This band will never work- it'll go over like a Lead Zeppelin!
"Oh pilot of the storm who leaves no trace
Like thoughts inside a dream
Who hid the path that led me to that place
Of yellow desert screen.
My shangri-la beneath the summer moon
I will return again.
Sure as the dust that floats high in June
When movin' through Kashmir"
— "Kashmir", 4:37 through 5:13
"Thank you for making us the world's number one band."
— Melody Maker advertisement for the release of Led Zeppelin III
The one, the only, the hammer of the Gods. Long story short: Led Zeppelin formed in 1968 after Jimmy Page recruited three other lads for a new band to satisfy contractual obligations for The Yardbirds (which Page had joined in 1966 and almost immediately assumed control of after their guitarist Jeff Beck left in late '66). The band was originally to be a Supergroup consisting of Page, Jeff Beck, Nicky Hopkins on piano, and Keith Moon and John Entwistle of The Who and possibly with Donovan as lead vocalist. They actually recorded one song (but with John Paul Jones on bass instead) called Beck's Bolero which made it's way onto Jeff Beck Group's Truth. The group never amounted to more, as Entwistle or Moon who said it would go over "like a lead zeppelin". They went on to release many albums, tour heavily, become one of the most successful and famous bands in Rock & Roll, help pioneer Heavy Metal and generally rock so hard as to blow people's minds and inspire them to form bands of their own. They broke up in 1980 after drummer John Bonham asphyxiated on vomit after a day of binge alcoholism. They were famously trashed at first by critics in The Seventies but gained a huge fanbase, and those critics (particularly Rolling Stone magazine) have since reversed themselves and realised that, hey, Led Zeppelin are awesome after all.The band have written their fair share of famous, classic hard rock songs that sometimes get overplayed like hell on AOR/"classic rock" radio for new generations to get annoyed, such as: "Dazed and Confused" (cover!), "Whole Lotta Love", "Heartbreaker"/"Living Loving Maid", "Immigrant Song", "Black Dog", "Rock and Roll", "Stairway to Heaven", "When the Levee Breaks" (cover too!), "Kashmir" and "Trampled Under Foot". Don't really peg them as simple noise-merchants though, because their discography's really varied and sometimes experimental, ranging from Blues Rock and acoustic Folk Rock to Eastern-influenced material, Funk, Progressive Rock and weirder material. They're widely respected for their superior musical abilities, eclectic tastes, legendary concerts and well-known for their infamous exploits (such as the ''shark episode''), among others. Also, pretty much any rock and metal band formed since owes them at least a bit, whether they admit to it or not.But as with every mega-successful and influential band, there are downsides. Negative marks on their record include Plant's habit of lifting lyrics from old blues songs without credit (which led to the occasional lawsuits), his occasionally embarassing lyrics (they referenced Lord of the Rings about thirty years before the movies made it cool to do that), the band inevitably allowing success to go to their heads and descending into overblown excess post-1975, and the infamous 1976 Rockumentary film The Song Remains the Same, commonly cited as one of the worst concert films ever, thanks to the sub-par performances and self-indulgent fantasy sequences. Also to be mentioned is their continued refusal to allow their songs into rhythm games, such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band.Band members:
All Drummers Are Animals: Keith Moon may be considered the quintessential example of this, but Keith just trashed hotel rooms. Bonzo trashed people.
May be exaggerated. Many describe Bonham as being closer to a Boisterous Bruiser.
Appropriated Appellation: Led Zeppelin got their name when Keith Moon and John Entwistle suggested that a supergroup with them, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck, would "go down like a lead balloon".
Bishōnen: Robert Plant. Jimmy Page also qualifies, as mentioned below.
Batman Gambit: Jimmy Page had the length of "How Many More Times" erroneously listed as 3:23 on the back cover of their first album (it's actually 8:26) in order to trick radio stations into playing it. We still haven't heard whether it's succeeded or not...
