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MOJO 380 – July 2025: Oasis

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MOJO 379 – June 2025: Pulp

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MOJO 378 – May 2025: Queen

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MOJO 377 – April 2025: Genesis

MOJO 376, The Jam and Paul Weller – two collectable covers

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MOJO 376 – March 2025: Paul Weller

MOJO 375 magazine cover, featuring The Rolling Stones

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MOJO 375 – February 2025: The Rolling Stones

MOJO 374 magazine cover, featuring Neil Young and The Best Albums Of 2024

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MOJO 374 – January 2025: Neil Young

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MOJO 373 – December 2024: David Bowie

David Gilmour, on the cover of MOJO magazine, number 372

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MOJO 372 – November 2024: David Gilmour

MOJO 371 magazine cover, featuring Bob Dylan

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MOJO 371 – October 2024: Bob Dylan

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MOJO 370 – September 2024: Nick Cave

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MOJO 369 – August 2024: Stevie Nicks

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MOJO 368 – July 2024: Paul Weller

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MOJO 367 – June 2024: Kate Bush

MOJO 366 magazine cover, featuring Pearl Jam and Pearl Jam CD

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MOJO 366 – May 2024: Pearl Jam

MOJO 365 cover, featuring Liam Gallagher and John Squire

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MOJO 365 – April 2024: Liam Gallagher & John Squire

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Every Fleetwood Mac Album Ranked

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Fleetwood Mac’s 30 Greatest Songs

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Led Zeppelin’s Best Albums Ranked!

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Led Zeppelin’s 50 Greatest Songs

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R.E.M.’s Best Albums Ranked

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Every Pearl Jam Album Ranked

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Stevie Nicks’ 20 Greatest Songs

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Neil Young’s 50 Greatest Songs

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The Cure’s 30 Greatest Songs

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Every Pink Floyd Album Ranked From Worst To Bes

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Neil Young & The Chrome Hearts  – Talkin To The Trees Reviewed: Veteran rocker rages against the world

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Pulp Live Reviewed: Jarvis Cocker and co. sparkle anew

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Pulp – More Reviewed: Britpop misfits still in a class of their own

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Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker: “More wasn’t conceived as our grand full stop…”

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Every Pulp Album Ranked!

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Dr John Interviewed: “Art Blakey pulled a gun on me…’”

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MOJO’s New Fleetwood Mac Special Is Out Now!

Metamorphoses don’t come more dramatic than that of **Fleetwood Mac**. Initially led by troubled, Bethnal Green-born guitar magus Peter Green – “the blues was too deep…it ended up hurting my soul”, he told MOJO in 1996 – they were arguably the most arresting act of the late ‘60s British Blues boom. By 1977’s Rumours, though, they were a polished Anglo-American chart colossus, whose equally stirring songs took months rather than minutes to nail.

Line-up wise, the thread that bound was Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, happenstance - then later wily - trustees of the moniker that the self-effacing Green concocted from their surnames. What other rhythm-section has such titular power? Okay, Sly & Robbie, but there is no Mullen Clayton…

As well as music, theirs is a name synonymous with acid burnout, messy affairs and cocaine-addled excess. Everybody knows Green’s transcendent guitar instrumental Albatross, and the :a[Stevie Nicks]{href='https://www.mojo4music.com/articles/stories/stevie-nicks-interviewed/' }-penned US Number 1 Dreams, but countless other delights lie in store for the patient peruser of the group’s 18 or so studio albums and numerous solo ventures.

Taken en masse, Fleetwood Mac’s oeuvre can still enchant purists, pop fans and stars alike, with artists from :a[Taylor Swift]{href='https://www.mojo4music.com/articles/stories/taylor-swift-an-artist-and-songwriter-to-shape-the-next-30-years/' } to Fleet Foxes still audibly in thrall to the group. Following Lindsey Buckingham’s departure from the band and the sad passing of :a[Christine McVie]{href='https://www.mojo4music.com/articles/the-mojo-list/christine-mcvie-her-20-greatest-songs/' } in 2022, it felt unlikely that the band would make another album, something which Nicks confirmed in no uncertain terms :a[recently to MOJO]{href='https://www.mojo4music.com/articles/stories/stevie-nicks-christine-mcvie/' }. If it really is over, then, MOJO has taken a look back at every album the band have made. Solo efforts such as Nicks' _:a[Bella Donna]{href='https://open.spotify.com/album/0IomjU2bXFng4LQBYn7Het?si=GEITawgzRG2qKkWEuKDc-Q' }_, Buckingham’s _:a[Out Of The Cradle]{href='https://open.spotify.com/album/6AXUV0aHP6vWHVNOOlH8XA?si=9xRJuMRkSlOBujewjsJunw' }_ or Christine McVie’s 1970 solo debut _:a[Christine Perfect]{href='https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7zKmz3SKQk' }_ could have found commendable placing here, but we decided instead to focuses on the singular magic of group and intra-band efforts only. Enjoy...

