Happy Anniversary: Led Zeppelin, In Through the Out Door

37 years ago this month, Led Zeppelin released what would prove to be their final album of all-new material.

Its title inspired by the trials and tribulations of battling back from their tax-exile status and getting into the public eye once more, In Through the Out Door was Led Zeppelin’s first new studio album in three years, but in the interim since the release of Presence in 1976, much had gone on in the lives of the band members. As a result, In Through the Out Door has a slightly different feel than some of the albums which preceded it, not least of which because John Paul Jones and Robert Plant had more creative influence over its contents. There were many reasons for this, but as Jones noted to Uncut, one of the biggest in terms of his musical contributions was that he had “a new toy.”

“I had this big new keyboard. And Robert and I just got to rehearsals early, basically, and…with Zeppelin writing, if you came up with good things, and everybody agreed that they were good things, they got used. There was no formula for writing. So Robert and I, by the time everybody turned up for rehearsals, we’d written three or four songs. So we started rehearsing those immediately, because they were something to be getting on with.”

While not necessarily a regular contender on lists of “the one Led Zeppelin album you absolutely must own,” In Through the Out Door was a tremendous commercial success, hitting #1 on the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart and staying there for seven weeks. As such, it remains tied with Led Zeppelin II as the band’s album to have spent the most weeks in the top spot, but perhaps more important is the fact that it’s sold six million copies to date.

It might’ve seemed like it was going to be a struggle, but it’s clear that with In Through the Out Door, Led Zeppelin made it back in, and in a big way.