Led Zeppelin FAQ: All That's Left to Know About the Greatest Hard Rock Band of All Time (Faq Series)

by George Case

  Aerosmith: “Train Kept A-Rollin’”

  Justly credited to songwriters “Tiny” Bradshaw, Lois Mann, and Howard Kay, the Aerosmith version (from 1974’s Get Your Wings) is nonetheless heavily indebted to that played by the Yardbirds, as heard on their 1965 record Having a Rave-Up and on their US tours. The members of Aerosmith were all bowled over by the Yardbirds and were equally impressed by the first American Led Zeppelin concerts of 1969, which also featured a forceful cover of the song. In London in 1990, Jimmy Page accompanied Aerosmith in some onstage jams of “Train Kept A-Rollin’.” Aerosmith leaders Steve Tyler and Joe Perry have struck up personal relationships with Page, and Aerosmith’s sound and songwriting, particularly during their 1970s heyday, was highly shaped by Led Zeppelin. “We learned a lot [from Zeppelin] in terms of playing big places with the echo,” Perry has said. “And they knew how that kind of music, if you played it a certain way with certain rhythms, was going to work better.” Other Aerosmith tunes with a strong Zeppelin flavor include “Nobody’s Fault” and “Round and Round.”

  Rush: “Working Man”

  The 1974 debut album by this great Canadian power trio, then with original drummer John Rutsey, first gained notice with its aural resemblance to Led Zeppelin. “Working Man,” boasting singer-bassist Geddy Lee’s piercing vocals and guitarist Alex Lifeson’s fat guitar tone, certainly recalls long Zeppelin improvisations like “How Many More Times” and “The Lemon Song,” while other Rush tracks from the LP, such as “In the Mood” and “Finding My Way,” also harked back to the loose blues workouts of Led Zeppelin or Led Zeppelin II. “Jimmy Page was my favorite guitarist,” Lifeson has looked back. “I wanted to look like him and play like him. And judging from our first record, you can see the influence there.”

  Rush and Billy Squier were among many artists clearly influenced by the Led Zeppelin sound.

  Author’s Collection

  The Cult: “Lil’ Devil”

  Ian Astbury and Billy Duffy, singer and guitarist of this group, always acknowledged their love of Led Zeppelin, and during their peak years of the late 1980s and early 1990s the influence was conspicuous. “Lil’ Devil,” from 1987’s Electric, is based on a guitar line loosely adapted from “Heartbreaker.” Later their “Edie (Ciao Baby),” off Sonic Temple in 1989, alluded to “an angel with a broken wing,” quoted from a Jimmy Page interview of the 1970s as well as a chapter title in Hammer of the Gods.

  The Mission (UK): “Black Mountain Mist”

  Another British act from the period of the Cult, who also blended the droning aura of goth music with the traditional elements of hard rock, the Mission too were noted Zeppelin acolytes. “Black Mountain Mist” does not so much copy any Zeppelin music as borrow its title from two tracks, “Black Mountain Side” and “Misty Mountain Hop.” The Mission’s hewing to the Led Zeppelin style on Children, the 1988 album on which this was featured, may be forgiven: The record was produced by John Paul Jones.

  Timeline

  1976

  March 31: Presence released

  April 5: Billionaire Howard Hughes dies, age 70.

  April 5: James Callaghan replaces Harold Wilson as British prime minister.

  June 19: Soweto Uprising, South Africa.

  July 4: US Bicentennial celebrations.

  August: Montreal Olympics.

  September–October: The Song Remains the Same album and movie released.

  September 18: Chinese premier Mao Tse-tung dies, age 82.

  November 2: Jimmy Carter defeats Gerald Ford in US presidential election.

  Movies: Taxi Driver; Rocky.

  Music: Boston, Boston; Kiss, Destroyer; Steve Miller Band, Fly like an Eagle; Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, Live Bullet; Blue öyster Cult, Agents of Fortune; Eagles, Hotel California; Tom Waits, Small Change; the Ramones, The Ramones; Bob Marley and the Wailers, Live!; Fleetwood Mac, “Rhiannon”; Roxy Music, “Love Is the Drug”; Hot Chocolate, “You Sexy Thing”; Elton John and Kiki Dee, “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart.”

  19

  Lots of People Talkin’, Few of Them Know

  Led Zeppelin and the Occult

  Devil Mocks Their Every Step: The Soul-Selling Legend

  Probably the most enduring—and most fantastic—legend pertaining to the group is the one that claims Jimmy Page made a pact with Satan to ensure his band’s popularity. Newcomers Robert Plant and John Bonham went along with the deal, goes the story, but the more seasoned and savvier John Paul Jones refused, and thereby was spared the personal misfortunes and fatalities that befell the three signatories.