By now the absence/almost random replacement of key personnel was such that it was a stretch to call _Time_ a Fleetwood Mac LP, the group hemorrhaging identity. Nicks had left acrimoniously, and Mick Fleetwood recruited country singer Beka Bramlett (the daughter of famed duo Delaney & Bonnie Bramlett) and Traffic’s Dave Mason, gifted-but-ill-fitting jigsaw pieces both. Though atmospheric, overtly country-sounding opener Talkin’ To My Heart is actually rather good, it’s diminishing returns thereafter - all the way to the appositely titled, Mick Fleetwood-voiced curio Strange Times. Nor did it help that Christine McVie and Dave Mason didn’t get on. Don’t remember them this way.

Contesting ownership of the Fleetwood Mac name with their former manager Clifford Davis - bizarrely, he’d drafted a counterfeit line-up to fulfil outstanding tour dates in the wake of Bob Weston’s sacking - the band moved to Los Angeles and began managing themselves. Bob Welch, now the band’s lone guitarist, penned the lion’s share of _HAHTF_, his busy last hurrah with the Mac. A somewhat de-fanged record with superflous horns, it had quality in the shape of its swampy, funky title track and gossamer Christine McVie ballad, Prove Your Love. Overall, though, the Mac sounded tired; ready for the new-blood makeover that Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham would very soon provide.

Citing likely internal friction on 1987-88’s _Shake The Cage_ tour, Lindsey Buckingham had quit, forcing another re-boot. Guitarists/songwriters Billy Burnette and Rick Vito were duly recruited to fulfil live, then studio duties, but _Behind The Mask_ feels jaded; half-baked. Though Christine McVie’s Save Me demonstrates a degree a failsafe pop nous and Nicks’s Byrds-via-Tom-Petty & The Heartbreakers-like Affairs Of The Heart is decent, The Mac entered the ‘90s _sans_ a Top Twenty hit single and declined to appear on their 15th LP’s front cover. “Touring _Behind The Mask_ it soon became clear it wasn’t a blockbuster record”, Rick Vito told this writer in 2019.

Penguin: a flightless bird. Fleetwood Mac: grounded after losing three lead-guitarists in two years. After Danny Kirwan’s acrimonious exit, Mick Fleetwood doubled-down on recruitment, drafting former Graham Bond foil Bob Weston on guitar alongside Bob Welch, plus former Savoy Brown singer Dave Walker. It was Christine McVie’s growing pop sensibility, though, which shone on the proto-_Rumours_\-esque Remember Me and sunny Weston co-write Did You Ever Love Me, though the latter’s prominent steel drums cemented the sense of _Penguin_ as outlier. Appearing on just two songs  - Holland, Dozier, Holland’s (I’m A) Road Runner and his own, skiffle-ish The Derelict - Dave Walker soon left by mutual consent.

Overkill to describe any Peter Green-helmed record as a misfire, but _Mr Wonderful_ - working title _Udder Sucker_ - was your textbook tricky second album. Jeremy Spencer’s clear debt to Elmore James feels somewhat unpaid inspiration-wise (I’ve Lost My Baby), and while Green’s wounded waltz Love That Burns is magnificent, much of _Mr. Wonderful_ lacks the extraordinary spark that would soon ignite stand-alone singles Albatross and Man Of The World. There’s no Danny Kirwan yet, either, and the Stax-inspired brass section doesn’t really fly. Still, an important and fecund seed was planted: that’s then Chicken Shack keyboardist Christine Perfect, later Christine McVie, honky-tonking on Lazy Poker Blues.

“Stevie’s songs are like her babies to her, even although some of them are rubbish”, claimed Christine McVie circa _Mirage_. A rare note of sisterly discord, certainly, but Nicks’ US Number 1 debut _Bella Donna_ had siphoned-off her best material and leached time/energy from the mothership. Buckingham saw _Mirage_ as a halfway house between _Tusk_’s experimentalism and _Rumours_’ commercialism, but it steered - or tried to - closer to the latter, Straight Back and Only Over You seemingly chasing the spacious buoyancy of Nicks’ Mac song par excellence, Dreams. Like _Tusk_, _Mirage_ was very much Buckingham’s baby as he tapped ‘50s influences (Oh Diane; Book Of Love). Nicks’ Gypsy, meanwhile, feels like the prototype for _Tango In The Night_’s world-beating, synth-rich AOR.

Despite its title, 2017's _Lindsey Buckingham Christine McVie_ is a Fleetwood Mac album but for one very key missing ingredient. Not long after Christine McVie re-joined Fleetwood Mac in 2014, she and Lindsey Buckingham revisited the LA studios where the group had recorded _Tusk_ to work on new material. Mick Fleetwood and John McVie joined the sessions and within a few months they had the bones of what looked like the next Fleetwood Mac album. However, when Stevie Nicks declined to contribute, Buckingham and McVie stuck it out under their own banner instead. With the joyous, Everywhere-like bounce of McVie’s Feel About You and Buckingham’s paranoid-sounding In My World standing up next to some of the band’s best songs, this would have made for a fine swan song.

Named for the communally-inhabited Hampshire oasthouse the Mac leased while getting it together in the country, _Kiln House_ saw Danny Kirwan and Jeremy Spencer grab songwriting reins in the wake of Peter Green’s tragic, acid-debilitated departure. Spencer tapped rockabilly (This Is The Rock; Buddy’s Song) and waltz-time country (Blood On The Floor), but the Kirwan-sung Station Man and Jewel-Eyed Judy are _Kiln_’s big-hitters, the latter a poppier outing inspired by the band’s then secretary, Judy Wong. Mac’s 5th LP also featured Christine McVie, mysteriously uncredited despite her Wurlitzer, piano and bv’s on Station Man. The cover drawing was Christine’s too: a fairytale sketch of the _Kiln House_ idyll.

