Led Zeppelin FAQ

by George Case

  When touring southern California in the early 1970s, Led Zeppelin and their entourage set up camp at this twelve-story hotel, inaugurated in 1956 as Gene Autry’s Continental. Management at the lodgings, which were not as ritzy as others in LA, made a point of tolerating the eccentric and sometimes destructive antics of celebrity guests, especially rock stars. Zeppelin’s stays at the “Riot House” were marked by defenestrated furniture and appliances, wild parties that took up several floors, and countless groupie overnights. Civilians can still check in to the Hyatt House (now called the Andaz West Hollywood) but are advised to leave the motorcycles outside.

  The Rainbow Bar & Grill, 9015 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles

  Just down from the Riot House was the preferred drinking establishment of Led Zeppelin and other rock ’n’ rollers when in Los Angeles. Many female hearts were won and broken at the Rainbow by members of the band, and John Bonham and various Zeppelin bodyguards committed some more physical breakages there. The open decadence of the Sunset scene stood in contrast to the more idealistic spirit of nearby Laurel Canyon and its singing-songwriting inhabitants. Visitors can still eat and drink at the Rainbow, and music and movie stars can still be spotted there; adorned with rock ’n’ roll memorabilia, the walls, unfortunately, cannot talk.

  Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco, 7561 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles

  Rodney Bingenheimer was a Los Angeles fan and hustler who established his own party scene here in 1972, which, like the Rainbow, also catered to visiting English rock royalty, not least of all Led Zeppelin. Jimmy Page joked about groupie feuds fought at Rodney’s, “down to razor blade sandwiches,” although his visibility there made him uncomfortable—“I mean you walk in and the next thing you know there are cameras everywhere and you’re ducking under the bar to get away.” One legend has it that Zeppelin paid Bingenheimer’s medical bills after sex and partying combined to give him a heart attack in his thirties. Though its proprietor is the subject of a documentary film, The Mayor of Sunset Strip, Bingenheimer’s Disco is no longer.

  The Equinox Bookshop, 4 Holland Street, Kensington, London

  From 1974 to 1979 Jimmy Page owned this small bookstore and printing house, which specialized in rare editions of occult volumes. As a business venture it was unsuccessful and although Page managed to build his personal library through the store, he clearly had no interest in maintaining it; after disagreements with the manager it was shut down. A tea shop stands on the location today.

  The Mill House, Mill Lane, Clewer, England

  Jimmy Page purchased this Berkshire home in 1980 for £900,000 from actor Michael Caine and owned it until the early 2000s. A spacious Georgian structure with a working water mill on the Thames River, it’s significant in Led Zeppelin lore in that it was the scene of John Bonham’s demise.

  To Sing a Song for You: Bootleg Led Zeppelin

  Despite manager Peter Grant’s sometimes brutal crackdowns on audience members who were spotted with microphones or recording gear, probably more than half of Led Zeppelin’s concerts between 1968 and 1980 were put on someone’s tape machine. Before the Internet, a well-stocked record store or comprehensive mail-order house could provide fans with a good bootleg selection from many artists: professionally manufactured vinyl discs of live shows which captured a “real” performance that would otherwise be edited or overdubbed if released officially. All the major acts of the time, including the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan, were bootlegged. Today more than one thousand different bootleg editions of Led Zeppelin are available on CD, and many more single songs or fragments thereof can be heard online.

  Among the most popular of the original bootleg records were Live on Blueberry Hill (Inglewood Forum in Los Angeles, September 4, 1970), In the Light (BBC radio performances, 1969–70), Going to California (Berkeley Community Theater, September 14, 1971), Bonzo’s Birthday Party (Inglewood Forum, May 31, 1973), The Destroyer (Richfield Coliseum, Cleveland, April 27, 1977), and Listen to This Eddie (Inglewood Forum, June 1977). Other bootlegs were named for the location in which they originated, like Ottawa Sunshine, Brussels Affair, Royal Albert Hall, Second City Showdown, and Return to Paris Theatre. As might be imagined, the quality of these varies, sourced as they are from concertgoers with professional (reel-to-reel) or amateur (cassette) tape machines, situated at different points in the venue. On many bootlegs the sound of the nearby attendees cheering, clapping, or talking comes in and out between or during songs.

