BBC Sessions (Led Zeppelin album)
| BBC Sessions | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Live album by Led Zeppelin | ||||
| Released | 11 November 1997 16 September 2016 | |||
| Recorded | March & June 1969, 1 April 1971, London, England, UK | |||
| Genre | Hard rock, heavy metal, blues rock, folk rock | |||
| Length | 138:58 | |||
| Label | Atlantic | |||
| Producer | Jimmy Page | |||
| Compiler | Jimmy Page | |||
| Led Zeppelin chronology | ||||
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| Singles from BBC Sessions | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |   |
| Blender |  |
| Robert Christgau |  |
| Pitchfork Media | 8.9/10 |
BBC Sessions is a compilation album featuring studio sessions and a live concert recorded by English rock group Led Zeppelin for the BBC. It was released on 11 November 1997, by Atlantic Records. This was the first release of new Led Zeppelin material in seven years. Disc one consists of material from four different 1969 BBC sessions. Disc two contains most of the 1 April 1971 concert from the Paris Theatre in London. Disc three was only included in a limited run of album releases and features rare interviews from 1969, 1976/1977, and 1990.
Countless bootlegs of these recordings circulated for years before the official release. This release was widely welcomed by Led Zeppelin fans as it was the first live release since The Song Remains the Same in 1976. Others have criticized the decision to edit some of the songs and drop others that were recorded for the BBC. Most notable are one session from 1969 which included the unreleased song "Sunshine Woman", and about seven minutes of the "Whole Lotta Love" medley from 1971. The album was re-released in September 2016 as The Complete BBC Sessions with further BBC recordings, including the "Sunshine Woman" session.
Nine unreleased recordings from a conglomerate of 1969 sessions, including "Dazed and Confused", "White Summer", "I Can't Quit You Baby", "You Shook Me" and "Sunshine Woman" along with two versions of both "Communication Breakdown" and "What Is and What Should Never Be" (recorded two years apart) were released on 16 September 2016, comprising a third disc of the previously two-disc BBC Sessions compilation. The lost March 1969 three-song session – by all accounts erased from its master tapes – appears on the disc sourced from a reputed AM radio recording. This session contains the oft-bootlegged, boogieing blues rocker "Sunshine Woman," a track that Zeppelin never formally released, and renditions of Willie Dixon's "I Can't Quit You Baby" and "You Shook Me."
^shipments figures based on certification alone
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