The endgame of cautious rapprochement after the _Rumours_ line up reformed for an MTV Unplugged performance released as 1997 live set LP _The Dance_, Fleetwood Mac’s final studio LP to date was redemptive; a Top Ten smash both sides of the pond. Citing fear of flying, Christine McVie quit after _The Dance_, but _Say You Will_’s 18 scrupulously-apportioned songs - nine by Nicks, nine by Buckingham - marked the Mac’s best material in years. Peacekeeper and Murrow Turning Over In His Grave had lyrical bite, while Thrown Down found Nicks raking the still smouldering coals of she and Buckingham’s tempestuous past. A rewarding season finale, the venerable Fleetwood/John McVie rhythm-section still steadfast as Buckingham restores edge and invention.

The last FM album recorded on UK soil brought The Rolling Stones Mobile rig back to Fleetwood Mac’s Hampshire mansion Benifold á la _Penguin_. Something of a unsung gem in the band’s back catalogue, _Mystery To Me_ was Bob Welch’s finest hour thanks to the poised, proggy opener Emerald Eyes and his hallucinatory career-best, Hypnotized. Part-influenced by Carlos Castaneda’s writings on astral travel, the latter would graced Mac live sets for years to come. Two weeks into the _Mystery To Me_ US Tour, Mick Fleetwood learned wife Jenny Boyd was having an affair with the band’s other guitarist, Bob Weston, and Bob got the boot. Clearly, the Mac soap-opera didn’t start with _Rumours_.

By January 1969, Fleetwood Mac’s blues credentials were such that recording a double album of standards at Chicago’s Chess Ter-Mar studio with the likes of Buddy Guy and pianist extraordinaire Otis Spann was go. Green’s raw, honeyed vocals on Howlin’ Wolf’s Sugar Mama and Little Walter Jacobs’ Last Night drip with empathy  and affection, while Shakey Horton blows smouldering harmonica throughout. An extraordinary, rough-hewn time-capsule recorded in a day and lovingly coaxed via talkback mic by producers Mike Vernon and Marshall Chess, …_In Chicago_ sees The Brit Blues Boom give something back. Oh, to have borne witness!

Again, not _technically_ a Fleetwood Mac album, but the combined talents of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham are as central to Fleetwood Mac's story as Peter Green, if not more so. It was of course the chance discovery of the pair's first album that led Mick Fleetwood to invite Buckingham - and on Buckingham’s insistence, Nicks - to join the band, and while _Buckingham Nicks_ has yet to be released on CD, fleeting vinyl re-releases in 1976 and 1982 show just what caught Fleetwood’s attention. Standouts such as Crying In The Night and Frozen Love showcase a fully formed Californian soft-rock sound that was clearly the template for 1975’s _Fleetwood Mac_, and not for nothing was _Buckingham Nicks_’s assistant engineer Richard Dashut a drafted co-producer on _Rumours_ and _Tusk_. The superb, cleverly modulating Long Distance Winner cements the view that BN is way more than juvenilia, but few folks got the record at the time. When Buckingham took that all-important call, Nicks was working as a cleaner.

John McVie’s arty cover shot, a poetry reading from local old lady Mrs Scarrott (Thoughts On A Grey Day), and a Danny Kirwan song that set Rupert Brooke’s Dust to music – despite some no-nonsense choogling on Child Of Mine, Bare Trees has highbrow ambitions. Bob Welch’s Sentimental Lady packs a beautifully insistent melody and raunchy Christine McVie original Homeward Bound airs the suitcase blues that led to her eventual 1998 departure, but Kirwan, fired on the subsequent tour, was next out. His pretty, perfectly formed instrumental Sunny Side Of Heaven is another reason why this record deserves your ear.

That Brett Livingstone-Strong’s cover painting homage to Henri Rousseau hung in Buckingham’s house speaks volumes. Tango’s DNA includes a jettisoned Lindsey solo record and his cathartic colossus Big Love, while he and Richard Dashut’s sequencer-rich, always musical production makes for a winningly poppy Mac on Christine McVie’s Everywhere. A slightly quieter outing for the Klonopin-fugged Nicks, perhaps, but once again the Mac gleaned gold from trouble at mill. Alas, strong chart placings (UK Number 1; US Number 7) didn’t prevent Buckingham quitting, and he wouldn’t make another record with the band until 2003’s Say You Will.

On 1970’s Kiln House, guitarists Danny Kirwan and Jeremy Spencer held the fort in the wake of Peter Green’s exit. Now Spencer was gone too, acid-frazzled and hanging with US religious cult, Children Of God. Christine Perfect, later McVie - also much-featured on Kiln - gained the full membership she was due, and guitarist Bob Welch arrived. The net result was a gently meandering record that’s perhaps the overlooked gem in the Mac stack. Kirwan’s trippy Woman Of 1000 Years; the Allman’s style guitars on Morning Rain; Welch’s fine, spooked-sounding title track and the graceful, Perfect-penned Show Me A Smile – what’s not to love?

