No Quarter (song)

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"No Quarter"

Song by Led Zeppelin
from the album 'Houses of the Holy'
Released	28 March 1973
Recorded	1972
Genre	Hard Rock
Length	7:00
Label	Atlantic Records
Writer(s)	Jones/Page/Plant
Producer(s)	Jimmy Page
'Houses of the Holy' track listing
"D'yer Mak'er" (6)	"No Quarter" (7)	"The Ocean" (8)

"No Quarter" is a song released by English rock band Led Zeppelin on their fifth album Houses of the Holy in 1973. It was written by bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones, guitarist Jimmy Page and singer Robert Plant. The lyrics tell of Norse warriors, braving the winds of Thor to deliver important news, who cannot pause for rest until they do so.

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1 Overview
2 Cover versions
3 References
4 Sources
5 External links

[edit] Overview

"No Quarter" was recorded in 1972 at Island Studios, London. It was engineered by Andy Johns and also mixed by Johns at Olympic Studios, London. The version that made it to the album evolved out of a faster version they recorded earlier at Headley Grange, an old mansion in a remote part of England. Jimmy Page applied vari-speed to drop the whole song a quarter-tone, in order to give it a thicker and more intense mood.^[1]

From 1973 onwards, "No Quarter" became a centrepiece at Led Zeppelin concerts, being played at virtually every show the band performed until 1980 (it was eventually discarded on their final tour "Over Europe" in that year). The song took on a very mysterious texture on stage as many lights and simulated fog were used.

Led Zeppelin performing "No Quarter" as shown in the film The Song Remains the Same.

During live performances Jones would showcase his skills as a pianist, frequently improvising on keyboards and playing bits of classical music. On Led Zeppelin's 1975-onward concert tours, Jones would also play a short piano concerto (on a grand piano) frequently turning the seven-minute song into a performance exceeding twenty minutes. He was particularly fond of playing Rachmaninoff pieces, but sometimes included portions of Amazing Grace and Joaquín Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez which had inspired Miles Davis' Sketches of Spain. One version of the song, recorded at the Kingdome in Seattle in 1977, lasted thirty-six minutes, where, after the piano solo, Jones leads the group into an R&B based jam, as a lead-in to the guitar solo proper (similar versions can also be heard on the Destroyer bootleg CD, or pirate DVDs of the 1979 Knebworth concerts.) In Led Zeppelin's movie The Song Remains The Same, "No Quarter"'s performance was the thematic music behind Jones' personal fantasy sequence.

Page and Plant recorded a version of the song in 1994, ironically without Jones, released on their album No Quarter: Jimmy Page and Robert Plant Unledded. Robert Plant played a radically different version of the song as the opening number on his solo tour in 2005. "No Quarter" was also a central part of Jones' solo concerts between 1999 and 2002.

[edit] Cover versions

The Flaming Lips on the Dolby 5.1 release of At War With the Mystics.
It is played as a melding between "No Quarter" and "Unmade Bed" by Sonic Youth from their album Sonic Nurse.
Tool, on the album Salival.
Metal band Crowbar on their 1993 self titled debut.
Ayreon on the single Day eleven: Love. Singers for this cover are: James LaBrie (from the band Dream Theater), Eric Clayton (from the band Saviour Machine), Devon Graves (from the band Dead Soul Tribe) and Ekwall.

[edit] References

^ Tolinski, Brad, and Di Bendetto, Greg, "Light and Shade", Guitar World, January 1998.

[edit] Sources

Led Zeppelin: Dazed and Confused: The Stories Behind Every Song, by Chris Welch, ISBN 1-56025-818-7
The Complete Guide to the Music of Led Zeppelin, by Dave Lewis, ISBN 0-7119-3528-9