Coda is the ninth and final studio album, as well as the first compilation album, by English rock band Led Zeppelin. It is a collection of rejected and live tracks from various sessions during the band's twelve-year career. The album was released on 26 November 1982, almost two years after the group had officially disbanded following the death of drummer John Bonham. In 2015, a remastered version of the entire album with two discs of additional material was released. The album was a collection of eight tracks spanning the length of Zeppelin's twelve-year history. Atlantic counted the release as a studio album, as Swan Song had owed the label a final studio album from the band. According to Martin Popoff, "there's conjecture that Jimmy [Page] called 'We're Gonna Groove' a studio track and 'I Can't Quit You Baby' a rehearsal track because Swan Song owed Atlantic one more studio album specifically."
Guitarist Jimmy Page explained that part of the reasoning for the album's release related to the popularity of unofficial Led Zeppelin recordings, which continued to be circulated by fans: "Coda was released, basically, because there was so much bootleg stuff out. We thought, "Well, if there's that much interest, then we may as well put the rest of our studio stuff out". As John Paul Jones recalled: "Basically there wasn't a lot of Zeppelin tracks that didn't go out. We used everything."
The word coda, meaning a passage that ends a musical piece following the main body, was therefore chosen as the title.
Songs
Side one
"We're Gonna Groove" is a Ben E. King cover (original title is "Groovin'") that opens the album. The track was recorded live at a concert held at the Royal Albert Hall in January 1970; for the Coda album, Page removed audience sounds and live guitar, overdubbing a studio recorded guitar. The unedited version can be heard in the complete recording of the original Royal Albert Hall concert of 9 January 1970. The original album notes incorrectly state that the track was recorded at Morgan Studios in June 1969. This song was used to open a number of concerts on the band's early 1970 tours and was originally intended to be recorded for inclusion on Led Zeppelin II.
"Poor Tom" is an outtake from Led Zeppelin III, having been recorded at sessions held at Olympic Studios in June 1970.
"Walter's Walk", a reject from Houses of the Holy, was recorded at sessions during April and May 1972.
"I Can't Quit You Baby" is taken from the same January 1970 concert as "We're Gonna Groove" but was listed as a taped rehearsal in the original liner notes. The recording was edited to remove the crowd noise as well as the beginning and ending of the song. The crowd sounds were muted on the multi-track mixdown, as was done with "We're Gonna Groove". In a contemporary review of Coda, Kurt Loder of Rolling Stone gave the track a positive review, praising Bonham's "drum orchestra" and the electronic effects added by Page. Loder further described the track as being "true to the spirit of Sandy Nelson, and thus vestigially nifty at the very least."
Critical reception
According to Julian Marszalek of The Quietus, however, "Coda has always been regarded as the band's weakest release. Made up of eight tracks that spanned Led Zeppelin's lifetime, it refused to flow as an album. Devoid of a coherent narrative, it felt tossed together to make up for contractual obligations." In a retrospective review for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine said while it did not include all of the band's notable non-album recordings, it offered "a good snapshot of much of what made Led Zeppelin a great band" and featured mostly "hard-charging rock & roll", including "Ozone Baby", "Darlene", and "Wearing and Tearing": "rockers that alternately cut loose, groove, and menace".
2015 reissue
A remastered version of Coda, along with Presence and In Through the Out Door, was reissued on 31 July 2015. The reissue comes in six formats: a standard CD edition, a deluxe three-CD edition, a standard LP version, a deluxe three-LP version, a super deluxe three-CD plus three-LP version with a hardback book, and as high resolution 24-bit/96k digital downloads. The deluxe and super deluxe editions feature bonus material containing alternative takes and previously unreleased songs, "If It Keeps On Raining", "Sugar Mama", "Four Hands", "St. Tristan's Sword", and "Desire". The reissue was released with an altered colour version of the original album's artwork as its bonus disc's cover.
The reissue was met with generally positive reviews. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 78, based on 8 reviews. In Rolling Stone, David Fricke said it is "the unlikely closing triumph in Page's series of deluxe Zeppelin reissues: a dynamic pocket history in rarities, across three discs with 15 bonus tracks, of his band's epic-blues achievement". Pitchfork journalist Mark Richardson was less impressed by the bonus disc, believing "there is nothing particularly noteworthy about the 'Bombay Orchestra' tracks".
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! scope="col"| Peak<br />position
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