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

by George Case

  Janis Joplin

  The tragic blues mistress shared billing at festivals in Atlanta and Dallas with Led Zeppelin in the summer of 1969, when she was the bigger name. Robert Plant later told US television interviewer Charlie Rose of a backstage meeting with Pearl, “She was just kind and knew I was quite naïve,” adding that she gave him tips on vocal maintenance and control. Many listeners have commented on how Plant’s singing style was reminiscent of Joplin’s, in his stream-of-consciousness flows of blues expressions and inflections sourced from a scattering of older tunes. If he did not directly copy her, audiences would have been prepared for his work on Led Zeppelin and Led Zeppelin II by hearing Joplin’s performances on Cheap Thrills and I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama!.

  Joni Mitchell

  “Find a queen without a king / They say she plays guitar, and cries, and sings”—the lyric from Zeppelin’s “Going to California” honored the ethereal Canadian singer-songwriter who was considered second only to Bob Dylan as rock’s most personal and profound soloist. Both Jimmy Page and Robert Plant were big fans of Mitchell’s, Page saying her music “brings tears to my eyes,” and confiding to Richard Cole, “My dream is to find a young Joni Mitchell lookalike—thin, angular features, long blond hair….” Led Zeppelin often played their take on Mitchell’s triumphant “Woodstock” in their onstage jams of 1975. Her adoption of quirky alternate acoustic guitar tunings echoed and encouraged Page’s. Speaking of Los Angeles’s Laurel Canyon neighborhood, where Mitchell presided with partner Graham Nash and many other sensitive folk artists, Plant said, “The canyon scene was a continuation of the artistic will to continue some sort of aesthetic and respectable role for pop music, so that there was an intention beyond ‘Rock-a-Hula Baby.’” He explained “Going to California” thusly: “When you’re in love with Joni Mitchell you’ve really go to write about it now and again.” Page and Plant did manage to meet Mitchell during the 1970s Zeppelin years, but only for small talk.

  Neil Young

  Another Canadian legend whose music alone and with Buffalo Springfield influenced Led Zeppelin’s quieter moments, the singer sometimes known as Bernard Shakey was, with compatriot Joni Mitchell, an example of a mellow, introspective composer for Page and Plant to follow. “Going to California,” Led Zeppelin III’s “Friends” and “That’s the Way,” and Physical Graffiti’s “Down by the Seaside” all hark back to Young’s vibe from his eponymous debut, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, and After the Gold Rush. Led Zeppelin quoted his tunes “Cinnamon Girl,” “Cowgirl in the Sand,” and “Down by the River” in concert, as well as the Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth.” Young, for his part, has praised Jimmy Page as one of his favorite guitarists, and mentioned him in his 1995 song “Downtown,” from his Mirror Ball album. Young was also inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the surviving members of Led Zeppelin in 1995, participating in an all-star jam on “When the Levee Breaks” with Page, Plant, and John Paul Jones.

  The Doors

  Though their trippy keyboards and Jim Morrison’s poetic ramblings were representative of the 1960s “acid rock” genre, the dark and sometimes dangerous mood of the Doors was a predecessor of the hard rock developed by Led Zeppelin. Zeppelin and the Doors were on the same bill at the Seattle Pop Festival in July 1969 (Richard Cole perpetrated the Shark Incident back at the hotel), where Morrison’s onstage behavior was subdued following his Miami arrest for indecent exposure. The Doors were much the better-known group in 1969, but they were already on a decline as their singer sank further into alcoholism and an alienation from the experience of rock stardom; Zeppelin’s brutal blasts of riffs and blues themes was an exciting contrast to the Doors’ vague “happenings.” Nevertheless, Morrison

  Led Zeppelin were among many classic artists who emerged at the height of the rock era in the 1960s and ’70s.

  Courtesy of Robert Rodriguez

  at his best boasted a powerful stage presence that was the equal of Robert Plant’s, and the Doors’ long, mesmeric performances paved the way for Led Zeppelin’s. On the 1995 Jimmy Page and Robert Plant tour, the Doors classic “Break On Through” was played in a medley with other numbers.

