Vanilla Fudge Covers the Mighty Led Zeppelin
Newly remastered tracks by the original Vanilla Fudge lineup put a unique spin on a dozen Zep classics on "Vanilla Zeppelin."
Hello and thank you for spending part of your day with Michael’s Record Collection. Cover songs are a part of most people’s music collections and people are divided on the topic of an artist recording songs that others have already nailed. This week’s issue won’t necessarily change anyone’s mind about the artistic value or quality of cover songs but it will discuss a collection of such songs from one legendary band as performed by another.
Let’s jump right into that story.
Vanilla Fudge and Led Zeppelin are both iconic rock bands, and although they typically sound quite different from each other, there are plenty of similarities. Both bands are creative, feature top-notch musicianship, and can flat-out rock.
The bands both emerged in the late 1960s, with the Fudge releasing their self-titled debut a little over a year before Zeppelin did the same. As contemporaries, the bands no doubt influenced each other somewhat but each retained its own unique essence.
One thing the two bands had in common were technically capable, hard-hitting drummers. Carmine Appice of Vanilla Fudge — who has gone on to work with an incredible array of artists and bands through his career, such as Rod Stewart, Ozzy Osbourne, King Kobra, Cactus, Blue Murder, and others — and Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham both were known to hit the skins with a heavy hand, brought huge drum sounds to their respective bands’ music, and became legends through their combination of talent and personality.
Appice’s playing influenced a young Bonham when both bands were in their early days and as the Vanilla Fudge drummer tells it, he even helped Bonham get a massive drum kit from Ludwig like his back in the day. Led Zeppelin opened for Vanilla Fudge in 1969 while touring the U.S., and it’s easy to picture Bonham watching Appice on stage and picking up some things to add to his arsenal.
Life, as they say, is like a wheel, and things come back around, so it seems fitting that Appice’s band has paid tribute to Bonham’s. In 2007, the original Vanilla Fudge lineup reconvened — it had broken up in 1970 and has gotten back together at various times and is still semi-active today — and recorded a dozen Led Zeppelin songs, putting their own, typically unique Fudge spin on the tracks. The end result was a covers album called Out Through the In Door, a play on Zeppelin’s well-known In Through the Out Door album.
The four original Fudge musicians — Appice on drums and vocals, Mark Stein on (most) lead vocals and keyboards, Vince Martell on guitars and vocals, and the late Tim Bogert on bass and vocals — are known for taking other artists’ songs, rearranging their vocal lines and playing with tempos to build them slowly to a crescendo. They are, perhaps best known for their 1967 psychedelic rock cover of the Supremes’ “You Keep Me Hangin’ On.” The Zeppelin covers are similarly reworked and given the Fudge treatment.
The label that released Out Through the In Door in 2007 has since folded, Appice said, and Golden Robots Records bought the rights “for pennies on the dollar.” The songs have been remastered and the 12 Led Zeppelin covers have been re-released as Vanilla Zeppelin, which came out Sept. 30. Vanilla Zeppelin, a title that Appice said he’s not necessarily crazy about, features new artwork and rearranges the running order of the songs. The album is available only digitally as far as I can tell, and Appice didn’t have any additional information when I spoke to him via Zoom while he was at his New York home (he also has a place in Florida).
“I’m not sure, because we gave it to Golden Robot before the COVID (pandemic),” Appice said. “We recorded it with the original band — (on) analog (equipment) — we mixed it, and it came out great, and then we had no label. So, we just used to sell it at our gigs. Just before COVID, we gave this (Vanilla Zeppelin) to Golden Robot, and we were going to do another record — Supreme Fudge, we were going to call it. We were going to do five or six Supremes songs and a couple other R&B songs, and maybe a couple originals. But that (other record) never happened because of COVID.”
The band did get its version of “Stop in the Name of Love” out, but never got to finish the new songs or turn in enough material for Supreme Fudge. That title was likely the impetus for Golden Robot going with the name Vanilla Zeppelin.
Appice said the band also changed managers recently and that changeover may have led to some of the confusion about Vanilla Zeppelin’s release.
“Rock and Roll” kicks off Vanilla Zeppelin and longtime Zep fans will instantly recognize a difference in the drum intro that Bonham made famous.
“I never understood the intro to ‘Rock and Roll’ that John did,” Appice said. “A lot of people do but I never did, so I just did it my own way.”
