Just as Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy seems to have taken the band off in too many different directions to count, with country and western, glam and reggae vibes overlapping on the album’s second side, ‘No Quarter’ arrives to remind us who we’re dealing with. “Close the door, put out the light”, wails Robert Plant’s voice from a distant plane.
We’re back in the realm of Valhalla and the legends of yesteryear, where “the winds of Thor are blowing cold”. Jimmy Page’s guitar is drenched in swamp water, and a jazz piano playing high-end triads hints at the exotic journey we’re undertaking. But John Bonham’s relentless drums keep us on the straight and narrow. We continue down “the path where no one goes” despite the Devil mocking our “every step”, driving snow and dogs of doom “howling” at us to turn back.
Most of all, we’re told, the blizzard-swept travellers in our party “hold no quarter” and “ask no quarter” in return. We can safely assume that Plant is using an archaism befitting the Norse mythology and Viking histories on which he draws for the song’s lyrics.
As he did with ‘Immigrant Song’ from Zeppelin’s third album, in ‘No Quarter’, Plant builds a narrative story around Vikings hordes undertaking a perilous journey. Previously, it was to reach new lands where they could find their own colonies, but in this case, it’s because “they carry news that must get through”. Could it be news of the territories they’ve just discovered?
So what about the title?
In any case, the song’s title remains the most obscure part of its lyrics. Not least because it makes up the majority of the chorus on its own, with no other lines providing context from which its meaning can be gleaned.
Yet its meaning speaks to the level of bravery and brute resilience among the people whose journey the song narrates. “No quarter” is an expression historically reserved for military settings, in which it describes the policy of mercilessly killing all enemy combatants without taking any prisoners.
In fairness to the song’s travelling brigade of Vikings, they’re not anticipating any quarter to be given in return, either. If they meet any potential enemies or belligerents on the path to their destination, they’re going to slaughter them without mercy. But, if not, they fully expect to be slaughtered themselves.
Their road is not for the faint-hearted. And not the kind of treacherous journey you expect to make immediately after having a lovers’ tiff on the beach in ‘D’yer Mak’er’. But then again, Houses of the Holy has a song for everyone. For many Zeppelin stalwarts, that song is ‘No Quarter’.