When Peter Green named his band **Fleetwood Mac** back in 1967, no one knew quite how far-seeing his decision would be. The idea was to honour the talents of the group’s rhythm section, drummer :a[Mick Fleetwood]{href='https://www.mojo4music.com/articles/stories/mick-fleetwood-interview/' } and bassist John McVie, who would reward Green’s largesse by remaining the only constant band members throughout the next five decades of Fleetwood Mac’s tempestuous and ever-entertaining history.

Green’s incarnation of the group is still discussed in hushed, reverential tones by fans of the British blues boom of the late ’60s, though it was the guitarist’s acid-induced breakdown in 1970 that grabbed headlines: seeking a more spiritual path, he resolved to give away all his money and encouraged his band members to do the same. His departure from the group soon afterwards marked the beginning of years of mental turmoil for the star, while his old band soldiered on with a shifting line-up and dwindling sales.

But then 50 years ago, in 1975, came the arrival of Lindsey Buckingham and :a[Stevie Nicks]{href='https://www.mojo4music.com/articles/the-mojo-list/stevie-nicks-20-greatest-songs/' }, and the transformation of Fleetwood Mac’s fortunes. Their first album together, simply called _:a[Fleetwood Mac]{href='https://open.spotify.com/album/5VIQ3VaAoRKOEpJ0fewdvo?si=AOA6PxkqRbKrrEgwlsqlmA' }_, sold several million copies, though it’s the follow-up, 1977’s _:a[Rumours]{href='https://open.spotify.com/album/0BwWUstDMUbgq2NYONRqlu?si=X4vJ7WobSMmdqGv-DFSP4Q' }_, that has most enchanted and intrigued music fans ever since. During its gestation, the two couples in the band – Christine/John and Stevie/Lindsey – split up in explosive circumstances, and the drama fed into timeless songs such as Dreams, Don’t Stop and Go Your Own Way.

The drama didn’t stop there, of course. From thereon Mac’s story has been one of emotional departures, dismissals and reunions – with some fabulous music to soundtrack them. The band may have become defunct since :a[Christine McVie]{href='https://www.mojo4music.com/articles/the-mojo-list/christine-mcvie-her-20-greatest-songs/' }’s sad passing in 2022, but one imagines that the bullet-proof rhythm section will be Fleetwood Mac forever.

In shops now and available to order **:a[HERE]{href='https://www.mojo4music.com/articles/stories/mojos-new-fleetwood-mac-special-is-out-now/' }**, **MOJO The Collectors’ Series: Fleetwood Mac Rumours 1967-2025** presents the finest writing on the band and their barely-believable story in one deluxe bookazine. Featuring in-depth features and exclusive interviews with **Stevie Nicks**, **Lindsey Buckingham**, **Mick Fleetwood**, **John McVie**, and fallen Mac members **Christine McVie** and **Peter Green**, it traces the turbulent majesty of rock and roll’s greatest soap opera and celebrates the music the various iterations of Fleetwood Mac have made together over the years. In this extract, we offer a taste of MOJO’s expert selection of the band’s greatest ever songs…

_Unashamedly mainstream and blatantly bonkers._

With the others indisposed, Christine McVie (subtly) and Buckingham (not so subtly) took control of _Tango In The Night_, and no more thrillingly than on the unfettered title track. Originally scheduled for a Buckingham solo project, but something of a template for the Buckingham/McVie collaboration of 2017, this was the swaggering offspring of _Tusk_’s title track: giant drums; McVie wailing appealingly; a blistering guitar solo all the better for its sheer inappropriateness, and what sounds like harp and castanets. _JA_

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i\_xlI6gMH7U

_From Stevie and Lindsey’s lowest ebb, a ray of hope._

1974\. Lindsey Buckingham is on a demoralising tour backing Don Everly, leaving Stevie Nicks in Aspen, Colorado. After another day’s waitressing, she considers their poverty, their future, their fracturing relationship – and ponders quitting music. Instead, she writes this song, as a redoubling of intent. Within three months, they’re invited to join Fleetwood Mac, and she’s sung Landslide at almost every concert she’s played since. “Landslide’s dear to Lindsey and I,” she says later, “because it’s about us.” Isn’t that what they’re all about? _SC_

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAkOm7XLoQQ

_Green inherits the absent Spencer’s bottleneck and makes it sing._

The post-’67 backlash against pop glitz and psych shimmer was exemplified by the Mac, who dressed like tramps and were keen to state their everyman qualities in song. Here, Peter Green stops time with his 20-second slide intro before revving into the body of this touring muso’s complaint, Fleetwood’s tambourine riding shotgun. The lyric – especially “You’re sitting there so green / Believe me, man, I’m just the same as you” – presages his soon-to-be more jaundiced, perhaps psychotic, takes on fame and wealth. _DE_

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGY3o53prUU

At root Buckingham giving solo mode a dry-run, the finished Never Going Back Again dispensed with Fleetwood’s early brushes-work, leaving a pretty exoskeleton of taut, Travis-picked guitars. Buckingham’s vocals (even the massed “mmms” are all him) channel an economical lyric full of resolve, the song reportedly inspired by an on-the-road dalliance while on the rebound from Stevie. A courtly little dance made from love’s missteps, it was _Rumours_’ daintiest moment. _JMcN_