  Alice Cooper

  Led Zeppelin played some important early US dates at the Whisky a Go Go club in Los Angeles in 1969, sharing the bill with this up-and-coming band, whose name was then that of the whole group rather than just the creepy lead singer. By the mid-1970s it was the theatrical “shock rock” of Alice Cooper that was getting more publicity in America, but that was the way Led Zeppelin liked it. The grotesqueries of Cooper’s stage act (boa constrictors, guillotines, dead baby dolls, et cetera) made the band one of the very few to draw criticism from Zeppelin’s players. Robert Plant said to New Musical Express in 1973, “Alice Cooper’s weirdnesses must really make these kids feel violent…. So you put things like that in front of them, and I don’t think it’s right.” Jimmy Page told William S. Burroughs in 1975, “Our crowds, the people that come to see us, are very orderly. It’s not the sort of Alice Cooper style, where you actually try to get them into a state where they’ve got to go like that, so that you can get reports of this, that, and the other.”

  Pentangle

  Along with comparable acts like Fairport Convention and the Incredible String Band, this group, with its Elizabethan English folk, was a major, if seldom recognized, influence on Led Zeppelin. Founded by guitarists John Renbourn and Bert Jansch—both acoustic heroes for Jimmy Page—the band boasted a complex blend of baroque instrumental styles and a rock sensibility that inspired Zeppelin’s pastoral sounds of “Black Mountain Side,” “Going to California,” “The Battle of Evermore” (sung with Sandy Denny of Fairport Convention), “Over the Hills and Far Away,” “Bron-yr-Aur,” and “Stairway to Heaven.” If not for the Celtic, quasi-Renaissance musical example set by the British folk movement of the 1960s, Led Zeppelin would have lacked the treed, idyllic dimension that stood in such contrast to the heavy electric blues at which they more obviously excelled. In 1979 Zeppelin did Fairport Convention the favor of having them open one of their Knebworth shows, and Page’s 1980s work with his friend Roy Harper also has a strong English folk flavor.

  Black Sabbath

  The sloppy, sleazy Rolling Stones to Led Zeppelin’s polished and positive Beatles, Sabbath are sometimes considered the only real rivals for Zeppelin’s title of heavy metal heavyweights. Sharing the same four-piece lineup and the same emphasis on fat electric guitar riffs and thudding drums, both groups are claimed as favorites by many listeners today; in the early 1970s Black Sabbath was close behind Led Zeppelin as an American concert attraction and in international record sales. Indeed, fans who couldn’t get enough of Led Zeppelin, II, III, and IV happily turned to Black Sabbath, Paranoid, Master of Reality, Vol 4, and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath for even harder rock and even more overt references to drugs and the occult. Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi was as accomplished an electric soloist as Jimmy Page, and his dissonant guitar lines on “Black Sabbath,” “Iron Man,” “War Pigs,” “Sweet Leaf,” “Snowblind,” and other cuts are as lethal as Page’s on “Dazed and Confused,” “Communication Breakdown,” “Whole Lotta Love,” “Heartbreaker,” “Immigrant Song,” “Black Dog,” and “Rock and Roll.”

  Black Sabbath’s personnel all came from around Birmingham, England, and had known John Bonham and Robert Plant as local hopefuls like themselves. “I grew up with John, and me and him had traded licks and played together since we were fifteen,” said Sabbath drummer Bill Ward. Bonham was best man at Tony Iommi’s wedding and invested in a short-lived Birmingham record shop with Iommi and Sabbath singer Ozzy Osbourne. There’s little doubt that Black Sabbath’s acquisition by the US Warner Brothers label was an attempt to capitalize on the previous success of Led Zeppelin, by appealing to the young masses of America with the same heavy blues. Rumors of a Los Angeles jam between Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath around 1972 have tantalized many fans, and a smiling, middle-aged Iommi and Pag
e have been photographed together in the 2000s as two exemplars of British guitar heroics.

  But while Bonham, for one, appreciated Ward’s playing on Sabbath’s “Supernaut” and envied Ward’s use of two bass drums, the rest of Led Zeppelin had less respect for the foursome. Zeppelin were doing dramatic distorted boogie before them, and soon enough branched out into folk, funk, and raga departures, whereas Sabbath have little in their repertoire to compare with “Kashmir,” “Bron-y-Aur Stomp,” “The Battle of Evermore,” “Trampled Underfoot,” or “D’yer Mak’er.” In interviews of the 1970s Robert Plant dismissed “groups in England who still rely on riff after riff after riff…. Some audiences can shake and bang their heads on the stage to riffs all night long, but subtlety is an art that must be mastered if you’re to be remembered.” After Osbourne’s firing in 1979, Sabbath soldiered on well past Zeppelin’s own demise, but thereby made their own formula more apparent—riff after riff after riff. Black Sabbath’s music of 1970 to 1975 still stands as a credible complement to Led Zeppelin’s and is in some respects more compelling, but since then their legacy has fallen farther and farther behind.