Black Sheep: While classic rock radio plays large chunks of I, II, IV and Houses of the Holy, for some strange reason, they don't play much from III, outside of "Immigrant Song" and the sadly excluded B-side "Hey Hey, What Can I Do?". Maybe "Gallows Pole", if you're lucky.
Also, radio stations rarely ever play anything off of Presence.
Which is strange, since it has the fan favorites "Achilles' Last Stand" and "Nobody's Fault But Mine".
Black Sheep Hit: "Stairway to Heaven". Robert Plant once called it a "bloody wedding song".
Led Zeppelin did release singles, but because they didn't release any in the UK, nor released "Stairway to Heaven" as a single anywhere, they've become known as an "album band". Even so, some of their chosen singles are atypical of the band's sound. For instance, "Fool in the Rain", the band's final Top 40 hit in the United States has a strong Brazilian-influence.
Careful With That Axe: Robert Plant, when he gets excited, tends to do this. One of the best recorded examples is his emotionally-charged scream near the end of "I'm Gonna Crawl".
Control Freak: Almost everybody in or near the band, to various degrees...
Jimmy, for being sole producer and even admitting he changed engineers for the first three albums just to make it clear he was the architect of the band's sound.
(In)famous manager Peter Grant, the big intimidating former wrestler who travelled with the band at all times, remained in charge through the chaos of touring, negotiated their contract with Atlantic Records, had complete faith in them and personally made sure that most of the profits from live performances went to the band - bootleggers and unauthorised photographers were lucky to get off with a stern talking-to. His most famous appearance was in the concert movie The Song Remains the Same, where he deployed a Cluster F-Bomb against a concert promoter who failed to stop illegal poster sales, and he was depicted in a fantasy sequence as a hitman alongside tour manager Richard Cole.
Creator Backlash: Robert Plant has come to abhor the band's classic song, "Stairway to Heaven" - and refuses to play it in concerts.
It held the record for most requested and most played song on the radio for a LONG time after it came out.
Jimmy Page has also claimed to hate "Living Loving Maid (She's Just a Woman)" and says it was just written as filler *
Probably didn't help that his girlfriend ended up hating it as well
. Doesn't stop classic rock stations from keeping it in heavy rotation to this day (usually following "Heartbreaker", since there was no real gap between the songs on the original album).
Then, to round things out, John Paul Jones is said to have never been too fond of the song "D'yer Mak'er".
Creator Breakdown: Between Robert Plant's grief over losing his son and Jimmy Page's increasing addiction to heroin, In Through the Out Door is commonly regarded as Led Zeppelin's worst album.
Dead Guy Junior: Jason Bonham took his father's place in the band for the few occasions they still play together.
The Drifter: We've lost track of how often Plant's mentioned he has to leave his girlfriend or some town or whatever because he has to "ramble on" or something like that in a LZ song. Hint: it's at least twice ("Babe I'm Gonna Leave You", "Ramble On", "Bron-Y-Aur Stomp", "Misty Mountain Hop", "Going to California", arguably "No Quarter").
Echoing Acoustics: Led Zeppelin IV was famously recorded in an old mansion, and has a massive, echoing sound as a result. This is especially noticeable with the huge drum sound on "When the Levee Breaks", which had its drum part recorded at the bottom of a stairwell with microphones positioned on the third floor landing.
Epic Rocking: They have three songs that go over the ten-minute mark, and dozens of others that are at least five. Also, on their live album, The Song Remains The Same, except for the first few, every song is at least ten minutes long, including a version of "Dazed And Confused" that clocks in at twenty-seven minutes. Not to mention "Moby Dick", which clocks in at 20 minutes (all but 2 minutes of it being a face-meltingly awesome drum solo) on How The West Was Won. "Whole Lotta Love" often extented well past the ten-minute mark in concert as well, often as a blues/rockabilly medley.
Filk Song: "The Battle of Evermore" is perhaps their best known one here, but it's without doubt that the group were, to a man, fans of J.R.R. Tolkien.