The vocal arrangement features the entire band chipping in some interesting backing vocals to Martell’s lead vocal line — all but Bogert contribute lead vocals at some point on the album, although Stein handles most of the songs — which changes the rhythm of how the lyric is delivered from the original. It’s both recognizable as the Led Zeppelin classic and uniquely Vanilla Fudge at the same time, and it sets the tone nicely for the rest of the record.
“Immigrant Song” is given an atmospheric Stein keyboard introduction. The music in the song largely follows the original but the vocal line is changed quite a bit, which gives it a fresh spin. Those who like their covers to be faithful to the original probably won’t like it, but I found it to be a fresh and exciting twist to an old favorite. The song has an extended instrumental outro that should satisfy most rock fans.
I absolutely fell in love with the vocal arrangement on “Ramble On.” The group vocals in the chorus are interesting and, along with the musical rearranging and Stein’s lead vocal, it presents a clever wrinkle on a track that is one of my absolute favorites from the mighty Zeppelin. Appice is crushing his drum kit, giving the song a huge percussive element, and the interplay between what is effectively a lead bass line from Bogert and Stein’s keyboards are bright spots on the album. Martell provides some sizzling guitar licks throughout and the song builds to a huge Vanilla Fudge finish. It’s one of the highlights of the album for me.
Carmine takes the microphone on “Dancing Days,” and does a bit of a talk-singing thing with some slight distortion that makes it sound as if he’s delivering the vocal through a bullhorn and doing it with plenty of New York attitude. There’s a military snare drum roll thing going on through the song and some soulful backing vocals. Bogert’s bass work stands out again.
“Black Mountain Side” opens with atmospheric keyboard washes and what sounds like bongo drums and has some Middle Eastern flavor to it before the acoustic guitar kicks in echoing the original work done by Jimmy Page on the Led Zeppelin version of the song. I’ll confess that the instrumental was never one of my favorite Zep songs and although it’s not a skipper by any means, it’s also not my favorite among the Vanilla Fudge covers. It’s fine.
“Your Time is Gonna Come” has an extremely Vanilla Fudge opening and sounds quite different than the original. The song has such a vintage Fudge flavor that it could have been recorded in the late 1960s. When Vanilla Fudge really nails a cover with big chorus vocals and killer Hammond organ, it’s almost a religious experience, and that’s what this cover has going for it.
Led Zeppelin’s iconic concert staple “Dazed and Confused” becomes a jazzy shuffle in the hands of Vanilla Fudge. It’s almost menacing with Appice’s heavy hands on the drumkit, the dramatic keyboard/guitar recurring theme, and Bogert’s bass bulking up an already full bottom end to the song. The instrumental break smolders and then builds, giving each of the musicians an opportunity to shine. The mix is great and provides a lot of space between the instruments and vocals.
Appice returns to the microphone for a snarling version of “Trampled Underfoot.” The riff is familiar but it sounds like it’s a half step slower than the original and Appice plays with the vocal arrangement at times, especially early in the song. As always, the musicianship shines through and adds some bold new flavors to a classic song.
The original song “Moby Dick” from Led Zeppelin II gave Bonham a spotlight for his drumming prowess back in 1969, and the Vanilla Fudge version of the song does the same for Appice. The majority of the instrumental’s six minutes are comprised of a lengthy Appice drum solo.
“My style was influential on John’s style, so the way I would play something could be similar in feel, because we have the same kind of feel,” Appice said. “I just did whatever. I paid tribute sometimes and played my own stuff. Like when we did ‘Moby Dick,’ I played my own solo. I wasn’t going to try and imitate his solo. I think I even played a little different leading up to it.”
Appice probably couldn’t play any of these songs exactly how Bonham played them. He has always played by feel, rather than learning one way to play a song and performing it the same way each time. He said that can become an issue when shooting a video, because he has to listen back to what he put down on the record to see what fills he played so he can recreate them for the video when being filmed.
“The last thing I’m going to do is try and play note for note with what Bonzo played,” he said. “I thought I played it really well and we had a lot of fun with it.”
