Physical Graffiti is also Jimmy Page's greatest achievement as a producer. Working from his multitrack home studio at his countryside home in Sussex, he began building guitar pieces for what would become "Ten Years Gone," "Sick Again," "The Wanton Song," and the template for "Kashmir." He then took those ideas to the storied Headley Grange (where they had previously recorded the bulk of their untitled fourth album as well as Houses of the Holy). There, he and John Bonham worked out the basic arrangements for about a half-dozen songs, including recording the drums for "Kashmir" in the entrance hall just as they had done for "When the Levee Breaks," creating one of hard rock's most enviable drum sounds.

By early 1974, eight songs had been recorded for Physical Graffiti, but they were longer than a single LP could hold, so they decided to go back to earlier material that had been shelved to expand it into a double LP. From the sessions for the previous album, Houses of the Holy, they revived, naturally, "Houses of the Holy" in addition to "The Rover" (which as an acoustic version had originally been considered during the sessions for III) and "Black Country Woman." "Night Flight," "Down By The Seaside," and "Boogie With Stu" had been rescued from the cutting room floor during the sessions for their fourth album, while "Bron-Yr-Aur" dated back to III. (Incidentally, like "The Rover," "Seaside" had first existed in acoustic form during the sessions for III as well.)

Due to Led Zeppelin's astonishing consistency, the album stands as a complete and coherent major statement, regardless of its (in part) pieced-together origins. Physical Graffiti revealed a group that was completely confident in their ability and comfortable with their direction; so much so that they even let some of that famous Zeppelin mystique slip so we can peek behind the curtain. We hear it in the banter that follows the mighty "In My Time of Dying," or on the gleeful arrangement of "Boogie With Stu," and in Robert Plant's insistence to engineer Eddie Kramer to leave the sound of an airplane flying overhead at the beginning of "Black Country Woman" (recorded in the garden of Mick Jagger's home, Stargroves).