THE MAKING OF UN-LED-ED
The original idea for Un Led ED was to record one 45 - that's vinyl talk for all you CD heads... two sides. Of course, the only thing that would have made any sense at all would be the classic "Immigrant Song/Hey, Hey, What Can I Do" because of the non-LP B-side. Luckily, Rasta Li-Mon was working at the home studio of Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics, who allowed us to work for nearly nothing at any time we wanted, as long as it was between the hours of 2:00 AM and 8:00 AM. As anyone who has ever been involved with the dairy industry can tell you, these are peak hours for milkmen, and Tortelvis was indeed, on top of his game. We soon decided that two songs weren't enough... A whole LP was needed.
But what to do? We started with Led Zeppelin I (which "Immigrant/Hey, Hey" obviously didn't fit with) but started to throw in our favorites from Zeppelin II as well... then we had to do "Black Dog" so there went the framework. Besides, who would have thought that we would ever make a second one...?
In those days Dread Zeppelin was a very loose collective of musicians and whoever showed up usually played on the session. Or, if nobody showed up, it was Rasta Li-Mon and myself doing most of the backing track (best example: "Your Time Is Gonna Come").
THE RECORDING:
The recording process began as a trilogy of single projects. With the success of "Immigrant Song/Hey Hey" on Birdcage Records, a second was recorded: "Whole Lotta Love/Tour-Telvis: A Bad Trip." A third, "Your Time Is Gonna Come/Woodstock (live)," was never released as a single, instead it appeared as part of a singles compilation called "Kom Gib Mir Deine Hand" ("I Want To Hold Your Zeppelin," natch!) on Birdcage in cassette-only format.
The B-sides were, as a rule, far more trippy than the A's and still are some of my favorite things that we have ever recorded. "Tour-Telvis" makes me laugh to this day. "Woodstock" happened as a result of having three gigs in one day (no Kidding!). We played in the morning at a festival in Chino, CA (immortalized in 'Colonel' Kane's introduction of Tortelvis' drum solo in "Moby Dick"), nighttime at the infamous Lingerie Club in Hollywood and afternoon at a twenty year reunion for the cast and crew of the movie Woodstock. We had heard that Joni Mitchell and David Crosby would be in attendance so, just for them, we worked out this crazed version of Joni's famous song complete to the tune of "Lemon Song." If you listen to the end of the recording that is Joni herself screaming in either pain or complete exhultation... but I have it on good authority that David dug it.
Most of the choices for the rest of the LP came from either Led Zep I or II with the notable exception being "Black Dog" which was a standout of our live set at the time.
"Heartbreaker Hotel" was generally regarded as our masterpiece (by us at least) - it had to be just right. We tried very hard to make the "Since my baby left me..." Elvis parts sound like an old scratchy mono record. To achieve this, I remember Rasta Li-Mon taking an old record from the stacks, throwing it across the floor and doing a mighty, semi-ethnic dance atop it, then recording the needle playing the between-songs sound. We dug the affect but at some Tower Records listening posts, there was a disclaimer that says the scratchy affect is intentional... PLEASE don't return the CD as defective!
We knew that we needed to make "Moby Dick" the big finale. Live, Tortelvis doing the drum solo was enough, but we had to pull a few recording tricks to make it work on tape. Watching Tort sitting in the recording booth reading from Melville's "Moby Dick" cracked me up, and is still the vision I have when I hear our version today. We threw in everything AND the kitchen sink on this one, including some backward masking (sorry but I'm sworn to secrecy). It must have worked as esteemed rock critic Greil Marcus wrote in his book Dead Elvis:
"... Tortelvis begins to read from Moby Dick- in the slurred, drugged voice of Elvis in his notorious 19 June 1977 Elvis in Concert reading of 'Are You Lonesome Tonight?' '... I've read this damn book twenty three times, Charlie, and I still don't understand a thing.' But he does: he identifies with Ahab because he is the White Whale."
"Black Mountain Side" posed a delicate problem for us. How in the world were we going to make it reggae? Answer: we couldn't, but we sure made it psychedelic and when all else failed... bring in the Maharishi (Carl Jah in a bravura performance).
