| "No Quarter" | ||
|---|---|---|
| ||
| Song by Led Zeppelin | ||
| From the album Houses of the Holy | ||
| Album released | 28 March 1973 | |
| Recorded | 1972 | |
| Genre | Hard Rock/Psychedelic Rock | |
| Song Length | 7:00 | |
| Record label | Atlantic Records | |
| Producer | Jimmy Page | |
| Houses of the Holy Album Listing | ||
| D'yer Mak'er (Track 6) | No Quarter (Track 7) | The Ocean (Track 8) |
No Quarter is a song released by English rock band Led Zeppelin on their fifth album Houses of the Holy in 1973. Written by bass guitarist/keyboardist John Paul Jones, guitarist Jimmy Page and singer Robert Plant, the song showcases Jones' skills as a pianist. The lyrics tell of Norse warriors, braving the winds of Thor to deliver important news, and they cannot pause for rest before they do so.
"No Quarter" was recorded in 1972 at Island Studios, London. It was engineered by Andy Johns and also mixed by Johns at Olympic Studios, London.[1]
During live performances of this song Jones would improvise on keyboards and often play bits of classical music. The song took on a very mysterious texture on stage as many lights and simulated fog were used. On Led Zeppelin's 1975 and later tours, John Paul Jones would also play a short piano concerto (on a grand piano) frequently turning the seven-minute song into a performance exceeding twenty minutes. He was particularly fond of playing Rachmaninoff pieces, but sometimes included snatches of Amazing Grace and also Joaquín Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez which had inspired Miles Davis' Sketches of Spain. One incredible version of the song, recorded at the Kingdome in Seattle in 1977, is an epic thirty six minutes, where, after the piano solo, Jones leads the group into a rip-roaring R&B based jam, as a lead in to the guitar solo proper (similar versions can also be heard on the "Destroyer" bootleg CD, or pirate DVDs of the 1979 Knebworth concerts.) In Led Zeppelin's movie The Song Remains The Same, "No Quarter"'s performance was the thematic music behind John Paul Jones' personal fantasy sequence.
Page and Plant would recorded a version of the song in 1994, notably (and ironically) without John Paul Jones, released on their album No Quarter: Jimmy Page and Robert Plant Unledded.
This song was later covered by Tool, with the lyrics slightly altered in places, for their Salival (2000) box set.
