In 1971, Led Zeppelin released their fourth studio album without a title. Instead, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham picked different symbols to represent themselves on the album. Years later, the untitled album has become known as Led Zeppelin IV. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Page discussed what he thinks of the Zoso symbol he chose for the album.
Jimmy Page thinks his sigil ‘is what it is’
On Led Zeppelin IV, Page designed his own sigil that reads “Zoso.” However, the famous guitarist has never truly clarified how he came up with the design.
“So I accessed my symbol or my sigil, and that is what it is. And [the record label] put it first,” Page explained to Rolling Stone in 2020.
Still, years after the release of Led Zeppelin IV, Page did not get into the specifics of the design with Rolling Stone.
“What it means to me now is that that I made a good choice [in selecting it]. It’s sort of instantly recognizable, and it’s lasted a long while, since whenever it is 16th century or whenever it was originally around, to 1971 and beyond. [Pauses] I hope that answer is as evasive as you hoped it would be,” Page said.
Jimmy Page thought critics were harsh on Led Zeppelin
The members of Led Zeppelin decided not to officially title Led Zeppelin IV because of how critics had acted about their previous album Led Zeppelin III.
Speaking with Rolling Stone, Page explained why the band members were upset with what critics thought of the group.
“Basically, how I arrived at it is when we did the fourth album … [Pauses]. Sorry, you’re Rolling Stone, but we’d had so much bad press from people who couldn’t understand the fact that you’d do Led Zeppelin II, following it with Led Zeppelin III, which is an album with lots of acoustic guitars,” said Page.
He continued, “Well, actually acoustic guitars were on the first album, second album, and the third albums, but they couldn’t understand that a band wanted to be so radical, to change what they were doing. Not only that, but to be onstage and then improvise like the way that we did. They couldn’t get their heads around it, nor did they want to.”
The members of Led Zeppelin picked out symbols for their fourth album
In the Rolling Stone interview, Page explained that the members “wanted to put” their fourth album “out with no information on it” in response to critics.
“So by the time the fourth album came around, we wanted to put it out with no information on it whatsoever, because people was saying we were this, we were that, we were a hype, it was a con. Well, yeah, OK. Let’s see any other hype or con come out with music of this sort of caliber. Well, they can’t,” Page said.
When deciding how to design where an album’s title would be, Page shared that each member eventually ended up including his own symbol instead of trying to decide on one together.
“But then there was an idea of how craftsman of days gone by had their own stamp, sort of like a trademark, but a pictorial stamp, so you’d know it was that person. So it went from that idea of one sort of sigil, one idea, to the best idea, which was that everybody came up with their own sigil or their own symbol. So everybody did,” Page told Rolling Stone.
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