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0i3ZfrVY9iU

_Rumours_’ co-producer Ken Caillat heard Christine McVie rehearsing this song one night and suggested they capture it in one of the auditoria at UC Berkeley, settling  on the Zellerbach Hall Auditorium. McVie sang and played the song alone on-stage in the empty hall, a dozen red roses on top of her piano. She has described Songbird as: “a little prayer… an anthem for everybody.” For 21 years, from its release until McVie left the band, it closed every Fleetwood Mac show. _JI_

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9Hqn8x6a8s

_Ghosts blown in from the Windy City’s sad side._

First thing you hear is the room, aged walls of heartache and thick, energy-sapping air muting and distorting every sound. Then dig the slowness, for this is Green’s riposte to the volume and velocity of “progressive blues” – voice muffled in defeat, tired, brilliant fingers bending and sustaining notes. It’s the blues boom’s anguished equal to Janis Joplin’s Ball And Chain. But when Green answers Christine Perfect’s piano play-out with the most consoling chording of all time, know that restraint is the victor. _MP_

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NaM0TFsqps

_Nicks’s most mythos-laden track, the longer the better._

Nicks wrote Sara – named for Sara Recor, her friend who married Fleetwood after his affair with Stevie, or her aborted baby with Don Henley, or her alter ego, or all three – as a 16-minute piano epic. This 8:48 outtake version invokes her pre-fame penury as a cleaning lady, wrestles with the ghosts of lovers lost and paths not taken, struggling to honour “the poet in my heart”. The 6:22 version on the original _Tusk_, and the 4:41 single edit are, by comparison, acts of sacrilege. _SC_

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnpSIWQmHoA

_Green is the colour of spiritual wilderness._

With the success of Albatross, and Mac’s growing interest in the US market, came loud accusations of “Sell out!” Yet no one grappled more with their conscience in spring ’69 than Peter Green, whose Closing My Eyes was a rock opera in microcosm, a one-man pilgrimage into the soul, lit with siren-like Spanish guitar and portentous tympani. There’s no blues wailing here, just a lonesome lament set against dolorous guitars, Green’s lovesickness seemingly less for the girl than for God. _MP_

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKopq5OoEbg

Big-haired, soft-focused and digitally buffed, there’s desolation in this ambient pop-rock ballad’s breathy choral filigrees. Written by Christine and new husband Eddy Quintela, its narrator longs to defer the terminal car crash of the dysfunctional love affair for one more day, but seems guiltily aware of the sweet, masochistic kick of being deceived (those lies could easily be ‘lines’ – does that explain the knowing tone of backing vocalists Nicks and Buckingham?). _IH_

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCGD9dT12C0

From the undervalued Mirage, Gypsy, with its classic Fleetwood thwack, chiming Buckingham guitar hook, misty multiple backing vocals, ascending melody and lyrical theme, adds up to the quintessential Stevie Nicks song: unorthodox yet madly hooky, immediate yet elusive. As Nicks’s songs often do, it just kind of glides by, leaving the listener wondering what they just witnessed. Buckingham’s double-speed  steel guitar solo, pealing into the distance, signifies the Gypsy moving on again, “back to the velvet underground”. _JI_

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwgg1Pu6cNg

(from _Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac_,1968)

_With Jeremy Spencer in the driving seat, bottlenecks expected._

Their debut album’s rampage through Elmore James’s 1961 12-bar blues-boogie classic flung Jeremy Spencer’s bottleneck to the fore. Kicked off by Green’s guitar in the role of the original’s piano, Spencer’s slide and vocal quickly take over, as McVie’s bass urges  over the driving pulse of Fleetwood’s drums. Fast and insistent, the track represented the second wave of ’60s British blues interpreters hitting an unrestrained stride, Spencer’s shouts and yelps demanding moneymaker (aka butt, booty) be shook. _GB_

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apL8sYeuOks

_An angsty masterpiece bristling with oddball pop hooks._

One of three songs Lindsey Buckingham donated from his intended third solo album to what would become _Tango In The Night_, Big Love showcases his combination of twitchy angst and pop catchiness – a synth part on the demo even evokes Hot Butter’s hit Popcorn. A :a[Beach Boys]{href='https://www.mojo4music.com/articles/the-mojo-list/the-beach-boys-50-greatest-songs/' } devotee, Buckingham here sounds inspired by :a[Depeche Mode]{href='https://www.mojo4music.com/articles/the-mojo-list/depeche-mode-all-the-albums-ranked/' }’s Vince Clarke – until the guitar solo screams in support of his lonely, bitter anguish. Contrary to rumour, the boudoir “ahhhs” were a heavily EQ’ed Buckingham and not the lifestyle-impeded Nicks. _MS_

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hPv6EuV7dM

_Interregnum boogie from the Mac’s Lost Boy._

Peter Green was lost to LSD and Jeremy Spencer wanted to play rock’n’roll homages. Luckily, 20-year-old guitar firebrand Danny Kirwan had ambitions to keep the dream alive. One was this flanging, choogling rocker with one eye on the bar and the other on the far horizon, stinging like an English Creedence as Kirwan riffs, thrusts and croons an economy omni-mantra of total openness. Sadly, it’s over too soon, not unlike Kirwan’s own troubled, fulgent career. _IH_

Is a visionary too strong? Certainly, Jimmy Page had vision. In July 1968, when an LA psalmist told him of imminent “life changing” decisions days before his then-bandmates called time on The Yardbirds, the guitarist was already conceptualising a supergroup who -  after a brief spell as The New Yardbirds - would be named Led Zeppelin as per :a[The Who]{href='https://www.mojo4music.com/articles/the-mojo-list/the-whos-50-greatest-songs/' }’s Keith Moon’s suggestion.