THE GREAT ED ZEPPELIN MYSTERY:
Personnel at the commencement of recording Un Led ED was constantly changing. The mainstays were myself, Rasta Li-Mon (always behind the scenes), and Ed Zeppelin. Ed was not only a toaster/congaist deluxe- but also a brilliant graphic artist with a lot of great ideas. It was he along with myself who conceived of the Monopoly-inspired game on the inside of the album. Yellow properties were named for Elvis; red for Zeppelin and green for Reggae.
The Win Taco Eating Contest square was based on a true story. Tortelvis had a standing challenge that he could outeat anybody at a Taco Bell restaurant on the road. The only one foolhardy enough to take him up on it was Ed (I said he was a talented graphic artist - not super smart!). Anyway, it got ugly. Tort put away 10 (ten!) tacos and ate a Burrito Supreme as a victory lap. Ed managed to to turn several shades of green while eating seven when cooler heads prevailed and made him stop.
A sad day for Dread Zeppelin was when the original Ed could no longer stay in the band. Instead his twin brother took his place shortly before Un Led ED was released. Although a very talented performer in his own right, I missed my friend and co-conspirator/collaborator. Outsiders couldn't really spot the change, in fact the new Ed's picture is on the cover of the album, while his brother's photo is on the gameboard.
SPINAL TAP FACTOR:
As brilliant and incisive as the Spinal Tap movie was (I didn't even laugh the first time I saw it- it was too true!), DZ, to me was a completely different thing. Real players, not actors- doing it for real. Touring, making videos, dealing with bullshit record co. guys, lawyers managers etc. etc. etc. but the one thing that the movie and DZ had all too in common was our problem with drummers. They didn't blow up or get killed in tragic gardening accidents, but they may as well have.
The original DZ drummer was Cheese. He played on most of the tracks on Un Led ED with the notable exception of "Moby Dick" (Tortelvis, of course). Poor Cheese didn't make it as far as the photo session for the cover. Enter Fresh Cheese who played only on the last song of the session "Black Dog" and lasted through the second LP. On the liner notes for Un Led ED it reads drums by Fresh Cheese and Cheese meaning two different drummers. Most people read that as one name, so drummer #2 became known as Fresh Cheese & Cheese. It is FCh & Ch who is pictured on the album cover.
ELVIS LOVES US:
Signing with IRS was a bit of gamble for us. There were gigantic and real concerns about copyrights and publishing clearances that we never had to worry about at our outlaw Birdcage label. Our first step to "clear the deck" was to notify the Elvis Presley estate as to our intent to release an album featuring an individual bearing a remarkable (yet distorted) resemblance to The King. A meeting was set up between myself, the band's manager, and Jerry Schilling, former Memphis Mafioso and one of Elvis' original TCB boys.
Jerry turned out to be an extremely nice guy and (surprise!) a big Led Zeppelin fan. He had real concerns about the project until I told him that Robert Plant himself had declared Dread Zeppelin his new favorite band and had been seen in several magazine photos wearing a DZ T-shirt. Jerry gave us his blessing with the following provisions: 1. No more saying Tortelvis was related in any way to the Presley family. We used to say that he was the king's illegitimate son. Now we say he was created by aliens to look and sound like the most popular entertainer to ever walk the earth. 2. The photo of Tort on the gameboard had to go. Guess they thought it looked too much like Elvis. 3. We had to change Tort's hair on the front of the CD. The initial pressing has the regular E-style hair (if you have one of these, I reckon you have a collector's item). Then the next pressing has Tort completely blacked out. Finally they changed the hair to a rasta look. I think I know what the Presley estate's intention was, but to my mind the wig makes Tort look even more ridiculous- in other words, real good!
Since the inception of the Dread Zeppelin project way back in '89, one thing has always been said to us every step of the way... YOU CAN'T DO THAT... YOU'RE GONNA GET SUED! Knowing the litigious history of the Presley estate, and even Led Zeppelin for that matter, I thought maybe they were right... but we'd go down swinging. After our meeting with Mr. Schilling though, I knew that everything was going to be all right and that Elvis, wherever he was, really did love us.
(Originally Published on Squidoo.com - 2010)