  Deep Purple

  Along with Black Sabbath the next best thing to Zeppelin as the leading British hard rockers of the 1970s, Deep Purple compare well with Zeppelin for instrumental and vocal wallop, but less favorably as a consistent band. Purple’s great records In Rock, Machine Head, and Made in Japan are nearly as influential as Led Zeppelin’s in defining the heavy metal state of the art, and arguably more so in inspiring later generations of electric guitar virtuosi in the “neoclassical” mold. A run of such FM staples as “Lazy,” “Burn,” “Highway Star,” “Space Truckin’,” and the monolithic “Smoke on the Water” are close rivals to “Stairway to Heaven” and “Whole Lotta Love” in radio rotation. Like Jimmy Page, guitarist Ritchie Blackmore had earlier done time with Neil Christian and the Crusaders and the London session scene, and unlike Page he was known for the razor-sharp precision of his soloing. Onetime Purple singer David Coverdale later joined forces with Page for a coolly received 1993 album.

  Deep Purple also rented the Starship for their US concert tours, but their internal differences and fluctuating membership kept them from reaching Zeppelin’s financial—and ultimately artistic—heights. The group’s first records, released in 1968, actually predated those of Led Zeppelin, though they had yet to hit upon a durable lineup or musical direction. “If Purple had stayed together,” recalled keyboardist Jon Lord, “we might have achieved the same mid-seventies status that they did. They embraced the arena rock ’n’ roll show with open arms, whereas we didn’t embrace it quite so completely.” A much-modified version of Deep Purple is still performing, with American pro Steve Morse filling Blackmore’s shoes, and Blackmore now plays in an unusual medieval act, Blackmore’s Night, that takes the Celtic motif farther than Zeppelin ever did.

  Pink Floyd

  The champion psychedelic artists of the rock era, Floyd released their first records before Led Zeppelin (in 1967) and were still drawing huge crowds decades after Zeppelin’s 1980 disbandment. Unlike Black Sabbath or Deep Purple, Pink Floyd had staked out different turf than heavy metal, and so offered a dreamy, druggy contrast to the electric blues and wooden folk of Zeppelin. When the later band exploded out of the gate in 1969, Floyd were already suffering from the LSD-driven mental breakdown of founder and guitarist Syd Barrett, replaced by David Gilmour by the time of the albums A Saucerful of Secrets and Ummagumma, and were seeking to establish a new sound. Appearing alongside Zeppelin at 1970’s Bath Festival, drummer Nick Mason recalled that the complex studio instrumentation of Atom Heart Mother was to be recreated onstage, in “an attempt to keep up with the John Paul Joneses.” Pink Floyd became a significant US concert attraction after their 1973 classic Dark Side of the Moon, a record whose worldwide sales exceed those of Led Zeppelin IV, and David Gilmour played along with John Bonham and John Paul Jones in Paul McCartney’s Rockestra shows of 1979. With both Zeppelin and Floyd disparaged as dinosaur acts by punk rockers and their journalistic boosters in the late 1970s, it was ironic that the huge popular demand for In Through the Out Door and The Wall were credited with saving a moribund record industry. The latter-day Floyd has replaced departed bassist Roger Waters with Guy Pratt, a versatile session player who also performed as part of the David Coverdale–Jimmy Page band in 1993.

  David Bowie

  As studio musicians, both Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones worked on songs for the struggling David Jones in the 1960s, and Page renewed his acquaintance with the rechristened David Bowie in the 1970s. It was Bowie whom Page outbid to buy his sumptuous Tower House in 1974, by which time Ziggy Stardust, alias Aladdin Sane, was in the vanguard of the new “glam rock” that was sweeping the pop scenes of Britain and America. (In 1973, however, Melody Maker reviewer Roy Hollingworth had commented, “If you wanna hear a rock and roll band, wipe off that bloody silly makeup and go see Zeppelin.”) David Bowie’s unique and literate music was of a different order than Led Zeppelin’s, but, like Jimmy Page, he had fallen under the twin spells of Aleister Crowley and cocaine. There are accounts of Page and Bowie sharing mounds of white powder together while viewing footage from Kenneth Anger’s Lucifer Rising, of Bowie being so far gone into cocaine-induced paranoia he felt that his Los Angeles swimming pool was possessed by Satan, and of a strung-out Bowie being fearful of Page’s enigmatic presence and allegedly demonic powers. Angela Bowie, the singer’s wife during the 1970s, has also documented her participation in a 1977 hotel room party with members of Led Zeppelin where Page was kidded as “Hoover nose,” and lived up to the name.

