Led Zeppelin FAQ_All That's Left to Know About the Greatest Hard Rock Band of All Time

by George Case

  Courtesy of Robert Rodriguez

  John Paul Jones was allegedly a member of Herman’s Hermits: As a session musician in the mid-1960s, Jones played on and arranged some recordings by the lightweight British Invasion act, and accompanied them at a handful of 1967 performances in Germany, but he was never officially a member of the band.

  The meaning behind the four symbols on Led Zeppelin IV: The icons are less significant than many assume. John Bonham’s and John Paul Jones’s (the interlocking circles and arcs, respectively) were taken from a preexisting book of designs; Robert Plant’s (the feather in the circle) was from a nineteenth-century text that purported to describe the heraldry and culture of a lost civilization; Jimmy Page’s (“ZoSo”) was a representation of an astrological sign for Saturn, adapted from a sixteenth-century manuscript.

  The Shark Incident: On tour in the US in 1969, Led Zeppelin’s tour manager used a freshly caught fish to stimulate an acquiescent nude groupie at a drunken hotel party.

  Led Zeppelin’s reputation for stealing other people’s songs: In a few cases, legal decisions have awarded other composers a share of royalties from some Zeppelin tunes whose lyrics had been casually or inadvertently appropriated. In others, snatches of various older pieces were still identifiable when combined into new Zeppelin music. Had Led Zeppelin not been so successful and so influential, most of the “plagiarisms” would have gone unnoticed.

  This book is also rated H (for “heavy”).

  Author’s Collection

  Author’s Collection

  Why Jimmy Page played a guitar with two necks: One neck had the conventional six strings, the other a more resonant twelve. By alternating between the two in a single performance, he could replicate the multiple overdubs of such studio epics as “Stairway to Heaven” on stage.

  Led Zeppelin’s reputation for smashing up hotel rooms and abusing women: In the 1970s world of traveling rock bands, the musicians and their entourages were granted wide latitudes of sexual enjoyment and offstage pranks, but the four members of Led Zeppelin were no more or less destructive or self-indulgent than most other acts of the period.

  John Bonham is widely believed to have choked to death on his own vomit: A coroner’s inquest concluded the drummer had died of “accidental suicide” brought on by a pulmonary edema, the swelling of blood vessels in the lungs. He had passed out too drunk to properly regurgitate the forty ounces of alcohol in his system.

  Robert Plant’s feelings about “Stairway to Heaven”: Though Plant is reputed to hate the song, he does not. At several times since 1980 the vocalist has said he is not as impressed with the song as many Zeppelin fans. He has never performed it as a solo artist and rarely agrees to sing it in company with the surviving members of the group, but he has also said he is very proud to have had a hand in its creation.

  Jimmy Page is said to have lived in Aleister Crowley’s house: From 1970 to the early 1990s, Page owned the Scottish Boleskine House, which had been registered to the occultist in the early twentieth century. Page rarely resided there for any length of time.

  2

  All Will Be Revealed

  The Led Zeppelin Basics

  We’re Gonna Groove: Personnel

  Led Zeppelin were a British-based rock group that recorded and played from 1968 to 1980. They are widely considered to be one of the greatest acts of the rock ’n’ roll era. The four members were:

  James Patrick “Jimmy” Page (January 9, 1944– ) Electric guitars, acoustic guitars, pedal steel guitar, mandolin, banjo, backing vocals, theremin, tape effects.

  Robert Anthony Plant (August 20, 1948– ) Lead vocals, backing vocals, harmonica, conga, tambourine, occasional guitar.

  John Paul Jones (née John Baldwin) (January 3, 1946– ) Electric bass guitar, electric upright bass, piano, electric organ, mellotron, synthesizer, mandolin, conga, acoustic guitar, lap steel guitar, recorder, backing vocals.

  John Henry Bonham (May 31, 1948–September 25, 1980) Drums, conga, gong, tympani, tambourine, backing vocals.

  It’s Been a Long Time: Life Span

  The group’s first rehearsals took place in August 1968; the band first performed under the name Led Zeppelin on October 25, 1968, and their debut album was released (in the US) in January 1969. John Bonham was found dead on September 25, 1980, and a formal press release announcing Led Zeppelin’s disbandment was issued on December 4, 1980. Thus, the band was officially extant for twelve years, give or take a few weeks.

