Led Zeppelin released the compilation Mothership in the United Kingdom on November 12, 2007, with the US release following the next day. Issued through Atlantic and Rhino, the two-CD collection put Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones in charge of choosing the songs. Their 24 selections covered the eight studio albums released between 1969 and 1979.
The running order followed those albums’ chronology, opening with four tracks from the 1969 debut and ending with “In the Evening” and “All My Love” from In Through the Out Door. Within that framework, the choices allowed room for different sides of the band. “Whole Lotta Love” shared the first disc with the slow blues of “Since I’ve Been Loving You,” while the second reached the extended arrangement of “Achilles Last Stand” from Presence. It’s a useful feature of the collection: listeners encounter the longer pieces as part of the same story as the immediately recognizable riffs. The selection carries that story through the later studio records, too.
The release also arrived during a change in how listeners could buy Zeppelin’s music. The catalog was entering digital stores, and Apple’s October 2007 announcement set November 13 for individual song and album downloads on iTunes. Alongside Mothership, Apple offered The Complete Led Zeppelin, a 165-track digital collection encompassing 13 albums, advertised for preorder at $99. Buyers could choose the band-selected overview, explore an original album or purchase individual tracks. That gave Mothership a practical place within the larger rollout, gathering selections from across the studio catalog into one release.
The physical editions offered a further introduction to the band’s performances. The deluxe two-CD/DVD package included the premiere version of the 2003 concert-film collection Led Zeppelin DVD, which had been shown in theaters. Its additional disc drew on previously released live footage, extending the package beyond the studio recordings without requiring a separate video purchase.
Shepard Fairey created the packaging and approached the assignment as a fan. In a November 2007 post on Obey Giant, he described Zeppelin as one of his favorite bands and explained that the commission also included a limited screen-print edition. Of the 400 prints, 100 were offered through his website; the remainder were reserved for distribution by the band and label. The artwork therefore existed both as record packaging and as a separate edition for collectors, giving the retrospective a visual identity beyond the individual album covers represented by its music.
The assignment led to another collaboration. Fairey returned for the artwork on the 2012 concert album Celebration Day, explaining that Zeppelin had been pleased enough with the Mothership package to ask him back.