“All of My Love” gets another atmospheric introduction and Stein sings the hell out of it. It’s nearly unrecognizable in comparison with the original until the chorus kicks in. Bogert’s bass playing is once again a highlight, along with cool organ interplay during the quieter verse parts. The subdued verses make the chorus and bridge sections seem huge in comparison. The organ solo takes the place of Page’s guitar solo in the extended instrumental middle section. It’s another of the album’s true peaks in my estimation.
The production quality is spotlighted again on “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You,” another song that switches back and forth between atmospheric and bombastic. Martell delivers a masterful guitar solo over the pulsing rhythm Appice and Bogert lay down.
On an album full of great drum tracks, closing song “Fool in the Rain” might be my favorite Appice performance on the record. The Fudge version is heavier and meatier than Zep’s original — look, I want to clearly state here that I’m not calling it “better” than the original or even saying that I like it better, just that the Fudge version has more heft. Appice lays down a rock-jazz shuffle and Martell slips a filthy guitar riff into the opening section. The whole thing shifts into a heavy Latin rhythm just before the three-minute mark and returns to “normal” about a minute later. Every drumbeat feels like Appice is going to destroy a drum head while Martell and Bogert play as one, providing a sleazy, grimy recurring riff with Stein’s keyboard providing texture underneath.
It’s a worthy closing number and leaves the listener wanting to hit play again.
The breakdown of the songs covered on Vanilla Zeppelin is as follows:
Four songs from Led Zeppelin (“Black Mountain Side,” “Your Time is Gonna Come,” “Dazed and Confused,” and “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You”).
Two songs from Led Zeppelin II (“Ramble On” and “Moby Dick”).
Two songs from In Through the Out Door (“All of My Love” and “Fool in the Rain”).
One song from Led Zeppelin III (“Immigrant Song”).
One song from Led Zeppelin IV (“Rock and Roll”).
One song from Houses of the Holy (“Dancing Days”).
One song from Physical Graffiti (“Trampled Underfoot”).
The only proper Led Zeppelin studio album not represented on Vanilla Zeppelin is Presence, which is something Appice said was unintentional. The band didn’t set out to omit Presence any more than it set out to intentionally do so many songs from Zep’s debut album.
“There was no real magic in what we did (in selecting the songs). They were songs we liked and songs we thought we could sing well,” Appice said. “There’s no use doing a song if it ain’t sung well.”
While Vanilla Zeppelin by no means renders one’s Led Zeppelin albums obsolete, the Fudge’s re-imagining of these 12 classics breathes new life into them. Vanilla Fudge pays tribute to Zep in a way that is respectful to the source material. At the same time, Stein, Martell, Appice, and Bogert do what they’ve always done so well, which is to provide the listener with a dramatic and cinematic experience through creative rearrangement and superb musicianship. They stay faithful to the essence of the songs while presenting them in a fresh, new light rather than copying them note for note.
There’s a lot to like on Vanilla Zeppelin both for fans of the Fudge and of the mighty Zeppelin.
Tracklist:
(All lead vocals by Mark Stein except where otherwise noted)
Rock and Roll - Vince Martell vocals
Immigrant Song
Ramble On
Dancing Days - Carmine Appice vocals
Black Mountain Side
Your Time is Gonna Come
Dazed and Confused
Trampled Underfoot - Carmine Appice vocals
Moby Dick
All of My Love
Babe I’m Gonna Leave You
Fool in the Rain
To keep up to date with Vanilla Fudge, visit VanillaFudge.com. The band still plays live, so you can find their show dates on their site. Pete Bremy plays bass with the three surviving members of the band these days.
For my full interview with Carmine Appice, check out the video below or listen to Episode 84 of the Michael’s Record Collection podcast, which features some music snippets from Vanilla Zeppelin. In addition to the Zeppelin covers, Carmine talked about his career, Vanilla Fudge’s history, and his plan to put together some live shows featuring songs he wrote with Rod Stewart, and he also dropped some juicy nuggets about some of the upcoming releases he’s got coming soon with the likes of Jeff Beck, Fernando Perdomo, and King Kobra.
Thanks again for your time. Please consider sharing this issue of the newsletter with the first button below, or Michael’s Record Collection (in general) with the second. And be sure to check out the podcast version of MRC at your favorite podcast dispensary. I invite you to visit michaelsrecordcollection.com and my Patreon site at patreon.com/michaelsrecordcollection to find out how you can support independent writing and podcasting for as little as $2 per month (that’s only 50 cents per week!).