Led Zeppelin - get a drive!
Led Zeppelin is a popular British band best known for their hit ‘Stairway to Heaven’ as well as for co-creating the music genre of heavy metal. Led Zeppelin was rock’s first real Heavy Metal band. Yet many of their fans were not even fans of metal music. They came about after guitarist Jimmy Page, (who was rock’s most sort after session man in the early and mid sixties) was left with what was the remains of theYardbirds. He had join the Yardbirds to record with them on what would be their final album, Little Games in 1967. In the spring of 1968, Page played lead guitar on Donovan’s song “Hurdy Gurdy Man” which also featured bassist John Paul Jones. Jones had heard rumors that the Yardbirds might break up and told Page he would like to be part of any new band he might put together. By the summer of ‘68 the Yardbirds’ frontman Keith Relf, along with James McCarty left the band leaving behind Page and bassist Chris Dreja with the rights to the name and obligation of fulfilling an upcoming fall tour. Page wanted to hire vocalist Terry Reid as Relf’s replacement, but Reid was still with Procol Harum and suggested Page check out his friend, Robert Plant, who was singing for a band called Hobbstweedle. Since their nine albums were recorded between 1968 and 1979, Led Zeppelin remains one of the most popular bands of all time, having sold more than 300 million records and millions of concert tickets worldwide.
The quartet was conceived at the end of the Hippie love era, in a group marriage of blues, rock and roll, soul, rockabilly, folk ballad, jazz, classical and Oriental music, and something else scattered over some woozy sounds of their songs. It was their mutual artistic stimulation, their group interplay and imagination that incorporated mythology and mysticism and concocted their inimitable style, and established the concept of album-oriented rock career.
Led Zep kept touring through 1970. They found the time to record their third LP and Led Zeppelin III was released that October. Although it still had some heavy numbers like “Immigrant Song”, the album was a little more mellow than the first two albums. That December they started to record their fourth album and sessions lasted till the next summer, several things held up the new album and the LP would not be released till the end of 1971. The band not only wanted the album to be untitled, but wanted nothing written on it; no credits or any text anywhere on the album, on its inside or outside sleeves. They wanted the music to do the talking. They were eventually talked out of it by Atlantic Records and there were credits added to the inside paper sleeve, but still, nothing was written on the front cover to identify the album or who put it out, and the album was left untitled by the band. It did get to be know unofficially as Led Zeppelin IV. The songs on the album were indeed powerful and the album reach number two on the charts. One of the songs was “Stairway to Heaven”, which would not only go down as Led Zep’s best song ever, but rock’s best ever song too, as far as most rock fans feel. In 1972 the band did less touring and worked on their fifth album. It would be released in the spring of ‘73 and titled Houses Of The Holy. Once again the album was filled with a little bit of everything and was another top seller, reaching number one, despite bad press reviews about it. The tour that supported the album broke just about all of the then records for attendance, as did the nightly gate cash receipts. Near the end of the tour while in New York City, someone broke into their hotel’s safety deposit box and got off with the first nights gross from the NYC gig, $205,000.00 in cash. It was the single highest theft from a deposit box in Manhattan’s history. Yet the band’s members didn’t seem to be fazed one bit by it.
Jimmy Page was an experienced lead guitarist who worked with multi-instrumentalist John Paul Jones in 1967, and they agreed to work on the next project. In August 1968 Page invited Robert Plant and John Bonham to join his band, the New Yardbirds, for a September tour in Scandinavia. In October they took the name Led Zeppelin, which stemmed from a humorous conversation among several musicians about their chances of going down like a lead balloon. However, British bands were highly anticipated in the USA, and the Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun signed the new band without even seeing them.
Their debut album, ‘Led Zeppelin’, recorded and mixed in just about 36 hours in October 1968 at Olympic Studios in London, kicked open the door for all extremes and experiments. The phallic image of the blown up Hindenburg airship on the cover, designed by George Hardie, announced the hardening of rock and coming of the new super-group. While ascending to musical success as a powerhouse band, Led Zeppelin explored a variety of styles, from English folk ballads to blues and rock, and created their own inimitable style.