  AC/DC

  Led Zeppelin took the majestic “Stairway to Heaven,” but AC/DC were careening down the “Highway to Hell.” Led Zeppelin demanded a “Whole Lotta Love,” but AC/DC were satisfied with a “Whole Lotta Rosie.” Though many would say Zeppelin were the masters of hard rock, the Australian quintet, on the same Atlantic record label, has proven nearly as successful with their own outback roadhouse interpretations of the genre. More than the punk rockers who emerged around the same time, AC/DC seemed to dislodge the complacent English rock aristocracy to win the hearts of the headbanging masses: they topped Sounds magazine’s “New Order Top 20” list of 1976, ahead of the Sex Pistols, the Damned, and Motörhead, while Zeppelin was on the “Boring Old Farts Top 20,” in company with the Rolling Stones and Rod Stewart. A useful quote from the Marquee Club’s Jack Barry cited AC/DC as the most exciting act he’d seen perform in that venue since Led Zeppelin. With the brilliant double entendres of original singer and lyricist Bon Scott and the combined guitar attack of brothers Angus and Malcolm Young, AC/DC eschewed the profundities of “Kashmir” and the acoustic delicacy of “The Battle of Evermore” for predictable, crowd-pleasing, straight-on rock ’n’ roll. Zeppelin’s veteran engineer Eddie Kramer was called upon by Atlantic to produce the album that became Highway to Hell in early 1979 but his professional methodology clashed with the Australians’. “They were different from Zeppelin, for obvious reasons,” he said. “I think that band required a specific type of handling which I had no idea how to do at that moment in my career.” “It turns out the guy was full of bullshit and couldn’t produce a healthy fart,” was Bon Scott’s take on the Kramer episode. Scott died from alcohol poisoning in 1980—the same year and in the same way as John Bonham—but the group survived and thrived with Back in Black and beyond; drummer Chris Slade, late of Jimmy Page’s the Firm, was even part of their lineup for a short period. Like other of Zeppelin’s hard rock rivals, AC/DC have outlived their originality, but in their heyday they made some excellent records that compare well to Zeppelin’s best.

  Van Halen

  Until the advent of these flamboyant Californian rockers, Led Zeppelin’s Gothic style was the model for all the heavy guitar-based pop music of the 1970s. When Eddie Van Halen first laid down his two-handed “Eruption” guitar solo on the 1978 debut album, however, six-string heroics were defined
a few steps upward, and when David Lee Roth first belted out “Ain’t Talkin’ ’bout Love,” rock showmanship was redefined by the spandex standards of Hollywood rather than the misty atmosphere of Boleskine House. Hugely popular and influential in the following decade, Van Halen were the first of a new generation of rock ’n’ rollers for whom Zeppelin were inspiration, not competition. Eddie Van Halen himself admitted that his innovative “tapping” technique came to him watching Jimmy Page do the same thing on an LA “Heartbreaker” solo circa 1972: “I’m going, ‘Wait a minute—I can do that! Use that finger up here, and use this as the nut and move it around.’ That’s how I first thought of it.” Page, in turn, has complimented the younger player on his fretboard dexterity: “You know, you talk about what I’ve done on the guitar and that’s what he’s done on guitar…. I must say that I can’t do it.” With Roth on vocals, Van Halen has essayed Zeppelin’s “The Rover,” and with Sammy Hagar at the mic they’ve done a solid “Rock and Roll.”

  U2

  The house band of the United Nations, fronted by a Nobel laureate, may be the last of the true classic rock groups. Though U2’s minimalist, punk-derived style was initially far different from the larger-than-life productions of Led Zeppelin, the Anglo-Irish foursome did maintain the same instrumental configuration, and singer Bono and guitarist Dave “the Edge” Evans have approximated the Plant-Page performance dichotomy of exuberant showman paired with introverted musician. It was the Edge who graciously inducted the Yardbirds into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 and admitted that the blues abilities of guitarists like Page, Jeff Beck, and Eric Clapton were so intimidating he could only seek out a personal sound completely distinct from them. “I was never really interested in heavy metal or that sort of thing,” the Edge told Rolling Stone in 1988, “but Zeppelin, of all those groups, really had something.” Along with Jack White of the White Stripes, the Edge finally dared to play with Page for revealing scenes in the 2008 documentary It Might Get Loud.