WINDOWS ON THE WORLD

At the peak of their powers in the early 70s, by 1975 there were signs that Led Zeppelin were burning out, and their legendary appetite for excess, not to mention stadium-straddling, mythically charged, epically inclined hard rock, might be waning.

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But they eventually regrouped to make an album that rivals their canonical first four self-titled LPs as their greatest-and this time it was a double. On the 50th anniversary of the release of Physical Graffiti, Dave Lewis recalls the making of Zeppelin's magnum opus (p78), remembers the day he bought Zep's meisterwerk (p79), and discovers what Zep were listening to when they made it (p81), while Nick Anderson compiles a Physical Graffiti discography (p87) and unveils a spread of PG memorabilia (p82). And finally, on p85, David Stubbs assesses the album's sonics and considers its impact 50 years on...

When the four members of Led Zeppelin left the stage on 29 July 1973, after a performance at Madison Square Garden, they were greeted by the news that $203,000 of takings had been stolen from their Drake hotel deposit box. Had the tour been a disaster, it may well have been the last straw.

However, this two-legged, 34-date assault on America had been a huge success. The opening dates alone, at Atlanta and Tampa, had seen them play to a combined audience of over 100,000. Two-night stints in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Detroit, respectively, another 50,000 event at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco and three consecutive nights at Madison Square Garden in New York, confirmed their status as not just a mere rock band but an entertainment phenomenon: the world's biggest rock group, the Stones and The Who possibly excepted.

What it also did was make it clear that they desperately needed a rest. Back in England, Jimmy Page, in an NME interview with Nick Kent, declared, "Everyone went over the top on the tourI know I did."