#19 - No Quarter from Houses Of The Holy(1973)
Appeared On: 29 ballots (out of 62 . . . 46.8%)
Total Points: 423 points (out of 1,550 possible points . . . 27.3%)
#1 Ranker: @zamboni
Top 5 Rankers: @Joe Schmo@Pip's Invitation@Mookie Gizzy@Ghost Rider@Witz@2Young2BBald@Whyatt@worrierking@SteevieG
Highest Ranking: 1
Live Performances:
LZ: 124 (
New York - 1973-07-27,
London - 1975-05-17,
London - 1975-05-24,
Los Angeles - 1977-06-27 (35 minutes),
Knebworth – 1979-08-04,
London - 2007-12-10)
Page & Plant: 190 (
DVD Version,
Glastonbury - 1995-06-25,
Rio - 1996-01-27,
London - 1998-03-25)
Plant: 96 (
Frankfurt - 1990-05-09,
Tromsø - 2005-06-11,
Chicago - 2005-07-09,
Berlin - 2014-07-16,
Rio -2015-03-24)
JPJ: 22 (
Seattle - 1999-10-25,
Atlanta - 2000-03-20)
Covers: Tool,
Crowbar,
Flaming Lips,
The Main Squeeze,
Dread Zeppelin,
Exhumed,
Heart,
Grave Digger,
Ayreon,
Great White,
Maktub,
Vitamin String Quartet,
Ben Harper,
Quidam,
Gov't Mule,
Dead Meadow,
Constantine Band,
Nuspirit Helsinki,
Kasia Kowalska,
Dan Bárta & Robert Balzar Trio,
Blindside Blues Band,
Violeta de Outono,
Ritual Device,
Indian Askin,
Phish
Ultimate Classic Rock Ranking (out of 92 songs): 12
Vulture Ranking (out of 74 songs): 33
Rolling Stone Ranking (out of 40 songs): 28
Louder Ranking (out of 50 songs): 10
Uproxx Ranking (out of 50 songs): 9
WMGK Ranking (out of 92 songs): 38
SPIN Ranking (out of 87 songs): 22
Ranker Ranking (out of 87 songs): 11
Anachronarchy Ranking (out of 80 songs): 10
We go back-to-back on songs from Houses Of The Holy. In a list full of “love it” or “didn’t rank it” songs, this one is no different. Checking the stat sheet . . . a #1 vote, a #2 vote, two #3’s, ten Top 5 votes, and 15 total Top 10 votes . . . to go along with 33 zeroes. Amazingly, there is still another song lurking with more zeroes than votes, and we are in the Top 20 songs already. Three of the outside rankers had it in their Top 10.
No Quarter was JPJ’s moment in the sun. He composed it and gave his blood, sweat, and tears to develop it over a two-year period. Plant wrote the lyrics in 1971 at the same time they were working on the fourth album. A version was recorded during those sessions but put on the back burner. In what universe does No Quarter NOT make the album currently under construction? (Probably the same one where people didn’t vote for it on this list.)
Early Version,
Alternate Version,
Alternate Version,
(Rough Mix with JPJ Keyboard Overdubs - No Vocal),
Rehearsal Version I,
Rehearsal Version II,
2007 Rehearsal
The song would have been a career crowning achievement for most bands. Jones revisited the song and reworked the track. He slowed it down and added acoustic and electric piano and various synthesizers. Ultimately, they went back to a faster paced style that was prevalent in the earlier recordings. Sound engineer Eddie Kramer raved, “It wasn’t just his brilliance as a keyboard player or even a writer, it was his subtlety of his arrangements, and the economy of notes that made this track such a powerful statement. Genius.” Oddly enough, Kramer was not involved in recording the song. Andy Johns, another audio engineer was, before he was dropped from the album.
How ironic is it that on what is essentially Jones' magnum opus, Page & Plant got together WITHOUT him and had the gall to call their album No Quarter. Imagine if Lennon and McCartney got together and didn’t bring back George but called their new album Something.
That they chose to name the project after a song associated with their bassist was not appreciated by John Paul Jones, whose biggest complaint was that he was kept out of the loop. Not only did Page & Plant not ask him to participate, they didn’t even tell him they were working together. Jones found out from a business associate, and he assumed they were doing new songs. When he finally got a hold of his former band mates, they assured him they were only working on and recording new songs.
