Various Artists - Your Time Is Gonna Come: The Roots Of Led Zeppelin 1964-69

The tip of an intriguing iceberg

This is severely blighted by the lack of releases by Robert Plant and John Bonham prior to the formation of Led Zeppelin in 1968. Plant is represented by only two tracks, as a protégé of Alexis Korner in 1967, while Bonham is crowbarred in via the more frivolous results of a session with PJ Proby, when Zeppelin were trading as The New Yardbirds, along with excerpts from a 1970 album on which he and Jimmy Page backed Screaming Lord Sutch. Of most interest to fans are both sides of a so-so instrumental 45, when John Paul Jones was being groomed as a Jet Harris for the mid-60s. The remainder consists principally of him and Page serving as hired hands for both comparative unknowns, such as The First Gear and The Fifth Column, and well-known names such as Heinz, The Kinks and Donovan. Presumably the compilers baulked at Walk Tall by Val Doonican, Engelbert Humperdinck’s The Last Waltz, Cliff Richard’s Shoom Bamma Boom Boom, and more well-concealed ledgers in the ultimate heavy metal group’s artistic accounts.

Castle | CMQCD 1550

Reviewed by Alan Clayson
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