Led Zeppelin IV

Sessions began on 5 December 1970 at Island's Basing Street studios with Black Dog. The band had considered Stargroves but found it too expensive, and moved the next month to Headley Grange, where the Rolling Stones' mobile studio was waiting. Jones recalled the house as cold and damp. Andy Johns, who had just worked on Sticky Fingers, engineered, with Ian Stewart assisting. Overdubs followed at Island in February, and Page took the tapes to Sunset Sound in Los Angeles for ten days of mixing from 9 February. The band disliked the playback at Olympic, and Page remixed the whole album in July 1971. Sandy Denny of Fairport Convention sang the duet on The Battle of Evermore and is the only woman heard on a Led Zeppelin recording.

The record carries no title. Page chose four hand-drawn symbols, one for each member, and when Atlantic objected the band refused to hand over the master tapes until the idea was agreed. Page recalled a press agent calling the move professional suicide. Rock and Roll came from a jam with Stewart, with a Bonham introduction drawn from Little Richard's Keep A-Knockin'. Going to California was first called Guide to California and was inspired by Joni Mitchell. Down by the Seaside, Night Flight and Boogie with Stu were recorded in these sessions and held back for Physical Graffiti. The cover photograph, long thought a painting, was identified in 2023 as a late-Victorian picture of a Wiltshire thatcher, thought to be Lot Long of Mere.

It entered the UK chart at number 10, then reached number one and stayed on the chart for 90 weeks. In the US it peaked at number 2 and is certified 24x Platinum. Lenny Kaye in Rolling Stone called it the band's most consistently good album, and Robert Christgau later called it the definitive Led Zeppelin and heavy metal album. Worldwide sales stand above 37 million, and it is tied for fifth among the highest-certified albums in the US. Pitchfork's Mark Richardson wrote that it is a triumph of form meeting function and that it is hard to hear When the Levee Breaks without thinking of hip-hop. Rolling Stone ranked it 66th in 2003 and 58th in 2020.