by George Case
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Fab Four FAQ: Everything Left to Know About the Beatles…and More!
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Fab Four FAQ 2.0: The Beatles’ Solo Years, 1970–1980
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Lucille Ball FAQ: Everything Left to Know About America’s
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Pink Floyd FAQ: Everything Left to Know…and More!
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Three Stooges FAQ: Everything Left to Know About the Eye-Poking,
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U2 FAQ: Anything You’d Ever Want to Know About the
Biggest Band in the World…and More!
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Copyright © 2011 by George Case
Foreword © 2011 by Danny Goldberg
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, without written permission, except by a newspaper or magazine reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review.
Published in 2011 by Backbeat Books
An Imprint of Hal Leonard Corporation
7777 West Bluemound Road
Milwaukee, WI 53213
Trade Book Division Editorial Offices
33 Plymouth St., Montclair, NJ 07042
The FAQ series was conceived by Robert Rodriguez and developed with Stuart Shea.
Book design by Snow Creative Services
Printed in the United States
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Case, George, 1967–
Led Zeppelin FAQ : all that’s left to know about the greatest hard rock band of all time / George Case.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-61713-025-0 (alk. paper)
1. Led Zeppelin (Musical group)--Miscellanea. I. Title. II. Title: Led Zeppelin frequently asked questions.
ML421.L4C37 2011
782.42166092’2—dc23
2011033450
www.backbeatbooks.com
Contents
Foreword: Light and Shade
Acknowledgments
Introduction: I Never Did Quite Understand
1. The Mystery of the Quotient: Led Zeppelin Quick FAQ
2. All Will Be Revealed: The Led Zeppelin Basics
3. To You I Give This Tune: Led Zeppelin’s Ten Best, Worst, and Most Overlooked Songs
4. Back to Schoolin’: The Roots of Led Zeppelin
5. I’m Gonna Join the Band: The Formation of Led Zeppelin
6. When the Guitars Play: Led Zeppelin’s Key Musical Instruments
7. Wonders What It’s All About: Led Zeppelin Songs That Reference Real People, Places, or Events
8. Sounds Caressed My Ear: Led Zeppelin Music Trivia I
9. Sitting Round Singing Songs: Led Zeppelin Music Trivia II
10. To Build a Dream: Other Musicians Featured in Led Zeppelin’s Music
11. Are We Rolling? Led Zeppelin in the Studio
12. Secrets of the Sorcerer: Jimmy Page’s Guitar Heroism
13. They Carry News That Must Get Through: Led Zeppelin Live
14. How the West Was Won: Led Zeppelin Around the World
15. If You Can Clarify, Please Do: Led Zeppelin’s Lurid Lifestyle
16. Mama It Ain’t No Sin: Led Zeppelin and Groupies
17. Love Some Other Man Too: Led Zeppelin as Song Swipers
18. Steal Away: Other Musicians’ Borrowing from Led Zeppelin
19. Lots of People Talkin’, Few of Them Know: Led Zeppelin and the Occult
20. It’s Not as Hard as It Seems: The Art of Led Zeppelin
21. The Story Was Quite Clear: Led Zeppelin in Literature and Film
22. And It Makes Me Wonder: Led Zeppelin’s Greatest Song
23. I Got Something I Think You Oughta Know: Led Zeppelin Behind the Scenes
24. These Things Are Clear to All: Led Zeppelin and Their Peers
25. Presence: Led Zeppelin Then and Now
26. Thinking How It Used to Be: Zeppelin After Zeppelin
27. But in the Long Run: Led Zeppelin in Overview
Selected Bibliography
Foreword
Light and Shade
In the summer of 2011, as I began to write this foreward to George Case’s informative and passionate book, I could not help but reflect on why Led Zeppelin remained so alive in the minds of fans more than thirty years after they announced in December 1980 that they “could not continue as we were,” in the wake of John Bonham’s death. Judging by the number of T-shirts one sees on the skinny frames of kids who were not alive when the band was together, there is clearly something about their music and their essence that has also translated to younger generations, which is certainly not the case for all ’70s arena bands. Try getting a glimmer of recognition from a teenager about Jethro Tull or Emerson, Lake and Palmer.
I worked for Led Zeppelin for three years, starting in April 1973, primarily as their American publicist, and even then my fascination with the music and the epic scene around them was matched with an appreciation for the powerful impact I could nightly see on the faces of their fans.
I asked Andrew Loog Oldham, the legendary former producer and manager of the Rolling Stones, for his thoughts and he suggested that one of the keys to Zeppelin’s mystique was the exact timing of their ascent, which uniquely bridged the ’60s and the ’70s. Oldham used the young Jimmy Page as a session guitarist on Marianne Faithfull’s “As Tears Go By” and later employed Page to do A&R at Immediate Records. “He was very, very quiet but keenly aware of the business. We had a blues series that included John Mayall and Eric Clapton, and Jimmy’s method of producing was to have people jam and have a Grundig tape recorder in the bathroom.”