Singles? Only very rarely. Studio recordings? They’d self-finance them, creating a bargaining chip when Jerry Wexler signed them to Atlantic. Zeppelin’s explosive, eclectic music would tap studio techniques Page had gleaned from recording engineers while working as a session musician, and US DJs would be encouraged to broadcast the magic a side of vinyl at a time. That way, epics such as Dazed and Confused could cast their spell.

Naturally, the line-up was crucial. A golden god on vocals - albeit a homeless one who’d been goofing around in blues/covers act Obs-Tweedle until Page and his manager Peter Grant scouted Robert Plant’s primal wail in Walsall. Plant assured them there was no finer drummer than his Black Country wingman/former Band Of Joy bandmate John Bonham, while John Paul Jones - a multi-instrumentalist/arranger/trusted session confrère of Jimmy’s on the Shirley Bassey-piloted Goldfinger and more - was a shoo-in bassist after his wife Mo urged him to feel Page out re his new group.

America swooned first. The early live shows were lightning unbottled, even if they opened for Moby Grape to half empty houses. Then between 1969-1971, four groundbreaking, earthshaking LPs arriving so thick and fast they didn’t have titles, only numbers. By 1973’s _:a[Houses Of The Holy]{href='file:///Users/chriscatchpole/Desktop/V' }_ Zeppelin had added reggae and taut funk to their lusty riffage and rustic, sometimes Eastern-flavoured folk, Plant skirting around :a[James Brown]{href='file:///Users/chriscatchpole/Desktop/V' }’s famed exhortations to “Take it to the bridge!” on the lovingly indebted The Crunge.

Ultimately Led Zeppelin were a bit like their airship namesake: just too huge, idiosyncratic and vulnerable to disaster to stay aloft indefinitely. Each member’s mojo was so crucial, that, in 1980, when John Bonham died aged 32 at Page’s home in Clewer, Windsor after a marathon vodka binge, a devastated Page, Plant and Jones instantly disbanded.

Though the accruing, multi-faceted darknesses and tragic losses which cast shadow on the band’s peerless music might partly explain why Bernard MacMahon’s thrilling 2025 documentary :a[Becoming Led Zeppelin]{href='https://www.mojo4music.com/articles/stories/becoming-led-zeppelin-reviewed/' } is an origin-story, not an overview, there were eventually moments of healing, too.

In 2012, when the group’s three surviving members received the Kennedy Center Honors from President Obama, Heart’s Anne & Nancy Wilson, John Bonham’s son Jason and a gospel choir performed Stairway To Heaven at the gala, Plant in particular was :a[visibly moved]{href='https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cZ_EFAmj08' }. “For years we’d had these carbon copy media cheap shots fired at us”, he told this writer in 2014. “It was great to see the Wilson sisters and Jason cut through all that.”

There was nothing risk-averse about Led Zeppelin’s 2007 reunion show in memory of Ahmet Ertegun. Indeed, with Plant unpersuadable re further gigs, their reputation came to rest on its for-one-night-only bravado. A fracture to Page’s pinky necessitated postponing for a fortnight, but Valhalla was breached and Zeppelin triumphed. Kashmir sounds Olympian, Dazed And Confused stretches old improv muscles, and Stairway To Heaven - previously tarnished by duff airings at Live Aid and an Atlantic Records’ 40th Birthday bash - regains its rightful place in the firmament. Through it all, Jason Bonham drums-up a storm worthy of his late father in emotionally testing circumstances. Avoiding the A-lister swamped aftershow, Plant repaired to his local kebab house for humous/reflection.

Hatched at Abba’s Polar studios, Zeppelin’s swansong (bar outtakes set _Coda_) was largely The Percy and Jonesy Show. Still battling heroin addiction, Page contributed less than usual, hence six Plant/Jones co-writes in which the latter’s piano and Yamaha GX-1 synth often star. In The Evening packs plenty of the old swagger, Page using a mic-stand as a slide during his rambunctious guitar solo, but much of _ITTOD_ shreds the blueprint. With talk of Plant’s “old blue dungarees”, rockabilly/bluegrass knees-up Hot Dog is perhaps a wheeze too far, but Fool In The Rain, replete with magnificent Bonham shuffle and joyous samba interlude, is wonderful. All Of My Love, Plant’s touching elegy for his late son Karac, also shines on a Zeppelin LP like no other.

Jimmy Page’s 2000 tour/concert LP with The Black Crowes energised him, hence he and _Live At The Greek_producer Kevin Shirley turned to the painstaking refurbishment of two near mythic, previously bootlegged shows Zeppelin played at the L.A. Forum and Long Beach Arena in June 1972. By Page’s estimation, these dates were exemplary, and this - the double-live LP _The Song Remains The Same_ could have been - bears testament. A ferocious Immigrant Song and three box-fresh picks from upcoming fifth album _Houses Of the Holy_ (The Ocean; Dancing Days; Over The Hills And Far Away) all thrill, while Plant gives a shout-out to Joni Mitchell on Going To California. The British Invasion at its most awe-inspiringly comprehensive.

