From Guitar World..

Led Zeppelin IV, 1971 (Led Zeppelin)

Call it Led Zeppelin IV, Four Symbols, Runes, Sticks, Zoso, Four or even Untitlted. By any name, Zeppelin's fourth effort is widely considered rock's Holy Grail, fusing hard rock, Celtic folk, boogie-woogie rock and roll and blues into one staggering, beguiling, epochal, masterpiece. (For the record, Jimmy Page has been known to refer to it as simply Led Zeppelin IV.)

The album was released in the States on November 6, 1971 (November 19 in the U.K.), and for Led Zeppelin, the timing couldn’t have been better. The public’s tepid response to the folky, acoustic-drenched Led Zeppelin III was a letdown, considering the wild reception that greeted the band’s smash-hit predecessors. (And forget the music press, which famously hated the band.) Zeppelin needed to come back strong.

Led Zeppelin IV was rehearsed and partly recorded at Headley Grange, a two-story, mostly stone structure, built in 1795 and located in the village of Headley in eastern Hampshire, England. While the rest of the band initially balked at the less-than-luxurious conditions, Jimmy Page was smitten: “Right from the early days of working at Headley Grange, it was very, very spooky. It had been a workhouse. The whole place was very grey and damp. There was no heating...I thought it was fantastic!”

While the old country workhouse undoubtedly influenced laidback numbers like "The Battle of Evermore" and "Going to California," Jimmy Page found that the 18th-century structure's acoustics perfectly suited rockers like "Black Dog," "Rock and Roll" (featuring an uncredited Ian Stewart on piano) and "Four Sticks." When it came time to track "When the Levee Breaks," Page had John Bonham set up his drum kit in the stone stairway that connected the floors. The resulting sound is one no studio in the world has been able to replicate.

Of course, the album’s apogee is “Stairway to Heaven,” renowned as much for Robert Plant’s curlicue poetry as for Jimmy Page’s fluid compositional structure. Remarkably, what has become radio’s most-requested song came together late one night in the most relaxed of settings. As Robert Plant recalls, “It was done fairly quickly… Jimmy and I just sat down by the fire and came up with a song which was later developed by the rest of the band in the studio.”

Thirty-five years after its release, Led Zeppelin IV stands as a marvel of rock record making. The music comes at you from all directions: Jimmy Page’s limitless array of riffs, Robert Plant’s air-raid screams, John Bonham’s chest-pounding drumming and John Paul Jones’ Rock of Gibraltar bass playing. It is as powerful, magical and oddly elusive today as when it first appeared.

WHAT THEY SAID Jimmy Page: “We were recording something else—I can’t remember what it was...and John Bonham just started playing the opening bars of ‘Keep a Knockin’,’ by Little Richard. I heard that and just started playing what you know as the riff of ‘Rock and Roll.’ The other song was just totally forgotten about and we did ‘Rock and Roll’ in a matter of minutes.”