When Page created Led Zeppelin in the wake of the breakup of the Yardbirds, he had a fully developed vision about what aspects of British ’60s rock culture to emulate and which to jettison to make the new band uniquely powerful.
Page picked the absolute best musicians and left no weak spots. John Bonham’s talent towered above that of Cream’s Ginger Baker or the Jeff Beck Group’s Cozy Powell. Robert Plant had a personal artistic vision that dwarfed that of the Who’s Roger Daltrey or Cream’s Jack Bruce. It is no accident that Robert has been able to have a vibrant solo career while the other lead singers from guitar hero bands have not. (Rod Stewart emerged from the Jeff Beck Group but, lacking Plant’s rock gravitas, he quickly became pop.) And of course John Paul Jones, who had also cut his teeth playing on many of Oldham’s sessions, was the premier arranger and bass player of his generation.
Page emphasized graphics rooted in a mythical band image instead of the tired convention of ensemble band photos. He was highly attuned to the rapidly developing language of the underground and the concepts of credibility that rock audiences were establishing. FM rock radio in the United States and John Peel in the UK had made it unnecessary for bands to contort their music into three-minute pop singles in order to reach a mass audience. “Jimmy had seen the perils of the wrong k
inds of singles with the Yardbirds,” Oldham reflects. “You couldn’t have a single like ‘For Your Love’ and then profess to be a blues band that played Mose Allison and be taken seriously.” Led Zeppelin was the first unapologetic “album” group to reach the apex of commercial success. No pandering to the pop culture, no singles, no television (Jimmy hated the tinny sound of TV speakers). From the beginning, Zeppelin invested in the best equipment for concerts and recognized that their real bond with their audience was created in person.
Zeppelin liked making money and they were justly proud that their manager (and my boss), Peter Grant, changed the economic terms of the business in their favor, and they liked sex and drugs. However, when I worked for them, amidst the record-breaking grosses, the dark glamour, and the wild consumption, I was always impressed with how seriously the band took its art. John Bonham got to every arena earlier than the others to do his own sound check. Jimmy and Robert agonized over the smallest mistakes, whether made by their crew or by themselves.
Zeppelin retained just enough hippie idealism to cast a wider psychological net than the “heavy metal” they inspired. (Page complained to me when critics lumped Zeppelin in with other heavy bands. “Don’t they hear the light and shade?”) Even bands whose first albums came out just a few years later, such as Aerosmith and Kiss, were oblivious to the ’60s idea of “credibility.” It is impossible to imagine Steven Tyler or Gene Simmons doing an album with Allison Krauss or a documentary about guitars and equally implausible to think of Robert Plant or Jimmy Page hosting American Idol or a reality show.
My friend Peter Newman, now a New York real estate executive, is a typical Zeppelin freak who was in tenth grade when Bonham died. “The first album I owned was Led Zeppelin IV, which I got when I was nine. Later, when I saw The Song Remains the Same, I couldn’t believe what I was watching. I was a drummer and I couldn’t figure out how to replicate what Bonham played. I must have listened to that live album a thousand times.” Now in his forties, Newman still brims with emotion when he talks about the band “Nothing else has stayed with me they way they do.”
Ultimately, I think there is some alchemy between the members of the band that made them distinct from anything they did in other configurations—and the intensity of the fans. I remember standing with Peter Grant in Tampa Stadium, which held 56,800 fans who helped Zeppelin break the Beatles’ record for attendance at a single-artist show. Pointing to cars zooming by on an adjacent highway he said, “In here people are having this great time, and out there they don’t have any idea.” A secret held by millions of people. Lucky us.
Danny Goldberg
Acknowledgments
In the over two years it has taken to research, write, edit, and revise Led Zeppelin FAQ, I have made contact with a range of people who have helped me check facts, track down images, offer opinions or insights, confirm (or refute) rumors, and generally assist in digging into the ever-challenging mysteries of Led Zeppelin. Specific responses from some individuals are referred to in the main text, others took questions and fulfilled requests, the answers to which are scattered throughout the book, and still more at least had the time to reply with civility when queried. My gratitude goes out to:
Roger Berlin, Richard Cole, Thea Dunn, Roger Farbey, Danny Goldberg, Ross Halfin, Roy Harper, Steve A. Jones for his Zeppelin scholarship, Trevor Lee, Clare Morris, Ron Nevison, Joe Petagno for his recollections of creating the Swan Song logo, Sam Rapallo, Marcus Reeves for thoughts on African Americans’ interest in Led Zep, Duane Roy for donating bootlegs and artwork, Evan Schechter for generous info on everything from Aleister to ZoSo, John Shap for reflections on classic rock radio, Len Ward for memorabilia and memories, John Watson, Beth Wilks for remembering the SCTV “Stairway” parody, and John Wright.
A whole lotta love goes out to Bernadette Malavarca, Rob Rodriguez, Polly Watson, and the Backbeat Books team, for getting me there.