Greatest Hits Album: They famously avoided releasing one for many years, finally breaking down in 1990 with the self-titled, Page-sequenced 4-CD box set. The ensuing two decades have seen several other compilation discs and sets.
Grief Song: "All My Love" — which was written on the death of Robert Plant's son, Karac.
He Also Did: While casual listeners may know them strictly for their rock songs, the band has done other songs (especially folk) that are so far removed from rock they cannot even be properly classified as the genre. Especially "That's The Way".
Incredibly Lame Pun: Aside from the title of "D'yer Mak'er", the cover of Led Zeppelin II manages to have an Incredibly LameVisual Pun. The story goes like this: designer David Juniper, asked to just come up with something "interesting", took a photo of Manfred "The Red Baron" von Richthofen and his Flying Circus from the First World War, filtered it and airbrushed the band members' heads onto the bodies. All good. He then put in manager Peter Grant and tour manager Richard Cole's heads. So far so good. But then, you notice there's a woman on the cover too, namely actress Glynis Johns. You may ask what she has to do with Led Zeppelin. The answer is: bugger all. She was just thrown on there because she has a similar name to Glyn Johns, who engineered the band's first album. One wonders why Juniper even bothered since Glyn's brother Andy replaced him as engineer for II.
He probably got it from hearing Jimmy referring to Glyn as "Glynis Johns". Jimmy still to this day has the impression of Glyn being a dick mainly because, being more experienced than him in the recording industry (Glyn was the first "manager" for the Rolling Stones, the producer of their first demo, the resident engineer at Olympic Studios and one of the first top-notch independent engineers in Britain; even The Beatles used him for Let It Be), he wasn't very inclined to put up with Jimmy's Control Freak tendencies. Jimmy also claims that Glyn never admitted that Jimmy's experimental techniques like backwards echo could be feasible, but that he used them in his next Rolling Stones project (Let It Bleed).
A good example of this would be the recording of "You Shook Me" as described by Jimmy:
Later, when we recorded "You Shook Me", I told the engineer, Glyn Johns, that I wanted to use backwards echo on the end. He said, "Jimmy, it can't be done". I said "Yes, it can. I've already done it." Then he began arguing, so I said, "Look, I'm the producer. I'm going to tell you what to do, and just do it." So he grudgingly did everything I told him to, and when we were finished he started refusing to push the fader up so I could hear the result. Finally, I had to scream, "Push the bloody fader up!" And lo and behold, the effect worked perfectly.
Insult Backfire: Responding to a derisive remark that only potheads listened to Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page once famously said "That's a relief, we were afraid the music would be too loud for stoned people."
Hell, the name of the band, as noted above, was chosen to make Keith Moon's insult backfire.
Actually, it wasn't an insult: "To go down like a lead zeppelin" meant that their music would go down, sink in to the audience real well.
"Bron-Y-Aur Stomp" is about a dog. That'd about it.
Well, "Battle of Evermore" is about... uh, a battle, "Gallows Pole" is about a guy getting hanged, "When the Levee Breaks" is about how much it will suck when a levee will break, "Stairway to Heaven" and "Kashmir" are about... something, "Hats Off to (Roy) Harper" is about... something else, "No Quarter" is about some merciless ominous dudes, "In My Time of Dying" is about dying...
"Gallows Pole" still manages to contain sex. Specifically Robert's character attempting to pimp out his sister to bribe the hangman after money fails to persuade him. He ultimately takes all the bribes and hangs Robert anyway. Presumably the sister told the hangman to go do something anatomically impossible.
One doubts that even Robert Plant knows what "Carouselambra" is about.
In The Style Of: "Trampled Underfoot" is a Led Zeppelin song in the style of Stevie Wonder (specifically, "Superstition"). "D'yer Maker" is a reggae song, and "The Crunge" is a funk song in the style of James Brown.
