Onions on Zep's Four Sticks

I was listening to IV and the companion disc tonight and realized how much I don't care for Four Sticks. It just seems like a throwaway track that doesn't go anywhere.


IMO the fourth album would be perfect if not for that track.

I'm curious to see what people on here think of the song.

Discuss

 

Love it!

Scott

 

Onions? White globe, red globe, ebenezer, vedalia, green onions...

Gorts, please fix the title to:

Opinions on Zep's Four Sticks

Yes, I like Four Sticks

 

I love listening to Bonzo's count-in on the Companion Disc.

 

I think it's great and has a cool vibe.

Zep IV is the rare perfect album.

 

It's not a bad track at all, not the most memorable thing though (and on a record filled with Rock'N'Roll, Stairway, When The Levee Breaks...there's going to be a dud!). There's usually one track like that on every Zep record.

 

its their least accessible song on IV and therefore when youre tired of the Lp being overplayed this is where you go. It really is a weird track with no real precedents so its pretty unique and yes I DO LOVE IT!

 

I love it. It's got a cool middle eastern vibe to it.

 

For the people that do like the song: do you like it more than any of the other tracks on the album? If so which?

 

Back when I first got into Led Zeppelin (when my ears were fresh and my mind was blank in regards to music and musical influence) and I considered them one of my favourite bands, if not the favourite, I used to think "Four Sticks" was the best song on the album and the album in turn was my favourite of theirs, so I guess "Yes" is my answer.

What I liked about it then first of all was that the main riff was so relentlessly heavy, as it was pounding away, droning, monotonous, hypnotic and odd-metered. The drumming style adds to both the heavieness and the drone-like qualities, and I still think that riff is hard to beat in the heavy/sludgy department. I also secondly really liked the mystical atmosphere and the odd scales used in the (let's call it) bridge-section. Similar sounds are also found in "Friends" and what Page sometimes plays live during "Dazed & Confused", and these aspects influenced me a lot in my musical thinking as a guitar player (I was just starting to learn guitar in roughly the same timeframe as I got into Zeppelin).

Nowadays I am not so sure if I would rate the song as highly among their songs and I also don't listen to Led Zeppelin very much overall (burned out), even if I still like them, but it has definitely left it's stamp on me.

I also think it has some archetype examples of Robert Plant vocals. I always think about this song when I hear Jeff Buckley's singing, wonder if he was a fan?

 

Don't like it, I love it. Personally, I'd rate it higher than "Misty Mountain Hop"...maybe "Battle of Evermore", depending on my mood. Heck, maybe even "Going to California".

The song is taut and evocative, spooky high drama. Lots of dynamics. Plant's vocals are a tour de force. What's not to love?

 

Seems like a great song to me.

 

Love the way it starts out.
The rest not so much.

 

Weakest song on IV and the only one I'm occasionaly inclined to skip.

 

Give me the "Four Sticks" but hold the onions.

 

better then "going to california" imho... so it's the seventh best song on a near perfect album...

 

Does the thread title refer to how it makes the O.P. cry when he hears that cut on the album??? haha

Good track - can't pick a favorite or rank them in any order. I am a little tired of hearing "Stairway..." - that's the track that I'll usually skip on the album...

 

One of the best cuts on the record in my opinion.

 

Love it, especially the drumming. Actually not the easiest song to play!

 

One of my favourite Zep tunes. A 10 out of 10. It's such a high tension, haunting tune, with evocative imagery ("When the owls fly in the night...."), that it's hard not to get drawn right in to that very dark and gloomy place. Page's amazing tunings and judicious use of acoustic rhythm layering; Plants tortured vocal; and Bonham's four drum sticks keeping a torrid pace and clicking against each other on every strike. This song is amazing, and one that needs to be dissected by the listener to really see what a fundamentally haunting and well crafted piece of music it is.

 

I agree with Murph. It's a great track, and one of the things that set Zep apart from so many other bands was venturing off on these types of tangents. It's brilliant.

 

Excellent synopsis.

 

"Stairway to Heaven" and "Going to California". To me, GTC is the bathroom break song on this album. It's not a bad song, it just doesn't move me. STH, for years has sounded forced to me, a "we need to write an epic of our own" kind of song. Note that before this all the longer LZ songs were pretty much re-do's of other songs (the four 6+ minute tracks on their debut album, "The Lemon Song" from II, and less so "Since I've Been Loving You" on III), and STH continued the trend. You get to the album 'Houses of the Holy' and the longer songs borrow less heavily from others' compositions.

But IV wouldn't be the slice of awesomeness that it is without all 8 of those tracks.

 

I quite like Four Sticks very much.


If you haven`t heard it already,check out the only known live performance of the song from Copenhagen Denmark May 3,1971 along with a great Gallows Pole.

 

I didn't even know someone was playing onions on Four Sticks. I think they sound great.