Bron-Yr-Aur

Bron-Yr-Aur' means 'golden breast' in Welsh, breast as in hillside of gold. It is pronounced 'bronariar.' Bron-Yr-Aur is a mountain cottage located in South Snowdonia, Wales, United Kingdom, near the River Dovey.

Led Zeppelin

In the spring of 1970, Led Zeppelin's 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 stress for the band. '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:

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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.

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Page and Plant returned twice: once to write some songs prior to Zeppelin's fourth album, Led Zeppelin IV and again in 1994 for their MTV video project No Quarter: Jimmy Page and Robert Plant 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, 'Bron-Y-Aur Stomp' and 'Bron-Yr-Aur'. 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 Led Zeppelin predecessors. However, as Page claimed:

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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!

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Yet, the effect was profound enough.