  Another category of bootlegs that document Led Zeppelin is soundboard recordings of concerts—unmixed tapes fed directly from the in-house mixing deck that controlled the sound levels. These are generally better than the random captures of music from the floor or the bleachers. Flying Circus, taken from a Madison Square Garden show on February 12, 1975, is one of many Zeppelin examples. A third and legally most serious species of bootleg consists of master tapes stolen from studios where the artists made their official records; again, Led Zeppelin has had their work lifted this way, with alternate or discarded takes of material from Led Zeppelin III and IV, Physical Graffiti, and other authorized albums turning up to intrigue collectors (e.g., 1970 Studio Works, Studio Daze). Sometimes the recordings find the band in a playful mood, enjoying themselves going over Chuck Berry’s “Reelin’ and Rockin’,” Johnny Kidd and the Pirates’ “Shakin’ All Over,” and other favorites of their youth (e.g., The Cover Versions, The Lost Sessions Volume 5).

  Because of the illicit nature of all bootlegs—at least all Led Zeppelin bootlegs—many small or clandestine labels have issued differing versions of the same material, and buyers do not have the assurance of high reproduction standards and accurate notes that would come with sanctioned music. The members of Led Zeppelin have expressed mixed views of bootlegging. Revenues generated by the audience recordings have never put much of a dent in their own earnings as performers and songwriters, and in some cases the musicians have been pleased to hear themselves in their prime as fans did. On the other hand, the private or studio tapes that found their way into the bootleggers’ markets are definitely taboo. “If it’s someone with a microphone at a gig, that’s one thing,” Jimmy Page defined in 1998.

  Magical Sound Boogie and Long Beach Arena Complete are just two of many Zeppelin bootlegs.

  Courtesy of Duane Roy

  “They paid for a ticket, so it’s fair game. But things that are stolen out of the studio—works in progress, rehearsal tapes, and things like that—are quite another. I’m totally against that. It’s theft. It’s like someone stealing your personal journal and printing it.” Some of the Led Zeppelin studio and soundboard takes sold and traded are known to have been taken from Page’s Mill House home in the 1980s: “[W]e did record a lot of shows, but many of the board tapes were stolen from me…. All that stuff, along with the recordings of our rehearsals, were stolen and have surfaced as bootlegs, and it’s a drag…. Someone who was pretending to be a friend stole the tapes.” In 2007 Page testified at the trial of a Scottish bootlegger who had produced and sold CDs and DVDs from Zeppelin performances and sound checks. “The legitimate part is where fans trade music, but once you start packaging up and you do not know what you are getting, you are breaking the rules legally and morally,” he said under oath. “There are some of these recordings where it is just a whirring and you cannot hear the music.”

  Given the volume of what is freely available on the Internet, as well as preemptive Led Zeppelin releases such as Coda, BBC Sessions, How the West Was Won and the Led Zeppelin DVD, the contemporary reception for the pirated tracks of the group has likely dwindled to a small number of extreme specialists. For those interested, however, there is definitely an extensive body of live and studio music from Led Zeppelin that gives a dimension to their art not heard anywhere else.

  How Many More Times: Zeppelin’s Most- and Least-Performed Music

  Over some five hundred–plus concerts a complete run of the songs the quartet played has been carefully assembled from au
dience recordings, reviews, printed set lists, and other data. Numbers frequently included were early warhorses like “Dazed and Confused” (210 performances), “Whole Lotta Love” (198 performances), and “Moby Dick” (158 performances). A mandatory “Stairway to Heaven” was played at every Zeppelin concert since before its record was released, amounting to 193 performances from 1971 to 1980, while “Since I’ve Been Loving You” figured in 191 shows, “Rock and Roll” in 166, and “Out On the Tiles” (either in its entirety or as an intro) in 163 gigs. The long, improvised passages of “Dazed and Confused” incorporated Gustav Holst’s “Mars: The Bringer of War” in many versions (165 performances).

