“Physical Graffiti” was released forty five years ago last month.

I really had no idea of the Led Zeppelin album until Nikki Sixx started talking about Motley Crue writing their “Physical Graffiti” in response to a question he was asked after “Decade of Decadence” came out and what would be next for the band. As soon as Sixx mentioned that, the album was on my radar.

Of course, we all know that Vince Neil got booted or left (depending on whose story you believe) and Motley Crue went to work, writing over 20 songs for what would become their “Physical Graffiti”, the self-titled “Motley Crue” album, otherwise known as Motley Corabi. My views of this album are all over this blog as one of the best Motley albums to date.

And I didn’t get “Physical Graffiti” until I picked it up at a record fair, for a very cheap price in the mid 90’s. I even heard Motley’s album before Led Zep’s. I know it’s sacrilege, but to have music at home, meant I needed to use my money for it and money was limited. And no one I knew had the album for me to dub.

The production team on this album is a who’s who of people that we all got to know from various hard rock albums.

Jimmy Page as usual is the producer, and you have Andy Johns engineering, Eddie Kramer engineering and Ron Nevison also engineering. These guys are all paying their dues, learning their craft from a master, which in this case is Page. It also has so many engineers because some of the songs which made the album are leftovers from previous albums.

But the stand out song on the album is KASHMIR.

I remember a time, when the riff was everything and there is no better definition of the riff being everything than this song.

I have already written about “The Kashmir Effect” before and again here. And man, i know it’s not right to say that I heard “Get It On” from Kingdom Come first. I even heard “Judgement Day” from Whitesnake before I even heard “Kashmir”. But that’s how it happened.

I didn’t own not one 70’s record until the 90’s.

And the older people I spoke to, said how “Kashmir” was one of the most popular songs in Australia, behind “Evie” (all three parts), “Stairway To Heaven”, “American Pie”, “Bat Out Of Hell” and “Hotel California”.

Not one of those songs is under 7 minutes.

An era in which artists did what they wanted and wrote what they wanted and FM radio had no choice but to play the whole damn thing.