It's Pronounced Tro-PAY : There are apostrophes in "D'yer Mak'er" for a reason - it's not "Dire maker", it's "Jamaica". Jimmy says the title comes from a bad joke:
Lucky Charms Title: Technically, the name of Led Zeppelin IV is the symbols on the spine. It's just easier to say Untitled.
Technically, the fourth album simply has no title. The symbols are intended to represent each member of the band (in descending chronological order of their birth from left to right - Page, Jones, Bonham, & Plant).
Even though Led Zeppelin nowadays could be the Trope Codifier for the rock and roll band succeeding thanks to a Deal with the Devil, Page and the others were really not in the habit of flouting their occult interests as was, say, Black Sabbath. The most blatant it got was ZOSO. Still, some of the more frenetic Moral Guardians attributed Zep's rise to fame (and also the tragedies that haunted the band in the latter part of their career) to Page's supposed black magic... rather than the band's combined talent and industry connections.
Specifically, this trope really reared its head after the band split up. Page got addicted badly to drugs (suppsedly even worse than the others), Robert Plant's son died. John Bonham himself died. John Paul Jones was fine, allegedly because he refused the deal while the others went in to it. Would also count as Fridge Brilliance for why he often isn't remembered as well as the others. The dealers asked for fame and fortune, and they got it.
Page once said the lyrics are intended to mean something different to each person. Thanks a lot.
Many of Zeppelin's songs are even stranger than Stairway—that's just their most famous example. 'Dancing Days,' a song about taking a girl on a date, contains the line, I saw a lion/He was standing along/With a tadpole in a jar.
Mohs Scale of Rock and Metal Hardness: A majority of the fourth album (except for "Stairway to Heaven" and "Going to California" — which would be in the 3 and 2 regions, respectively) fall squarely into the 5 region. Conversely, the majority of Led Zeppelin 3 (except for "Out On the Tiles" and "Immigrant Song", both of which fall into the 5 region) are in the 1 region. The majority of Presence would be as high as the 6 region. "Wearing and Tearing" from Coda is probably the sole 7 track. Songs that contrast light and heavy, such as "What Is and What Should Never Be" and "Over the Hills and Far Away", would be in the 4 region - as would "Kashmir". Lastly, the entirety of In Through the Out Door would be in the 2 region. All in all, Led Zeppelin's catalogue span the gamut from 1 to 7 - showing how versatile they were.
Myspeld Rökband: They most likely popularized it. Word Of God was that they wanted to make sure Americans would pronounce Lead like the heavy metal and not like the Zeppelin that is in the front.
New Sound Album: Basically, each album had a slightly different style from the previous — but probably the most note-worthy is with Led Zeppelin III, where the band has actually experienced critical backlash for deviating from their blues-rock sound. Also, Houses of the Holy has a less raw sound from their previous albums. Then you have Presence and In Through The Out Door, which generally receive lower reviews than the rest of their catalogue.
No Celebrities Were Harmed: Dorian Red Gloria, the fabulously gay art thief from From Eroica with Love, was physically modeled after Robert Plant. (Three of his subordinates in the Eroica gang are also modeled after other Zeppelin band members.)
Non Appearing Title: "Immigrant Song", "Out on the Tiles", "Bron-Y-Aur Stomp", "Hats Off To (Roy) Harper", "Black Dog", "The Battle of Evermore", "Four Sticks" "Over the Hills and Far Away", "The Crunge", "D'yer Mak'er", "The Rover", "Trampled Under Foot", "Boogie With Stu", "Black Country Woman", "Sick Again", "Candy Store Rock", "Hots on for Nowhere", "Tea for One", "Carouselambra", "Ozone Baby" and "Wearing and Tearing".
Noodle Incident: The mudshark incident. Depending on who you ask, during the band's stay at Seattle's Edgewater Hotel in 1969, one or more members of the band and/or crew sodomized one or more groupies with one or more fish or mudsharks, living or dead, which the band had just caught while fishing off their balcony.