  A few Led Zeppelin tunes were very rarely played live, or only played in part (“The Rover,” “When the Levee Breaks,” “Good Times Bad Times,” “The Wanton Song”) or never played live at all (“Custard Pie,” “Houses of the Holy,” “Night Flight,” “Royal Orleans,” “Tea for One,” and some others). “Wearing and Tearing” was first played live when Jimmy Page made a guest appearance at Robert Plant’s Knebworth gig in 1990, and “For Your Life” was not performed by the band until their 2007 O2 reunion.

  The Dark Side of the Globe: Led Zeppelin’s Following in the Non-English-Speaking World

  Though the band originated in Britain, sang songs in English, and concentrated their concert events in the United Kingdom and the United States, they won fans all over the globe. Led Zeppelin received strong reactions to their shows in Japan, West Germany, and Holland, and they made their debut as the New Yardbirds in the Scandinavian lands of Denmark and Sweden. Subsidiaries of Atlantic Records released singles from their albums in Japan, Italy (“Muchismo Amor” b/w “Ruptura de Comunicaciones”), the Spanish world (“Sobra Las Colinas y Muy Lejos,” “El Emigrante”), Germany (“Whole Lotta Love” reached number one there), Thailand, Sweden, the Netherlands, and elsewhere. The 1990s tours of the reunited Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, playing mostly Led Zeppelin material, traveled to big shows in the previously virgin territories of Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Mexico,

  A rare Turkish edition of Led Zeppelin II.

  Courtesy of Robert Rodriguez

  Led Zeppelin’s international popularity extended as far afield as Japan.

  Courtesy of Robert Rodriguez

  Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Spain, the Czech Republic, Liechtenstein, and Turkey.

  Many Americans, however, would be surprised to find that Zeppelin was less popular in Europe, Asia, and South America than in their own country. The United States provided by far the act’s largest and most responsive audience, whereas other nations showed more interest in worldwide figures like Elton John, Pink Floyd, Abba, Queen, the Beatles, and homegrown talent. Rock outfits like Deep Purple and Cheap Trick became “big in Japan” even as they lagged behind Zeppelin in Britain or America. Well over half of Led Zeppelin’s performances took place in the US, a deliberate strategy that corresponded with the home base of their record label, the intentions of their manager Peter Grant, and the country’s network of supportive radio stations, concert promoters, and youth publications. Rock ’n’ roll began in the States, and Led Zeppelin was nothing if not a rock ’n’ roll group. The Englishness that made them seem remote and exotic in Pittsburgh and Minneapolis was less striking in Paris and Munich. Gigs in continental Europe were sometimes considered warm-ups for later North American shows (where some of the punters would have been US servicemen or their families), and an evaluation of Zeppelin’s total record sales reveals that a disproportionate quantity of product was purchased in America. While Led Zeppelin is rightly thought of as an international phenomenon, their fame and influence is only moderate outside the Anglophone nations, is impressive but not dominant in Britain, and is greatest in the USA.

  I Know Where That Jive Is At: Led Zeppelin’s Following Among African Americans

  While the band clearly drew on black blues influences like Robert Johnson, Howlin’ Wolf, and Willie Dixon, and had a knack for funk rhythms rare in their genre, any cross-section of Led Zeppelin’s concertgoers and record buyers would indicate that the majority of them were white people. Judging by photos of their audiences in the 1970s, “The Ocean” that Robert Plant sang to was mostly monochromatic. The same divide probably obtains with most stars of pop music, whose fan bases generally break down along racial lines; perhaps the most notable exception in rock ’n’ roll would be Jimi Hendrix, who, to his own discomfort, was accepted by a bigger white audience than black and was once called “a psychedelic Uncle Tom” by white critic Robert Christgau.

  Individual black musicians have certainly appreciated and adapted Led Zeppelin’s music for themselves. Lenny Kravitz, Vernon Reid of Living Color, and Prince have all spoken of their youthful admiration for Zeppelin and their absorption of guitar-based heavy rock into their own work, and Zeppelin’s drums and riffs have been sampled by many hip-hop acts of all backgrounds. To the extent that music is or should be color-blind and that anyone can enjoy any song by anyone else, African-American listeners have gotten into Led Zeppelin as much as whites have gotten into Billie Holiday, Funkadelic, the Supremes, Run-DMC, or Michael Jackson.

