Led Zeppelin released Led Zeppelin II in North America on October 22, 1969. Their second studio album was made around a touring schedule, with sessions spread across London, Los Angeles, Vancouver and New York. Recording the follow up meant finding studio time while the band was already out supporting its debut.
Writing on the band’s website, Jimmy Page recalled that the work began with rehearsals at his home in Pangbourne. “Whole Lotta Love” and “What Is and What Should Never Be” then took shape at Olympic Studios in London, where engineer George Chkiantz recorded the basic tracks and some guitar overdubs. Those sessions gave the band a starting point for further recording in North America. Page eventually completed the final mixes with Eddie Kramer at A&R Studios in New York.
Page was changing his guitar sound, too. In a 2020 interview with Total Guitar, he explained that the debut had largely revolved around his Telecaster, while the follow up centered on the Les Paul. “The second album was clearly going to be all about the Les Paul guitar,” he said. He was also thinking about where instruments sat in the stereo mix, how overdubs entered and disappeared, and how those decisions shaped the listener’s experience.
That thinking gets its most unruly workout in the middle of “Whole Lotta Love.” Page told Guitar World in 2014 that he used a theremin for the higher sounds and a heavily detuned Les Paul for the lower growls. Pulling at the guitar strings produced noises far removed from the opening riff. During mixing, Page and Kramer moved those sounds across the stereo field and used oscillators on the tape machine to make them rise and fall in rhythm. Page connected that freedom to his role as producer. He could carry an unusual idea through the recording process without an outside producer deciding it was too much.
The album’s range mattered to him just as much as its weight. In the Total Guitar interview, Page paired “Whole Lotta Love” with “What Is and What Should Never Be” as his first two ideas for the record, describing their contrasting moods as two sides of a coin. “Thank You” and the acoustic passages in “Ramble On” also gave the album room to move beyond its biggest riffs. When Led Zeppelin III leaned further into acoustic material, Page saw that as developing ideas already present on the first two records.
Led Zeppelin II became the band’s first No. 1 album. Its later archival release also gave listeners a way to hear how much work separated an early recording from the finished record.
The 2014 deluxe edition included rough mixes, instrumental backing tracks and the previously unreleased “La La.” Its working version of “Whole Lotta Love” was especially revealing. Robert Plant’s guide vocal was in place, but the familiar guitar solo and several other finishing touches were absent. Released alongside the completed album, that earlier mix let listeners compare the basic performance with the arrangement Page and Kramer ultimately finished.