  This measurement is qualified by the actual amount of time Led Zeppelin were performing and recording. A sterner look might conclude that the act’s most fruitful years were from 1969 to 1973, when they were touring constantly and when their most popular records were made. After that, they made one complete tour of the US and did the Earl’s Court gigs in 1975, performed an American tour in 1977 that was prematurely canceled, made a total of four appearances in 1979, and ran a short European jaunt in 1980. Led Zeppelin’s first four albums, generally regarded as their best, were produced between October 1968 and mid-1971 (Led Zeppelin IV was in stores in November, but the tracks had been completed in the spring of that year), a span of about thirty months. Physical Graffiti, their last really well-received album, came out in February 1975, using material that had been put down in 1974 or even as far back as 1970. The low-key, only partially successful last studio album, In Through the Out Door, was recorded in late 1978 and on sale in the late summer of 1979. Like many, perhaps most, of the great rock ’n’ rollers, Led Zeppelin rose and fell in a far shorter duration than a mere chronology will reveal. The various reasons for this decline are addressed elsewhere, but, for a band whose fame has extended over four decades, Led Zeppelin had no more than five or six years of peak productivity.

  Measuring a Summer’s Day: Sales Figures

  The question of the band’s absolute record shipments is a more complicated one than a simple statement of numbers will answer. Though Led Zeppelin are routinely described as one of the highest-selling acts ever, arriving at a definite statistic to corroborate this is not easy. In the first place, record companies, even in their heyday before the advent of home cassette recordings and, later, Internet “piracy,” have often been reluctant to disclose hard figures. Releasing accurate data on record sales is (or was) for the labels a double-edged sword: Hit records could be talked up to promote further purchases, but talking up hit records also invited the attentions of artists or managers who would then demand a bigger share of the revenue generated, and eventually government tax collectors, with their sharp eyes and long arms, would take an interest in any corporation making too loud or too specific boasts of product shipped. Press-friendly phrases like “broke all records,” “went double platinum,” or “all-time best seller” are usually hyperbole that have no real application in the accounting department.

  Another factor is the price and durability of the items being counted. Vinyl records, eight-track tapes, audio cassettes, CDs, and DVDs are, like books, relatively inexpensive and can last indefinitely; many a Led Zeppelin collector owns original LPs as well as remastered compact discs of the same material. Whatever the medium, an album in good condition can change hands several times over its life where only the single original purchase (by retailer from manufacturer) will ever be counted. A measure of Led Zeppelin’s record sales will also leave out the even murkier subject of bootleg discs (called “audience recordings” in polite company), and some Zeppelin examples of these, such as The Destroyer or Listen to This Eddie, have acquired almost as much a following as the authorized studio releases. And there is simply no telling how much Led Zeppelin music was copied to tape at home and passed around from friend to friend, all of it of course without the sanction of the authors, their manager, or their corporate partner. Even today, copyright matters are vexing ones at all levels of the entertainment industry, not only in view of lost income but lost accuracy.

  Third, statistics of absolute record sales are often confused with chart positions of s
ales measured against competing discs. Trade publications such as Billboard, Goldmine, Cashbox, and Variety track weekly movement of units in the familiar hierarchies of Top Tens, Top 40s, Hot 100s, or number ones, without acknowledging that what constitutes a Top Ten or a number one will necessarily vary from one interval to the next. Paralleling best sellers’ lists and television ratings, the actual count of records bought in stores has declined over the last twenty-odd years, reflecting changes in demographics, economic conditions, and technology, but there must by definition always be a “most popular” title whatever the total transactions or viewers. In 1971, Led Zeppelin’s untitled fourth album failed to register as the biggest-selling LP in America when Santana’s III, Sly and the Family Stone’s There’s a Riot Goin’ On, and Carole King’s Tapestry were all shifting more copies, but over time Led Zeppelin IV has proven the bigger seller. Conversely, most of Led Zeppelin’s albums made number one in Britain shortly after their respective releases, but the band have sold altogether fewer records there than many other British acts of their own and later eras, including Queen, Oasis, Dire Straits, and the Spice Girls.