  This is a great yarn that has added immensely to Led Zeppelin’s mystique, but it is on its face ridiculous. “We never made a pact with the Devil,” an exasperated Plant said in a post-Zeppelin interview. “The only deal I think we ever made was with some of the girls’ high schools in the San Fernando Valley.” The deadpan Jones, for his part, confirmed he’d backed out of the diabolical contract: “I’d run out of ink or blood or something. My old dad said, ‘Never sign anything without first talking to a lawyer.’” Page’s comments on Zeppelin’s alleged Satanism have ranged from the oblique to the annoyed. “I don’t want to get into too many backlashes from Christian fundamentalist groups,” the guitarist demurred around the time of his 1994 reunion with Plant. “I’ve given those people too much mileage already.” Stephen Davis’s Hammer of the Gods repeated the tale as heard by his various sources (Page girlfriend Pamela Miller and French promo man Benoit Gautier are quoted), and the soul-selling stigma has become a permanent part of the Led Zeppelin biography.

  Why the story should be attached to the band is the more relevant issue. Part of the countercultural movement of the 1960s involved the exploration of non-Western religious traditions, including Buddhism and Hinduism, and the rediscovery of pagan or animist belief systems that had been nearly obliterated by the prevailing Judeo-Christian orthodoxies of several centuries. At the fringes of this proto–New Age philosophy were the truly occult (from the Latin for “covered” or “hidden”) practices that had long been actively suppressed by conventional authority but which were now ripe for revival: witchcraft, astrology, crystals, the I Ching, fertility cults, and other “alternative” spiritualities. Young, curious, and rendered impressionable by psychedelic drugs, the hippies and their various offshoots took to the occult in large numbers. The mass media reflected the changes, in books and films like Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, Chariots of the Gods, and newly fashionable authors like H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, and J. R. R. Tolkien. UFOs, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, tarot cards, Ouija boards, and similar subjects were embraced by a wide public. A Time magazine cover story of June 1972 alerted readers to “The Occult Revival” sweeping across America.

  Coinciding with this was the primacy of rock music. Inevitably, these two big interests of a generation would overlap, whether it was the Rolling Stones singing “Sympathy for the Devil” (1968) following their previous album Their Satanic Majesties Request, or Black Sabbath singing “Black Sabbath” on their eponymous debut record (1970), in addition to the gender-bending shock rock of Alice Cooper and David Bowie, and the sacrificial stage shows of long-forgotten acts like Black Widow, which featured numbers titled “Come to the Sabbat” and “Conjuration.” In the years before MTV, home video, and the Internet, there was far more speculation than fact surrounding even the most successful performers, since the sheer breadth of the market for rock ’n’ roll permitted healthy sales of records and tickets with a minimum of authorized publicity; rock stars lived lives of such unrivaled wealth and mystery that almost anything could be credibly said of them. Was Paul McCartney really dead? Did Bob Dylan really pose in drag on the cover of his Bringing It All Back Home? Did Frank Zappa and Alice Cooper really have an onstage “gross-out” contest? Did Peter, Paul and Mary’s “Puff the Magic Dragon” really encourage pot smoking? Did Donovan’s “Mellow Yellow” really refer to the hallucinogenic properties of smoked banana peels? Did Led Zeppeli
n make a bargain with the devil? Who could authoritatively deny it?

  The selling of one’s soul in exchange for worldly gain is an ancient myth. The Gospel of Luke tells of Christ tempted by Satan during his forty days of wandering in the wilderness: “And the devil said unto him, All this power I will give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will give it. If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine” (Luke 4: 6-7). English playwright Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus (1604) was based on a German tract, The History of the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Doctor John Faustus, a purportedly true account of a sixteenth-century personage who experimented in magic and sorcery. Marlowe’s Faust sells his soul to the devil but is ultimately dragged off to hell after partaking of the forbidden knowledge and experience granted to him by Lucifer’s servant Mephistopheles. The German account was also the basis for several adaptations, among them Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s 1806 play and Charles-François Gounod’s 1859 opera. Several medieval narratives concern magicians who unlocked dangerous secrets from rare books known as grimoires, including a student of Cornelius Agrippa who was killed by a demon he had inadvertently summoned after reciting the text of one such volume. English occultist MacGregor Mathers (1854–1918) wrote of a contemporary, Antony of Prague, who had given up his soul for forty years’ worth of supernatural powers, only to be found murdered. Stephen Vincent Benét’s famous short story “The Devil and Daniel Webster” (1937) situated the Faustian scenario in pioneer America. Nineteenth-century violin virtuoso Niccolò Paganini was said to have sold his soul for musical proficiency (his technique was called “Mephistophelean” and “bewitching”), and the same accusations circulated around twentieth-century bluesman Robert Johnson. Schoolyard whispers insisted the theatrical hard rockers Kiss picked a band name that was an acronym for Knights In Satan’s Service, and Black Sabbath’s 1976 compilation album was titled We Sold Our Soul for Rock ’n’ Roll.

