Led Zeppelin- IV (1971)

This was the first Zep album I ever heard, back in my mid-90s teen heyday. Inevitably, perhaps; this is the most famous album, and has Stairway to Heaven on it. That's obviously a sublime track, building up and up in a truly epic way. Yet there's so much more to this album than that, from The Battle of Evermore to its true highlight, When the Levee Breaks, which to my ears is right up there with Kashmir as Jimmy Page's masterpiece.

And the band is, lets face it, about Page, with John Bonham and John Paul Jones. Robert Plant is a decent enough singer but in a style which, well, has dated somewhat. It's also true that a hell of a lot of what the band did, far more understood now than it was at the time, could fairly be described as white boys plundering the musical heritage of the Mississippi Delta Blues.

Yet there's far more to them than that, and even at their bluesiest- see When the Levee Breaks- Page manages to develop those influences into something incredible. And, in a case of conventional opinion sometimes actually being right, this is probably their best album.