more like a fairytale or an epic poem than a story about four rock stars, there are dramatic glimpses of their dysfunctions throughout its lengthy duration. “How keen the storied hunter’s eye prevails upon the land to seek the unsuspecting and the weak,” Robert Plant sings. “And powerless the fabled sat, too smug to lift a hand toward the foe that threatened from the deep.”
During a conversation with Mojo, Plant expressed tentative pride in the track, even though it would never be performed live. “I thought parts of ‘Carouselambra’ were good,” he told me. “Especially on the darker dirges that Pagey developed.”
The songwriter’s only complaint about the track appears to be how indecipherable his lyrics became, shrouding the story of Led Zeppelin. “And I rue it so much now,” he said, “because the lyrics on ‘Carouselambra’ were actually about that environment and that situation. The song tells the complete story of Led Zeppelin’s later years. “And I can’t hear the words!”
Though they may not always be discernible amidst the prog-rock soundscapes that surround them, that story remains just beneath the surface, charting Led Zeppelin’s final years before Bonham’s death and the band’s subsequent breakup the following year.