  For a medium so dependent on another—broadcast radio—for advertising, records’ popularity on the airwaves does not automatically translate into popularity at the cash register. Though Led Zeppelin albums were heavily rotated on North American FM stations in the 1970s (and the band are fixtures of “classic rock” radio today), they were well removed from the playlists of more hit-oriented networks, and because Led Zeppelin put out relatively few singles as an operating band and never catered to the formats of AM stations (much less TV spots), they were often beat out by briefly more successful songs that reached more listeners in a shorter space of time. Thus 1973 was not the year of “Over the Hills and Far Away” but the year of “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree” by Dawn, featuring Tony Orlando, and 1979’s most requested track was not “Fool in the Rain” but the Village People’s “YMCA.” This has also clouded the issue of which artists have won the greater success: Is it the multimedia superstar sensations whose flurry of catchy 45s and glitzy television appearances were inescapable for a few weeks or months, or the secretive, anonymous cult act generations of fans have actually forked over hard cash to seek out and hear?

  Here again is a complication, namely the expanding and fragmenting market for recorded music. The most popular works, as indicated by total sales, are frequently skewed toward more recent issues, as growing populations are more likely to buy records by newer artists. Because young people are generally the most consistent spenders of entertainment money, modern releases will gradually surpass earlier ones in terms of copies bought—as aging audiences devote their disposable income to products other than popular songs, the overall stature of their own favorites will be eclipsed by those of their children and grandchildren. Globally, too, emerging economies like those of Brazil, India, and China have already begun to develop their own domestic followings for homegrown talent, and the conventional first-world rankings of hits and blockbusters will be obsolete; the “universal” appeal of Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” or Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon can no longer be assumed in coming decades.

  Considering all this, the long-disbanded and British-based rock ’n’ roll group Led Zeppelin have proven a remarkably resilient and worldwide musical attraction. If they cannot be proven as the most popular musical act of all time (can anyone be, in the final analysis?), they have certainly enjoyed a commercial fortune very few performers from any genre have known. Not only is their catalogue relatively small—a mere eight studio albums issued between 1969 and 1979, in addition to the live The Song Remains the Same and the funeral Coda—but it has been anthologized in only a few collections. The box sets of 1990 and 1993; the BBC Sessions of 1997; the Early Days and Latter Days best-of packages from 1999 and 2001, respectively; the triple-disc live How the West Was Won in 2003; and the remastered Mothership from 2007 have boosted the ultimate figures, but not in the way other acts have reconfigured their songs into literally dozens of Greatest Hits, Not Sold In Stores, All-Time Classics, or Christmas assemblies.

  According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Led Zeppelin sold 111.5 million records in the United States through 2009. This number puts them behind the Beatles, Garth Brooks, and Elvis Presley but ahead of the Eagles, Billy Joel, Pink Floyd, and Barbara Streisand. With the US still the biggest market for sound recordings, Led Zeppelin’s sales

  “Hey Hey, What Can I Do,” the B side of 1970’s “Immigrant Song,” was the sole Led Zeppelin song released only in the 45-rpm format.

  Author’s Collection

  in that country can be extrapolated to an estimate of between 250 million and 300 million records purchased around the planet.

  You’ll Be My Only: Led Zeppelin’s “No Singles” Policy

  Between 1969 and 1979 ten 45-rpm Led Zeppelin records were available in North America; there were others released in overseas markets like Japan and elsewhere. “Whole Lotta Love,” “Immigrant Song,” “Black Dog,” “D’yer Mak’er,” “Trampled Underfoot” and “Fool in the Rain” were all Top 40 hits in the United States. No singles, other than a promotional issue of “Trampled Underfoot,” were made available in Britain.

  Perhaps difficult to fathom for generations grown up on videos and the Internet, the “no singles” policy identified with Led Zeppelin refers to their practice of not putting out new music only as a single. In both the US and the UK, the music industry had up until the mid-1960s been dominated by the single, which served the demands of broadcasters and teenage listeners adequately, but which also tended to produce a high rate of turnover for the artists, all vying for more airplay and hook-based material than most could ever have. Before the Beatles and Bob Dylan, pop records’ low cost and typical reliance on two-minute gimmickry made most of them critically and economically disposable.

