What is the whole deal with Bron-Yr-Aur?
An avid Zeppelin fan surely must know the two Zeppelin song titles 'Bron-Y-Aur Stomp' and 'Bron-Yr-Aur,' and has most likely even stumbled across the word 'Bron-Yr-Aur' while reading about the band. But what the heck is Bron-Yr-Aur?
'Bron-Yr-Aur' means 'golden breast' in Welsh (Zeppelin tour manager Richard Cole supposedly even said, 'Bring back a couple of those golden breasts for me') -- breast as in hillside of gold. It is pronounced 'bronariar.' Bron-Yr-Aur is a mountain cottage located in South Snowdonia, Wales (UK), near the River Dovey. In the spring of 1970, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant stayed there and composed songs for their third album, Led Zeppelin III. There was no electricity in the cottage. It was a much more relaxed setting than the one for their previous album -- Led Zeppelin II -- which had been recorded while the band was on tour, thus creating more stress for Zeppelin. 'This is the way we have to do it from now on,' Page said. 'I feel energized with this kind of pace.' The band felt that Bron-Yr-Aur had helped their creativity to ebb and flow, and even credited the cottage on the inside jacket of the third album: 'Credit must be given to Bron-Yr-Aur, a small derelict cottage in South Snowdonia for painting a somewhat forgotten picture of true completeness which acted as an incentive to some of these musical statements.' Page and Plant returned twice: once to write some songs for Zeppelin's fourth album -- and again in 1994 for their MTV video project No Quarter: Unledded. Bron-Yr-Aur is now a family home and not open to the public.
Led Zeppelin wrote two songs mentioning Bron-Yr-Aur in the title, both of which are mentioned above. The cottage had a drastic musical effect on the band -- which is evident in their third album. Led Zeppelin III contains more acoustic and romantic numbers than any of its Zeppelin predecessors. However, as Jimmy Page claimed, 'We have included some quieter numbers, and we can always infiltrate new material into the old songs, without making everything we've done before obsolete. We're still a heavy band!' Yet, the effect was profound enough.
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