And to my captive audience of hardcore Zep-heads Tonya, Genevieve, and Olivia, for everything: “If the sun refuse to shine, I would still be loving you.”
Introduction
I Never Did Quite Understand
It would be both easy and, on the surface, accurate to begin by stating that no artists in rock music have been the subject of as much hearsay, rumor, and conjecture as Led Zeppelin. Most modern public references to the foursome make seemingly obligatory allusions to their larger-than-life history of legendary albums, legendary concerts, legendary offstage proclivities, and the legendary swirl of exaggeration, suspicion, and superstition that trailed in their wake. A critical, oft-repeated tale from their annals tells of guitarist Jimmy Page demanding that publicity photographs of Led Zeppelin convey a sense of “power, mystery, and the hammer of the gods.” This description has been the convenient cue for a majority of Led Zeppelin’s journalistic and popular citations ever since.
Yet any researcher today can sift through this mystery to avail him- or herself of dozens of Led Zeppelin books, numerous official and unofficial sound and video recordings of Led Zeppelin, and thousands of Led Zeppelin newspaper and magazine articles, in addition to the very contemporary resources of Wikipedia, YouTube, and other online indices. Indeed, a growing body of latter-day collectors, archivists, and authors have done scrupulous jobs of investigating relevant primary sources (interviews, press releases, concert bills, musicological analyses, et cetera) to lay bare anecdotes or technical secrets that would have been revelations (not always welcome) during the group’s prime. Really, a more honest introduction must ask, What riddles about Led Zeppelin haven’t been solved? Is there anything we don’t know about one of the most successful, celebrated, and documented rock ’n’ roll bands of all time?
Yes, in fact. The problem is that Led Zeppelin’s career as a permanent legend has lasted over twice as long as the act’s career as a regularly performing and recording ensemble. Over this posthumous time—from 1981 to the present—many of the outfit’s achievements have become enshrined as pop music’s equivalent of the Battle of Britain, the conquest of America, or the discovery of fire: events so self-evidently momentous, memorable, or influential that their original circumstances have been left unexamined. What Led Zeppelin did in the studio, on the stage, or in private has been covered so thoroughly, and covered and re-coverd again, that critics, fans, and curious listeners have been denied a more realistic perspective on what specifically happened and why audiences responded as they did. The better topic to address, then, might not be Frequently but Infrequently Asked Questions, the musical, personal, and cultural issues around the quartet that are rarely raised, rarely resolved, or which are rarely considered at all.
Such is the mythology spun around the biggest rock names of the 1960s and 1970s—hagiographic accounts of fateful beginnings under the spell of Chuck Berry or Elvis Presley, of historic tallies of Top Tens or number ones, of tragic dissolutions under the weight of fame, self-indulgence, and personal acrimony—that the confused, coincidental, and very hurried narratives of their professional lives are often forgotten. Led Zeppelin’s story is among many where image and reality have only occasionally overlapped. Thirty, forty, or fifty years on, the epic sagas of uniquely compatible players brought together by destiny to create a timeless series of million-selling records or play an epochal run of concerts seem etched in stone, but the day-to-day truths underlying these sagas were far more prosaic. In 1969 or 1975, rock stars like the members of Led Zeppelin were people scarcely past school age, rarely with formal musical training, struggling to survive in a fickle commercial medium where hard work and raw talent alone could not guarantee artistic or economic viability. They were in constant competition with older and newer acts of widely varying styles, were often overlooked by the day’s arbiters of cool, and were affected as much by the routine demands of their industry as by any musical inspiration or spiritual epiphany. Hindsight might portray their fame as foreordained, but more probing study will unearth a different and in many ways more illuminating trajectory.<
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Led Zeppelin FAQ is not an attempt to debunk or disparage the band. It does sort out the basic information on Led Zeppelin any novice follower will want to know, highlight the most important aspects of the band members’ lives and work, and catalogue as many confirmed details and bits of trivia and arcana as are possible to track down. However, I have also tried to bring in fresh insights and ideas to familiar controversies, shake up a few fallacies, and to remind readers of the fundamental roles celebrity and commerce have played in creating—and sometimes distorting—the standard Led Zeppelin biography. Asserting from the outset that Led Zeppelin were a great rock group who more than earned their acclaim, I believe both the reputation of the act and the sentiments of its fans are secure enough to withstand the scrutiny to which they will be subject herein: frequently asked questions, infrequently asked questions, and questions never dared until now.
1
The Mystery of the Quotient
Led Zeppelin Quick FAQ
Led Zeppelin’s total record sales: At least 250 million and possibly up to 300 million copies in all formats worldwide.
Backward messages on “Stairway to Heaven”: There aren’t any. If persuaded of such beforehand, listeners might pick out intelligible language when the music is played in reverse, but nothing the band ever deliberately put on the recording.
Jimmy Page, Satanist: Page was not. He was interested in alternative religions that were sometimes categorized under “the occult,” but he did not practice anything that meets the usual criteria of devil worship.
Led Zeppelin’s music and mystique have entranced listeners for more than forty years.