  In contrast, all Zeppelin’s 45s were “teaser” rather than “stand-alone” releases that were taken from—and promoted—a recent album. By the time of the band’s inception in 1968, the size and affluence of the baby-boomer audience, especially in America, had made the sale of cohesive and original pop LPs (i.e., not anthologies) increasingly viable: the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde, Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced, and Cream’s Disraeli Gears were highly successful records unto themselves rather than just platforms for one or two radio hits. Jimmy Page and Peter Grant, Zeppelin’s manager, saw the commercial opportunities in this trend—albums were more profitable than singles, of course—on top of the artistic respectability. “We didn’t have to create songs for a pop singles market,” Page told Guitar World magazine in 2003. “That would have been the kiss of death for us…. By not releasing a traditional single, we forced people to buy albums, which is what we wanted. We wanted them to see the band’s complete vision.”

  The “no singles” stance of Led Zeppelin was, on one hand, a calculated approach to capitalize on a lucrative market by offering only premium product; on the other, it was a conscientious gesture of principle in making whole, self-contained albums the band’s prime medium. A dearth of singles has meant that Zeppelin’s total record sales are artificially lower than those of other acts who put out many more of their songs in a cheaper and more palatable format, but it has also made the group’s music appear more serious in being communicated in a more substantial way.

  Maybe More than Enough: Led Zeppelin’s Biggest Hit

  The group’s most popular record is Led Zeppelin IV. The RIAA credits this disc with 23 million copies sold in the US since 1971, below the numbers for the Eagles’ Greatest Hits, 1971–1975 and Michael Jackson’s Thriller and above Pink Floyd’s The Wall, AC/DC’s Back in Black, Garth Brooks’s Double Live, and Shania Twain’s Come On Over. This list is only of albums, not discs of any format, but considering the scarcity of Led Zeppelin singles and their commitment to the medium of long-playing albums, it
is certain that this record is their single most popular releases. That it has reached this level of sales almost forty years after its first appearance, and long since the demand for most of its contemporaries has tapered off, is in the world of pop music a striking achievement. Judging again by its American popularity, it is probable that between 30 million and 40 million copies of Led Zeppelin IV have been bought internationally.

  Overlords: The Strengths and Weaknesses Each Member Brought to the Group

  Another of the clichés according to which classic rock groups are characterized is their alchemical balance of personalities and abilities, as if their resultant music was a magical creation only the musicians in question could have made, or wanted to make. In fact, although compatibility is of course a crucial component to a functioning ensemble, many of the best-loved bands came to their sounds through a combination of rehearsal, accident, compromise, and convenience, with each individual member attempting to pull the songs in his preferred way and forced to accept the others’ opposite influences. “The only heavy band I really dig is the Zeppelin,” Robert Plant once said, while John Paul Jones has pointed out that “none of us had remotely the same record collection.” More than that of most of their peers, the music of Led Zeppelin was a product of widely varied leanings and techniques that blended in an unforeseen and volatile mixture.

  John Paul Jones

  Jones was the band’s most formally disciplined and versatile player, raised in a musical family and having served an apprenticeship in the London studio scene since the early 1960s. A multi-instrumentalist with solid chops on bass, piano, organ, guitar, mandolin, and reeds, and fluent in music theory and the crafts of arranging and orchestration, he was the consummate professional in Led Zeppelin. Despite his low-key demeanor on- and offstage, Jones was the prime mover behind some of Zeppelin’s standout tracks: “Good Times Bad Times,” “Your Time Is Gonna Come,” “Heartbreaker” (probably), “Celebration Day,” “Since I’ve Been Loving You,” “Black Dog,” “No Quarter,” “Trampled Underfoot,” “Ten Years Gone,” and “All My Love.” Without his skills, Led Zeppelin might have been just another bunch of English bluesmen endlessly jamming around three chords, pedestrian riffs, and wandering solos. A jazz and soul fan whose heroes included Ray Charles and Charles Mingus, he told scholar Susan Fast, “[B]ands often form from people who all listen to the same (one) type of music and therefore lack the variety of listening that I think is necessary for a well-rounded and interesting musical group.” Likewise, Jones’s post-1980 involvement with alternative darlings like Sonic Youth, the Butthole Surfers, Diamanda Galás, Uncle Earl, and the Mission lent Led Zeppelin a retroactive credibility their snootier critics of the 1970s had always denied them. With his eclectic tastes, Jones embellished Zeppelin’s music just as he had done for numerous performers’ music as a session hand: made it tighter, trickier, more sophisticated, and often more exciting.