Un-Led-ED, more than any other album I have ever been involved with, was a complete labor of peace 'n' love.

The original idea was to go into the studio and record one 45 - that's vinyl talk for all you CD heads... two sides. Of course, the only thing that would have made any sense at all would be the classic "Immigrant Song/Hey, Hey, What Can I Do" because of the non-LP B-side. Luckily, Rasta Li-Mon was working at the home studio of Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics, who lets us work for nearly nothing at any time we wanted, as long as it was between the hours of 2:00 AM and 8:00 AM. As anyone who has ever been involved with the dairy industry can tell you, these are peak hours for milkmen, and Tortelvis was indeed, on top of his game. As we got into the single, we decided that two songs weren't enough. A whole LP was needed.

But what to do? We started to do Led Zeppelin I (which "Immigrant/Hey, Hey" obviously didn't fit with) but started to throw in our favorites from Zeppelin II as well... then we had to do "Black Dog" so there went the framework. Besides, who would have thought that we would ever make a second one...?

In those days Dread Zeppelin was a very loose collective of musicians and whoever showed up usually played on the session. Or, if nobody showed up, it was Rasta Li-Mon and myself doing most of the backing track (best example of this is "Your Time Is Gonna Come").

From the very first time that we played as Dread Zeppelin, I knew that people liked it. Even at our first gigs in jaded "we've seen it all!" Hollywood people would walk away with a smile on their face with black makeup smudged and running down their faces from tears of joy (guys & girls!). This sustained Rasta Li-Mon & myself. Un-Led-ED would be made and would come out on Birdcage if necessary. At the eleventh hour, IRS swooped in and made us a deal that we couldn't refuse.

The recording process began as a trilogy (I tend to work in threes) of single projects. With the success of "Immigrant Song/Hey Hey" on Birdcage Records, a second was recorded: "Whole Lotta Love/Tour-Telvis: A Bad Trip." A third, "Your Time Is Gonna Come/Woodstock (live)," was never released as a single, instead as part of a singles compilation entitled "Kom Gib Mir Deine Hand" ("I Want To Hold Your Zeppelin," natch!) on Birdcage in the cassette-only format.

The B-sides were, as a rule, far more trippy than the A's and still are some of my favorite things that we have ever produced. "Tour-Telvis" makes me laugh to this day. "Woodstock" happened as a result of having three gigs in one day (no Kidding!). We played in the morning at a festival in Chino, CA (immortalized in 'Colonel' Kane's introduction of Tortelvis' drum solo in "Moby Dick"), nighttime at the infamous Lingerie Club in Hollywood and afternoon at a twenty year reunion for the cast and crew of the movie, "Woodstock." We had heard that Joni Mitchell and David Crosby would be in attendance so, just for them, we worked out this crazed version of Joni's famous song complete to the tune of "Lemon Song." If you listen to the end of the recording that is Joni herself screaming in either pain or complete exhultation... I know not which. But I have it on good authority that David dug it.

Most of the choices for the rest of the LP came from either Led Zep I or II with the notable exception being "Black Dog" which was a standout of our live set at the time.

"Heartbreaker Hotel" was generally regarded as our masterpiece (by us at least) - it had to be just right. We tried very hard to make the "Since my baby left me..." Elvis parts sound like a scratchy mono record. To achieve this, I remember Rasta Li-Mon taking an old record from the stacks, throwing it across the floor and doing a mighty, semi-ethnic dance atop it, then recording the needle playing the between-songs sound. We dug the affect but, still to this day at some Tower Records listening posts, there is a disclaimer for "Heartbreaker Hotel" that says the scratchy affect is intentional... PLEASE don't return the CD as defective!

We knew that we needed to make "Moby Dick" the big finale. Live, Tortelvis doing the drum solo was enough, but we had to pull a few recording tricks to make it work on tape. Watching Tort sitting in the recording booth reading from Melville's "Moby Dick" cracked me up, and is still the vision I have when I hear our version today. We threw in everything but the kitchen sink on this one, including some backward masking (sorry but I'm sworn to secrecy). It must have worked as esteemed rock critic Greil Marcus wrote in his book, "Dead Elvis":

"... Tortelvis begins to read from Moby Dick - in the slurred, drugged voice of Elvis in his notorious 19 June 1977 Elvis in Concert reading of 'Are You Lonesome Tonight?' '... I've read this damn book twenty three times, Charlie, and I still don't understand a thing.' But he does: he identifies with Ahab because he is the White Whale."

"Black Mountain Side" posed a delicate problem for us. How in the world were we going to make it reggae? Answer: we couldn't, but we sure made it psychedelic and when all else failed... bring in the Maharishi (Carl Jah in a bravura performance).