Jones was on tour in Germany when he saw the MTV concert and realized that they were doing Led Zeppelin songs. When the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Jones took a jab at Page and Plant, saying during the ceremony: "I'd like to thank my friends for finally remembering my phone number.”
Several years later, Plant was unphased by Jones’ anger and consternation. He reflected on the Page & Plant collaboration, album, and tour very positively: ‘The will and the eagerness with Unledded were fantastic and Jimmy was really creative. He and I went in a room and it was back. His riffs were spectacular. To take it as far as we did, and the tour we did - it's one of the most ambitious and mind-altering experiences.”
Fans of the song have a ton of live performances to comb through if they are interested. The track quickly became a live favorite and was featured at every show from 1973 through 1979, providing Jones with an extended solo showcase in the middle and a jam session with a variety of different styles. The song took on a life of its own each night, getting extended to 15, 20, even 30+ minutes when performed in concert.
Plant revived the song for his 1990 tour, and it was performed by Page and Plant in 1994-1998. Jones performed a solo instrumental performance on tour in 1999, and Plant performed it solo again in 2005 (and several times in the past few years). It was part of the set at the Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert in 2007. Add it all up, and there have been 432 total performances.
Ultimate Classic Rock (12 of 92 songs): A Jones showcase from Houses of the Holy that more than any other classic song in Led Zeppelin's catalog relies on mood rather than a riff. It sets an unhurried and deliberate pace from the start and rides it to the howling finale seven minutes later.
Vulture (33 of 74 songs): Houses of the Holy is the band at their height. The abstract songs here are even more abstract. This is probably some great war epic, but all you really notice is the sound texture — is that a Leslie the vocals are going through? — and Page’s lancing rumble of a guitar riff coming through the chorus. There’s a lot going on here, but too much of it is monochromatic.
Rolling Stone (28 of 40 songs): The band's trippiest moment since Dazed and Confused was a showcase for co-writer Jones, who gets cool-jazzy on piano in the middle section as Page spins fluid lines. If couplets like "Walking side by side with death/The devil mocks their every step" didn't invent heavy-metal mythology, they planted some seeds.
Louder (10 of 50 songs): The only studiedly ‘down’ track on Houses Of The Holy, No Quarter was first tried out at Headley Grange during sessions for Zeppelin’s fourth album, at which time it was much faster than the final versions. On Houses Of The Holy, it was John Paul Jones’s personal showcase. “This was the album where Jonesy really came into his own, and this is the track that proves it,” producer Eddie Kramer told Classic Rock in 2017. “I wasn’t there when they finally recorded it, but they had demo versions of it going back a few years. It really demonstrates that Led Zeppelin could do anything they turned their minds to now – and do it better than anybody else. They were able to really stretch out now and experiment, which allowed the space for Jonesy to come in and do his thing on the arrangements. It wasn’t just his brilliance as a keyboard player or even a writer, it was also the subtlety of his arrangements, and the economy of notes that made this track such a powerful statement. Genius.”
Uproxx (9 of 50 songs): Take a bow, John Paul Jones. I was tempted to include a live version of this song as well, so that we could all luxuriate in an endless JPJ keyboard solo that sounds like Chick Corea on quaaludes. But the studio take from Houses Of The Holy more than does justice to what is unquestionably the greatest stoner song in the Zeppelin canon.
WMGK (38 of 92 songs): An about-face on side two of ‘Houses of the Holy’ following upbeat jams Dancing Days and D’yer Mak’er, it’s one of the most haunting tracks in the entire Zeppelin catalog and shows just how much John Paul Jones can change the mood of the room with his piano playing.
SPIN (22 of 87 songs): A mood piece unlike any other in the Zep discography, with supremely fuzzed-out guitar, aqueous electric piano, and a muffled-sounding Plant — not to mention Page pitch-shifting the whole thing down after the fact — creating a uniquely disqueting vibe that may as well have invented the Deftones’ entire post-’90s output. Plant sings about the “winds of Thor” and “dogs of doom,” but he could have been singing about ice cream sandwiches and Slip N’ Slides and it would have probably sounded just as ominous.
There aren't many vocals in the song, but when he does sing it sounds kinda eerie to me. It's a trippy sounding song in general I think, but I'd rather Robert keep his lips zipped in this song. 