  The first oral reports of Led Zeppelin’s devilish transaction probably surfaced sometime in the 1970s but were so transparently nonsensical they were not taken up in any other medium. They would have been rooted in the basic facts of the group’s fame and riches; leader Page’s guarded admissions of his interest in magic and the unknown; the obscure symbolism on several of their album covers; their unashamed (if not then publicized) enjoyment of sexual and chemical indulgences while on tour; and eventually the death and injuries that struck Plant’s family and the band’s dissolution following John Bonham’s death. Few have noticed the logical inconsistency in the premise: If John Paul Jones refused to sell his soul, how come he still got rich and famous? Wouldn’t Mephistopheles have requested a more amenable bass player? Printed references to the Zeppelin “curse” began to crop up in the more sensational rock publications after 1975 and especially after the tragically curtailed 1977 American tour. Combine these with the general atmosphere of innuendo, supposition, and superstition that affected both the pop music industry and the pop culture of the decade, and it would only require the fantasizing aloud of a single disc jockey, journalist, or hanger-on to ripple into the urban legend remembered today. Contemporary discussion of the Satanic pact rumor, indeed, cites it as an example of the credulity of rock fans rather than the debauchery of rock stars.

  Prayer Won’t Do You No Good: The Zeppelin Curse

  The reports of a jinx on Led Zeppelin, as suggested by the 1975 car accident that severely injured Robert Plant and his wife, the 1977 death by viral infection of Plant’s young son, and the 1980 death of John Bonham, were never more than cheap headlines for British tabloid newspapers and their American equivalents in the rock press. “The comments about it at the time all connected it to Jimmy’s dalliances and preoccupations with the dark side and whatever,” Plant observed. “I’ve never shared those with him and I don’t really know anything about it.” While the Presence album (with the regretful “Nobody’s Fault but Mine,” “For Your Life,” and “Tea for One”) conveyed a theme of unease, and though Plant was said to be unwilling to sing “In My Time of Dying” or, following the collapse of a Californian beachside residence, “The Ocean,” much more of the bad luck was played up by the press. The London Evening News ran a story titled “Zeppelin’s ‘Black Magic’ Mystery” shortly after Bonham died, while the English trade paper New Musical Express featured “Bonzo’s Last Bash.” Eventually rock magazine covers featured blurbs like “Led Zeppelin: The Evil Curse That Haunts Them” and “Jimmy Page: Will Black Magic Kill Him?” Even the thoughtful commentator Gary Herman in his 1982 Rock ’n’ Roll Babylon wrote that “it is certainly true that Led Zeppelin as a group have had a peculiarly tragic record of untimely death and severe accident associated with themselves and their entourage.”

  Is this true? Consider first the confirmed fatalities, misadventures, arrests, and assaults associated with Led Zeppelin:

  • John Bonham: Died of a pulmonary edema following a drinking binge at Jimmy Page’s house, 1980.

  • Phillip Hale: A young photographer friend of Jimmy Page died in Page’s Sussex home in October 1979. An inquest attributed the death to an accidental overdose.

  • Sandy Denny: Guest vocalist on “The Battle of Evermore” died after a domestic fall, 1978.

  • Karac Plant: Died of a respiratory virus in 1977, age five.

  • Jim Matzorkis: Employee of promoter Bill Graham, severely beaten by John Bonham, Peter Grant, Richard Cole, and Zeppelin security man John Bindon backstage at an Oakland concert, 1977. Bonham, Grant, Cole, and Bindon were arrested and charged with assault.

  • Stanley Blair: Concertgoer, injured in a melee outside Cincinnati’s Riverfront Coliseum, 1977; one fan died in this same episode, although whether or not it was Blair himself is unknown.

  • Keith Harwood: Engineer on several Zeppelin albums, killed in an auto accident in 1976.

  • Robert Plant, Maureen Plant: Severely injured in car crash on the Greek island of Rhodes, 1975.