An energised, often funky outlier - witness Royal Orleans and For Your Life transmute space into groove -_Presence_ also has Achilles Last Stand, a thunderous canter whose unnerving intensity seems remarkable given Plant sang it in a wheelchair while recovering from a car crash on Rhodes. The accident had nixed touring plans, bringing Page and Plant together to write spontaneously in Malibu, California before recording _Presence_ in Munich. Tea For One is Since I’ve Been Loving You’s poor cousin, but Nobody’s Fault But Mine’s phased, Willie Dixon-plundering call-and-response has real sass and heft. Hipgnosis’s cover-art use of a mysterious black obelisk in kitschy, wholesome settings also resonated; _Presence_’s druggy, sometimes seedy underbelly signalled encroaching darkness.

The US press had heralded “the next supergroup” prior to _Led Zeppelin I_’s release. No pressure then. Good Times Bad Times opens with showboating brio, while Zep sound suitably hungry, almost feral on short sharp shock Communication Breakdown, Plant’s vocals urgent and electrifying. Their palette was already broad, Jones’s ecclesiastical Hammond opening Your Time Is Gonna Come, and Page performing his Bert Jansch-indebted take on Black Mountainside backed by tabla player Viram Jasani. By July, Zeppelin had their first US Gold Record. Not bad for an album tracked and mixed in nine days for £1,782. Baroness Eva Von Zeppelin sent no congratulatory telegram. Zeppelin, she claimed, were “shrieking monkeys” who besmirched her family’s name.

In which No Quarter, Zeppelin’s spookiest song, vies with The Rain Song, one of their prettiest and most chordally complex. The studio itself was becoming more of an instrument, lending an almost prog-rock quality to multi-guitar-overdubbed opener The Song Remains The Same, and seeing Jones overdub Mellotron, piano and synth. “They’re just a giggle, they’re just two send-ups” Page told the NME when they dissed reggae offering D’yer Mak’er and funk pastiche The Crunge, but Zeppelin shone even at play. Elsewhere, Dancing Day’s finds Zeppelin’s fabulous rhythm section functioning as one and The Ocean’s acapella vocal interlude and climactic coda are not to be missed. Shall we talk about the cover art? No, let’s not.

“We can’t relax because of people from Nagoya turning up to ask about Bron-Yr-Aur Stomp”, the owners of Bron-Yr-Aur cottage wrote Robert Plant in 2001. It was there, in Snowdonia, Wales, _sans_ electricity, that he and Page wrote acoustic gems such as That’s The Way and Friends, Page’s inspired use of open-tunings bringing a hypnotic, raga-ish quality to the latter. _Led Zeppelin III_’s bucolic, mostly gentler quality came to define it in the public imagination, but when the group decamped to Headley Grange, Hampshire en masse with the Rolling Stones Mobile in tow, Immigrant Song’s punishing nod to Norse myth would contrast sharply with Tangerine’s wistful dandelion-clock idyll. All this plus Since I’ve Been Loving You’s transcendent, squeaky kick-pedal blues.

Recorded in various locations against a backdrop of near-relentless touring, _II_ sees Page emerge as _the_ riff-writer par excellence. Outwith its orgasmic, theremin-imbued middle section, Whole Lotta Love makes an artform of simplicity, while Heartbreaker invites all comers to strut, not walk. Alongside The Lemon Song’s oversexed blues, Zeppelin’s Black Country contingent brought songs for their better halves. Plant’s Thank You, the best of the group’s early ballads, was for wife Maureen, while Moby Dick, partly a Bonham drum solo, was later renamed Pat’s Delight in honour of his missus.  Zeppelin were a band on the run recording in multiple studios, yet _II_ had genius to spare. A Number 1 on both sides of The Atlantic.

Ubiquitous; fabled; charged with satanic backmasking, Stairway To Heaven will always be the focal point of Zeppelin’s magnum opus. But _IV’_s colossal sales and mythic status depend on so much more. Witness Sandy Denny, immortalised and gaining the reach she deserved on The Battle Of Evermore; Black Dog’s extraordinarily elastic riffage and When The Levee Breaks’ mammoth, endlessly-sampled backbeat. Flack for _III_’s lighter touch didn’t cow Zeppelin. They became more resolute, even withholding _IV_’s masters until Atlantic, freaked by the idea, sanctioned a front sleeve with no mention of the band’s name. Regardless, the inner-sleeve symbols representing each band member were inked on schoolbooks from Heston to Haight Ashbury. Behold: the sway of mystique.

A tour-burnt Jones had told Peter Grant he wanted to quit and become Winchester Cathedral’s choirmaster, but Zeppelin rallied and then some back at Headley Grange.  Upscaling the grandeur, their double-set tour de force has three exemplary epics: Page’s magnificent guitar-orchestration Ten Years Gone; Kashmir, seismic and hulking enough to soundtrack 1998’s Godzilla when Puff Daddy sampled it on Come With Me; and Jones led paragon of synth-drone mysticism In The Light. A happening with Stones’ pianist Ian Stewart (Boogie With Stu), Trampled Underfoot’s funky clavinet and breathless riffer The Wanton Song also shine alongside easeful, feel-personified ballad Down By The Seaside. An audacious undertaking of which Zeppelin were especially - and justifiably - proud.