Prior to the release of their first album, Led Zeppelin made live appearances at the University of Surrey and in London in October 1968, then went on their first American tour in December 1968. In their first year, Led Zeppelin made four concert tours in the USA, and another four tours in the UK. Their second album was recorded entirely on the road at several American recording studios, and was an even greater success than the first one. ‘Whole Lotta Love’, ‘Heartbraker’, ‘Living, Loving Maid’, and ‘Ramble On’ became big international hits.
Each member of the quartet contributed to their compositions, thus setting a fine example of group creativity. Their songs and albums rambled on with the highly versatile voice-guitar interplay. Plant’s incredible vocal range and Page’s enchanting guitar solos were as responsible for the band’s singularity as its musical wanderlust. Plant’s and Page’s musicianship was supported by the tight work of John Paul Jones on bass, and John Bonham on drums. The intense interaction of all four players on stage gave their live performances a visual counterpoint to well intertwined harmonic and rhythmic structures of their compositions.
Their third album, Led Zeppelin III, influenced by folk and Celtic music, offered more inventiveness with acoustic/electric sound-work, and revealed more of the band’s versatility with such compositions as the ‘Immigrant Song’ and ‘Since I’ve Been Loving You’. With the release of their 4th, and most popular album, Led Zeppelin achieved a reputation of the biggest band in the world. ‘Stairway to Heaven’ became the most played radio hit, several other songs became rock classics, and nobody knows how many more times their lines would help other musicians (like the opening riff from ‘How Many More Times’ was later used by Pink Floyd in their hit ‘Money’).
Capitalizing on the success of their first four albums, the band toured extensively in the 1970s. At that time they chartered a private jet, nicknamed The Starship, that carried the band’s name and later added the famous ‘Swan Song’ winged Apollo image on the tail. Going to California turned into a ritual of wildness and excess, most notably at the Hyatt House hotel on the Sunset strip in Los Angeles, known colloquially as the “Riot House” for a series of some most exciting off-stage events, such as riding a motorcycle inside the hotel and throwing TV set out of the window. Another scandal known as the ’shark episode’, down by the seaside, in a Seattle hotel, had contributed to their enormous popularity. One of their concerts under a heavy thunderstorm in Florida ended with police using tear gas, and led to a temporary pause in their concert tours.
During the 70s their career was interrupted several times by accidents, deaths and other unfortunate events. In 1980 John Bonham was getting sick again and again, until he shook many by his death, leaving others dazed and confused. It was nobody’s fault but his. In December 1980, Led Zeppelin disbanded, albeit the public could feel their presence. In 1982, a collection of out-takes from various sessions from the 1970s was released as their last album, Coda. During the 1980s the remaining three members experienced a serious communication breakdown, until they briefly united for a short set in 1985, and once again, in 1988, to play with Bonham’s son, Jason, for the Atlantic Records 40th Anniversary show.
In 1994 Page and Plant showed their softer side when they performed live together on ‘MTV Unplugged’, which was released the same year as album titled ‘No quarter’. Then they made an international tour with an orchestra. In 1995 Page and Plant were joined by Jones when the band was indicted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, albeit the three former band-mates did not perform together. By that time Jimmy Page as well as Robert Plant had pursued individual careers touring and recording with their own bands.
Another ten years gone. Page’s and Plant’s call-and-response interplay took them through good times and bad times. Their sonic originality had sparked imagination and creativity in millions of open minds. Singers, songwriters, armies of music fans and a rainbow of dedicated ‘led heads’, as well as guitarists and guitar collectors worldwide remained united through the acquired experience and conditioning to the Led Zep sounds.
Hats off to Led Zeppelin, who opened the new extremes of musical expression, and are now back in the light confirming their presence. Their long anticipated reunion in December 2007 was a true celebration day. Their live performance was as tight as a rock band can be, and their living, loving song remains the same since we’ve been loving them, that’s the way!
The lates albums of Led Zeppelin:
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