Frank Zappa released a song about the mudshark incident, though he attributed it to a groupie of the band Vanilla Fudge, not Led Zeppelin.
He might not be wrong. In Mick Wall's 'When Giants Walked The Earth', Vanilla Fudge drummer Carmine Appice also says the girl in question was one of his groupies.
One-Scene Wonder: Folk singer Sandy Denny duetting with Robert Plant on "The Battle of Evermore."
The Other Darrin: Jason Bonham, John's son, has filled in on drums in the handful of live performances the group has done since his death.
Painted On Pants: Plant's trademark usual attire. Little wonder that his 'girly whine' is his other trademark...
Serious Business: Allegations of plagiarism plus the occasional Fan Dumb equals not very fun indeed.
And because Jimmy Page bought Aleister Crowley's old house, there are the accusations that he worships Satan, or put backmasked Satanic messages in the music, or that the Led Zeppelin IV symbols are Satanic runes. It's the stuff of parody now, but some people do believe it.
Page did have a legitimate interest in the occult (referring to Aleister Crowley as "a misunderstood genius of the 20th century" in 1978), and actually owned an occult bookstore in the early 1970s, so such suspicions about him are perhaps understandable. However, since Crowley has nothing to do with the actual worshiping of Satan as a deity...yeah, it's pretty stupid.
Short Lived Big Impact: Led Zeppelin had a career that spanned little more than a decade, cut short by drummer John Bonham's death. Their impact on the rock genre is undeniable, and their sound was one of the precursors to Heavy Metal.
Shout Out: Most famously, the Lord of the Rings references in Ramble On and The Battle of Evermore and "Misty Mountain Hop".
Although there are a few different explanations for the Presence object, at one point the band members stated it was an artistic depiction of the 2001 monoliths.
In an example of a literalShout Out, Plant can be heard saying "Joni!" (Mitchell) on the live version of "Going to California" from How the West was Won. Fitting, considering the song was basically about how the band were big fans of Joni Mitchell.
Also, the Pan imagery from Stairway to Heaven appears to be inspired by The Wind in the Willows.
Siamese Twin Songs: "Heartbreaker" and "Living, Loving Maid (She's Just a Woman)".
Song Style Shift: "Over the Hills and Far Away" start out as an acoustic guitar folk ballad, and then it abruptly transitions into a faced-paced hard rock tune (with the acoustic guitar providing the rhythm), and then slows down into an echo-y finish.
Spinning Paper: In the band's movie The Song Remains the Same; "Led Zeppelin Robbed of $203k".
The Something Song: "The Lemon Song", "Immigrant Song", "The Rain Song", and "The Wanton Song"
Throw It In: There's many instances throughout their catalogue, to the point that you could say most of it is just the band jamming. Examples are on that page.
Two Faced Aside: Led Zeppelin's early albums featured quite a few songs where they basically copied lyrics and riffs from older blues songs. Then Jimmy Page sued rapper Schoolly D for doing the same thing with "Kashmir". Then Page and Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello recorded the same riffs for Puff Daddy's Godzilla single "Come With Me".
Urban Legend of Zelda: The alleged Satanic messages when "Stairway to Heaven" is played backwards.
The Walrus Was Paul: When Page and Plant were in concert one night, after Zeppelin broke up, someone in the audience shouted, "What does your symbol mean, Jimmy?" To which Plant replied, "Frying tonight!"
What Could Have Been: Zepp - or at at least, Peter Grant - turned down an invitation for the band to perform at the original Woodstock.
(which led to the occasional lawsuits), his occasionally embarassing lyrics (they referenced Lord of the Rings about thirty years before the movies made it cool to do that), the band inevitably allowing success to go to their heads and descending into overblown excess post-1975, and the infamous 1976 Rockumentary film The Song Remains the Same, commonly cited as one of the worst concert films ever, thanks to the sub-par performances and self-indulgent fantasy sequences. Also to be mentioned is their continued refusal to allow their songs into rhythm games, such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band.Band members:
0 reviews