"Led Zeppelin's music was always on the move," Robert Plant once told MOJO. "It was never just, 'Here's a little ditty and it's going to have the same lick as all our other songs...'" Indeed, during the band's imperial 12-year reign, no two albums ever sounded the same. And as their music pinwheeled between apocalyptic heavy rock, blues, folk and balladry, it never stopped moving. Here, MOJO's world-class team of writers have charted that journey and assembled what we think is the definitive list of Zeppelin's greatest ever songs. We hope you enjoy the ride...

Prefacing its John Paul Jones-penned main section with a spooky, Page-led collage of Eastern-sounding guitars, treated tympani and bass-pedal drones, the opener on Zeppelin’s ‘comeback’ album, In Through The Out Door, might Zeppelin’s last great studio hurrah.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSEClIembvU

Based on Leadbelly’s Gallis Pole, in Zeppelin’s hands it became a an ancient-sounding fusion of folk, rock and blues with a nifty banjo solo from Page.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmxaT37yeOs

A deep cut from 1976, For Your Life captures the sound of a band on the brink. Dosed up on painkillers following a car accident, Plant sings a cautionary lyric about the antics of one of the band’s LA groupies, a woozy, see-sawing riff from Page adding to the atmosphere of blurred disorientation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuXUhOQzprA

An acoustic rambling reverie with an ecological edge, the prettiest moment on the folk-tinged Led Zeppelin III is a song of resignation and heartbreak, influenced by Neil Young’s early albums and driven along by a simple strummed acoustic guitar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6wLf0ucCaY

Written for his wife, Maureen, Plant’s song of homely gratitude is lush and textured, and boasts a stamp of classicism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12KbOAc8vmk

A radio favourite in the US, Dancing Days’ twisting riff was inspired by a melody Page and Plant had encountered in India while playing with the Bombay Symphony Orchestra in February 1972.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qztKD75J2BM

The final track from Zeppelin’s 1969 is an eight-and-a-half minute Page and Bonham tour de force. Page combined various song ideas he’d been working on through the ‘60s to catapult the band into the next decade.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEPog\_WdPE4

Swept away by blues-rock and roots Americana, psychedelia may have fallen out of haute-rock fashion by the end of the 60s, but for Led Zeppelin its memory lingered on. Evident on the disorientating speed-rush of Robert Plant’s love letter to the Big Apple.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GsxngIzc3c

A self-confessed Bert Jansch obsessive, Jimmy Page upset members of the folk community after borrowing both tune and arrangement from Jansch’s unorthodox finger-style treatment of the Irish traditional song Blackwater Side, and passing them off as his own. An oversight that doesn’t detract from the dexterous beauty of Page’s playing here which established Led Zeppelin as an unlikely but cog in the folk process.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUFCkM-tNUQ&list=RDsUFCkM-tNUQ&start\_radio=1

When it comes to sexual abandonment, few albums depict the spoils of the road as candidly as Physical Graffiti. Indeed, Plant’s opening couplet on The Wanton Song leaves little to the imagination. “Silent woman in the night, you came/Took my seed from my shaking frame!” screeches the singer over a funky reboot of the Immigrant Song riff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTypf\_JMFis

Chicago blues translated via the ‘Surrey Delta’, I Can’t Quit You Baby was a blueprint for the relationship that developed between Plant’s voice and Page’s guitar. The slow, grinding blues tune (a take on Otis Rush’s 1966 version of a song written by Willie Dixon) became a stalwart of Zep’s early live set, evolving and changing almost nightly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3CYOGFMe1o

Recorded in summer 1972 at Mick Jagger’s country pile, Stargroves, The Song Remains The Same began life as an instrumental fanfare. After Plant heard the work in progress, however, he insisted writing a lyric, turning it into a rambling hymn to the band’s globe-trotting adventures. It also, of course, provide Zeppelin with the name for their movie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRnKvXqti6M

**38 Living Loving Maid (She’s Just A Woman)**

Originally titled Livin’ Lovin’ Wreck – a title inspired by a persistent older female admirer – this track has never been fully embraced by the band. Their scorn may be due to the fact that it’s also the closest that Zep have ever come to a bona fide pop song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8MCijoQpfA

Regret, optimism and a need to escape the dark stuff combine on this beguiling West Coast-influenced track. Plant is on record as saying it’s his favourite Physical Graffiti track and one of the best things the band ever did.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNo1nS\_JV5k

A rare moment where a drum solo actually appears on a studio tune, the rapacious Moby Dick became a vehicle for John Bonham’s percussive mastery and, live, stretched out into a 20-minute tour de force. The fact that the studio version remains a fan-favourite is a testament to Bonzo’s eternal popularity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOb8otk7Y0U

The closing track on II was intended as homage to Willie Dixon’s song of the same name, released in 1963 by Sonny Boy Williamson. Although the lack of acknowledgement led to a lawsuit, ultimately, the tune is defined by the core of the song; Page’s swinging stop-start multitracked riff and Plant’s joyous vocal combining with Bonham and Jones’s deft percussive interplay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZnHavrD4vQ

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