  • Unnamed Starship stewardess: Assaulted by John Bonham, 1975.

  • Michelle Myer: Los Angeles PR agent, assaulted by John Bonham, 1975.

  • Jimmy Page: Injured his left ring finger in a train door in Britain preceding the US tour, 1975.

  • Danny Markus: Promo man, had eyeglasses smashed by John Bonham, 1973.

  • Les Harvey: Guitarist with Stone the Crows, managed by Peter Grant, electrocuted and died onstage, 1972.

  • Mac Nelson: Student at Vancouver’s Simon Fraser University, recording a Zeppelin concert for the Scientific Pollution and Environmental Control Society, assaulted by the band’s road crew, August 1971.

  • Joe Baldwin: Father of John Paul Jones, died suddenly during a Zeppelin tour, August 1970.

  • Jason Bonham: Slightly injured in a childhood accident, necessitating his father’s temporary departure from a US tour, 1969.

  • Ellen Sander: Journalist, assaulted by unnamed band members, 1969.

  • Assorted concert attendees, venue staff, bystanders, and hangers-on: Injured or assaulted in the vicinity of individual band members, Led Zeppelin live appearances, and/or the group’s management and security team, 1969–80.

  This is a serious tally of trouble that lends credence to the curse theory—until it is compared to the history of other groups and soloists from the same era. The Beatles lost their manager Brian Epstein to a drug overdose in 1967; chief roadie Mal Evans was killed in a Los Angeles police shootout in 1976; leader John Lennon was gunned down by a deranged fan in 1980 at just forty years of age; and lead guitarist George Harrison succumbed to cancer in 2001 at age fifty-eight, following another fan attack he had sustained the previous year. The Rolling Stones, who also were linked to occult specialists including Kenneth Anger and artist Donald Cammell, had their founder Brian Jones drown in his swimming pool in 1969; played their disastrous Altamont concert the same year in which one fan was murdered by Hells Angels; and suffered several years through Keith Richards’ crippling heroin addic
tion, while numerous associates, wives, and girlfriends themselves fell victim to drug dependency. The Who have lost half their original lineup to drug fatality—drummer Keith Moon in 1978 and bassist John Entwistle in 2002—and themselves played a Cincinnati concert in 1979 where no fewer than eleven punters were trampled to death. After enduring the unwanted interest of the Charles Manson family, the Beach Boys have been affected by producer Brian Wilson’s drug-induced mental illness and the premature deaths of his two brothers Dennis (drowning, 1983) and Carl (cancer, 1998). Pete Ham and Tom Evans, the two principal members of the chart-topping Badfinger, committed suicide in 1975 and 1983, respectively. Of more recent vintage, Def Leppard drummer Rick Allen’s left arm was amputated after Allen’s 1984 car crash, while the band’s guitarist Steve Clark died of an overdose in 1991. Nor were members of Led Zeppelin the only rockers to have been shattered by the death of a child: Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Joe Walsh, Rush drummer Neil Peart, and Mötley Crüe singer Vince Neil have all experienced similar heartbreak. There are no reputed “curses” around any of these performers, leading to a conclusion that contentions of a Led Zeppelin curse are what Jimmy Page condemned as “a horrible, tasteless thing to say.”

  Heed the Master’s Call: Was Jimmy Page a Satanist?

  Someone once said that if you are a celebrity and want to be known as an art lover, be seen once at a gallery; if you are a celebrity and want a reputation as a fitness buff, be seen once jogging. Jimmy Page has been subject to the same typecasting. While he has been publicly associated with a variety of figures prominent in the field of the occult—underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger, Beat novelist William Burroughs, and especially Aleister Crowley—in retrospect his rumored affiliations and activities seem less and less central to his life and career. “I mean, asking me about black magic and Aleister Crowley and whatnot… Give me a break,” he said in 1991. “It’s all so stupid. I’d rather talk about the music, you know?” “It’s unfortunate that my studies of mysticism and Eastern and Western traditions of magick and tantricism have all come under the umbrella of Crowley,” he added in 2003. “Yeah, sure, I read a lot of Crowley and I was fascinated by his techniques and ideas. But I was reading across the board…. It wasn’t unusual [in the 1960s] to be interested in comparative religions and magic. And that’s it.” In 2007 he went further, explaining, “There’s no point in saying more about it, because the more you discuss it, the more eccentric you appear to be.” What he first spoke about with some enthusiasm in the early years of Led Zeppelin’s ascendancy he later took pains to downplay, in the face of fan gossip and tabloid sensationalism.