That’s all millions of fans have needed to know when picking up Led Zeppelin’s best-selling fourth album, which was released 50 years ago this month. That’s true in part because the record sleeve itself didn’t give them much else to go on. The packaging was intentionally mysterious, without any words or insignias on the cover, only a peeling wall with a framed picture depicting a graying man hauling sticks on his back.

 

Colloquially known as Led Zeppelin IV, IV, or sometimes Runes in reference to the four runic symbols chosen by band members Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham to represent themselves, the officially untitled affair is a massive wallop of sound, the 1971 rock classic standing as a quintessential expression of the band’s lyrical mysticism, folk leanings and bruising hard rock.

 

For the first three years of Led Zeppelin’s existence, stretching from their formation in the summer of 1968 to the release of IV, the band was in constant motion, releasing three albums in a span of just 22 months. Led by former session and Yardbirds guitarist Page, fronted by a then-unknown Plant, and anchored by bassist Jones and drum-basher Bonham, the band built its fanbase by bringing its bombastic live show to concert halls across the U.K., Europe and North America.

 

Breaking in America was central to the band’s strategy. They crossed the Atlantic Ocean seven times to tour the U.S. before releasing IV, building from opening for groups like Vanilla Fudge and Iron Butterfly in 1968 to headlining a two-night stand at the 20,000-capacity Madison Square Garden in New York City in under two years. Not long after that September 1971 run, the quartet returned to Headley Grange, where they had recorded part of III, armed with a batch of new songs that would change their lives.

 

By the time the band parked the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio outside the eighteenth-century retreat in rural southwestern England, its four members were locked in like a machine. The band hired engineer Andy Johns, who had just worked in the studio while tracking the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers, and as a result, the record’s production values leapfrogged their previous albums, which were mostly recorded in various towns while on tour. The live-in rehearsal and recording situation at Headley Grange yielded more than enough music for their upcoming album, leaving them with extra songs that appeared on 1975’s Physical Graffiti. The eight songs that made the cut, though, were stone-cold classics.

 

Black Dog” opens the album with an explosive pentatonic blues-based riff in the tradition of Page’s classic “Heartbreaker” [a highlight from Led Zeppelin II] and a shrieking vocal performance from Plant. Bonham deepens the groove with propulsive drumming that alternates between 4/4 and 7/8 time, providing the backbone to the call-and-response interplay between vocals and guitar. “Rock and Roll” follows, a straight-laced, up-tempo boogie inspired by Little Richard.

 

Zeppelin returns to the Celtic folk it explored on III for the mandolin-based “The Battle of Evermore,” which finds Plant exchanging vocal lines with Sandy Denny of Fairport Convention [famously covered by Heart’s Ann and Nancy Wilson on the Singles motion picture soundtrack in 1992, billed as The Lovemongers]. Later, contemplative, fingerpicked acoustic-folk ballad “Going to California” mellows the vibe after “Misty Mountain Hop” and “Four Sticks,” an off-time experiment played by Bonham holding two drum sticks in each hand.

 

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The album’s most famous experiment came on the hypnotic “When the Levee Breaks,” originally composed by Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie, with Johns capturing the sound of Bonham playing drums at Headley Grange with microphones hanging from a nearby stairwell. Johns slowed down the tape when he recorded the rest of the band, giving the drums an apocalyptic scale.

 

And then there’s “Stairway to Heaven,” the eight-minute epic that pulled all the band’s strengths together into one song. Page wrote the song’s delicate, acoustic opening section while staying with Plant at a remote cottage in Wales, then assembled the middle and climactic third section at Headley Grange, with Plant writing vocals on the spot.

 

“Stairway to Heaven” has become a cultural touchstone thanks to its enormous popularity on FM radio in the 1970s and ’80s. The song’s descending opening guitar figure became so well known that it made a cameo as “the forbidden riff” in 1992’s Wayne’s World, which winked at the song’s enduring popularity. In 2014, that same riff was the subject of a lawsuit claiming the band lifted it from the song “Taurus” by the L.A.-based Spirit. A jury cleared Zeppelin, and the lawsuit finally ended in March 2020 when an appeals court upheld the verdict.

 

With legal questions in the rearview, the song’s legacy is undeniable. “Stairway to Heaven” has notched more than half a billion streams on Spotify alone, and it ranked No. 61 on Rolling Stone’s 2021 redux of its list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Page’s fiery leads in the third section topped Guitar World’s list of the 50 Greatest Guitar Solos in 2009.

 

The seven other songs on IV have earned similar legacies through another path: sampling. Bonham’s beats became foundational to hip-hop, and nearly every track on IV has been sampled—including dozens of instances for “Black Dog” and “Stairway to Heaven.” But the cavernous drum intro to “When the Levee Breaks” has been sampled more than 200 times, most notably in “Rhymin’ & Stealin’” by Beastie Boys, “Kim” by Enimem, “Army of Me” by Björk, and “Don’t Hurt Yourself” by Beyoncé featuring Jack White.

 

The popularity of Led Zeppelin’s fourth album endures. At present, it is the fifth best-selling album of all time in the U.S. for moving 23 million copies. Worldwide, the album has sold 37 million copies and ranks the twelfth best-seller of all time. In 1999, the Recording Academy inducted it to the GRAMMY Hall of Fame.

 

The monumental success of Zeppelin’s fourth album turned the band into a stadium act, and the momentum carried them through 1973’s House of the Holy and 1975’s double-album, Physical Graffiti. The band’s pace slowed during the latter part of the decade, due to a car accident that left Plant in need of rehabilitation, as well as spiraling substance abuse with Page and Bonham that ultimately led to the drummer’s death in 1980.

 

While their post-IV musical output only strengthened the band’s legacy as one of rock’s most potent forces, after five decades those eight songs still sound every bit as adventurous and groundbreaking