Charts: UK #1, AUS #1, AUT #25, CAN #1, GER #1, JPN #8, NLD #1, NOR #2, SWE #4, US #1. AUT: Gold; GER: Platinum; AUS & UK: 4x Platinum; CAN: 9x Platinum; US: Diamond.
Led Zeppelin II was conceived during a busy period of Led Zeppelin's career from January through August 1969, when they completed four European and three American concert tours. Each song was separately recorded, mixed and produced at various studios in the UK and North America. The album was written on tour, during periods of a couple of hours in between concerts, a studio was booked and the recording process begun, necessarily resulting in spontaneity and urgency, which is reflected in the sound. Several songs resulted from improvisation while touring and were recorded mostly live in the studio.
Recording sessions for the album took place at a wide variety of studios in the UK and US, including Olympic and Morgan Studios in London, England; A&M, Quantum, Sunset, Mirror Sound and Mystic Studios in Los Angeles; Ardent Studios in Memphis, Tennessee; A&R, Juggy Sound, Groove and Mayfair Studios in New York City; and R&D Studios. Some of these were ill-equipped, leading to one Vancouver studio, which had an 8-track set-up without even proper headphone facilities, being credited as "a hut". A more favourable set-up was Mystic Studios in Hollywood, Los Angeles with Chris Huston engineering.
Lead singer Robert Plant later complained that the writing, recording, and mixing sessions were done in many different locations, and criticised the writing and recording process. "Thank You", "The Lemon Song" and "Moby Dick" were overdubbed during the tour, while the mixing of "Whole Lotta Love" and "Heartbreaker" was also done on tour. Page later stated, "In other words, some of the material came out of rehearsing for the next tour and getting new material together."
Page and Kramer spent two days mixing the album at A&R Studios, and the album's production was entirely credited to Jimmy Page, with Eddie Kramer engineering. Kramer was quoted as saying, "The famous Whole Lotta Love mix, where everything is going bananas, is a combination of Jimmy and myself just flying around on a small console twiddling every knob known to man." Kramer later gave great credit to Page for the sound that was achieved, despite the inconsistent conditions in which it was recorded: "We cut some of the tracks in some of the most bizarre studios you can imagine ... but in the end it sounded bloody marvellous ... there was one guy in charge and that was Mr. Page."
(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Led_Zeppelin_II)