Finishing an album is never easy. Even the greatest musicians can spend endless hours chasing the perfect sound, adjusting guitar tones, or layering vocals until everything feels just right. But none of that matters if the songs themselves aren’t alive. For Led Zeppelin, a band known for capturing lightning in a bottle, Coda didn’t come with that same spark—it came with heartbreak.

Jimmy Page, the mastermind behind Zeppelin’s sound, usually made it all look effortless. Whether it was the haunting delay on “Whole Lotta Love” or the thunderous grooves of “Kashmir,” he had a vision in his head long before the band ever hit the studio. Even when Zeppelin reunited briefly for Live Aid, their chemistry—with Phil Collins on drums—still eclipsed what most bands could dream of. But for Page, “good” was never enough. He was chasing magic.

And that magic, he knew, ended with John Bonham.

Bonham wasn’t just the drummer—he was the engine. Without him, Zeppelin couldn’t survive. They didn’t try to fake it. There were no tours. No replacements. No desperate comebacks. Just silence.

But contracts needed to be honored. So the label came calling, asking for one more album. What Page delivered was Coda, a collection of leftovers and outtakes—fragments of past sessions that hadn’t made it onto earlier records. Some fans were thrilled to get anything at all. But for Page, it was painful.

“It wasn’t for the taxman, but it was a contractual album,” he said years later. “It was a difficult album… a posthumous album—you’re going to be using studio outtakes, because we didn’t have anything else in the can.”

Page tried to piece together a story from scraps. There were glimpses of brilliance, sure—but they were echoes, not visions. And while In Through the Out Door hinted at a new direction for the band, Coda was a return to the past, stitched together from memories that hurt too much to revisit.

Looking back, Coda isn’t a triumph. It’s a tombstone. A collection of songs that reminds us not of what Led Zeppelin became—but of what they lost, and what they could have still become. It was the sound of a chapter closing, and the weight of knowing it would never open again.

If you’re new to Zeppelin, don’t start with Coda. Let it come at the end—where it belongs. As a quiet goodbye.