  But black writer and critic Marcus Reeves, author of Somebody Scream!: Rap Music’s Rise to Prominence in the Aftershock of Black Power, comments that “I know of no hard-core African-American Zep fans…. I knew a couple of Black folks, when I was in high school, who really dug the music and possessed an LZ LP or two. I even had my favorites like ‘Levee Break’ [sic] and ‘Whole Lotta Love.’ And for a few weeks in Eleventh grade I borrowed a classmate’s Zep tape as an alternative to the hip-hop I was listening to. I also heard about hip-hop’s connection to the band, but mostly from old school DJ’s who played ‘Levee’ because of that big-ass beat in the beginning. Other than that, I never knew of any Black devotees who were fans like the white ones.”

  Timeline

  1974

  February 23: Newspaper heiress Patty Hearst abducted.

  May 4: Duke Ellington dies, age 75.

  May: Led Zeppelin launches Swan Song label.

  May–September: Led Zeppelin record Physical Graffiti.

  June 17: IRA bomb explodes in UK Parliament.

  August 8: Richard Nixon resigns US presidency.

  September 8: Daredevil Evel Knievel attempts Snake River Canyon jump.

  October 29: Muhammad Ali defeats George Foreman for heavyweight boxing title.

  Movies: Chinatown; The Godfather II; The Towering Inferno.

  Music: Eric Clapton, 461 Ocean Boulevard; Lynryd Skynyrd, Second Helping; Joni Mitchell, Court and Spark; Steely Dan, “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number”; Bachman-Turner Overdrive, “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet”; Barbara Streisand, “The Way We Were.”

  15

  If You Can Clarify, Please Do

  Led Zeppelin’s Lurid Lifestyle

  What the Little Fish Are Sayin’: The Shark Incident

  Even people who don’t know much about rock stars’ lives or rock stars’ music have heard of this one: something about Led Zeppelin, a hotel room, a groupie, and a fish. The Shark Incident is a more-or-less authenticated episode of the band’s tour exploits that has been widely cited as a pinnacle (or nadir) of rock ’n’ roll debauchery. It’s the punch line to many Led Zeppelin jokes, and the premise behind unauthorized T-shirts promoting the “Led Zeppelin Fishing Academy.” Soon after it occurred, Frank Zappa commemorated it in a song, “Mud Shark,” performed as part of the Mothers of Invention’s live concept album Fillmore East—June 1971, and in 2000 it was named by Spin magazine as the Number One Sleaziest Moment in Rock. The honor is not as richly deserved as it seems.

  The scenario is one in which the one most crucial participant—the groupie—has never come forward, so its pertinent details have been pieced together from several sources. Most accounts put the date of the Shark Incident at July 28, 1969, the day after Led Zeppelin had played at the Seattle Pop Festival at Woodinville, Washington’s Gold Creek Park (the Doors, the
Byrds, the Guess Who, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Spirit, Chuck Berry, and Bo Diddley also appeared), although they had also performed at Seattle’s Green Lake Aqua Theater in May of the same year, and later at the Paramount Theater in October. The important point is that during an early tour of America the band and its retinue were staying at Seattle’s Edgewater Inn on Puget Sound, a lodging where the guest suites overlooked the sea and it was possible to fish directly from windows on the lower floors.

  Another significant factor in the Shark Incident is that this was a time before Led Zeppelin were the chart-topping, high-flying superstars of 1975 or 1977. In 1969 they were just one of many rock groups traveling North America in a ragtag crew of musicians, roadies, label or radio associates, friends, and local hangers-on. Indiscriminate or unorthodox sex among these groups and their admirers was common. Few fans could have named every member of the bands or distinguished between onstage performers, road managers, and buddies from other acts, and this is how the Shark Incident has been tied to the world-famous Led Zeppelin rather than the less-renowned Vanilla Fudge. At the Edgewater after the Pop Festival, an all-night party of performers, their attendants, and young women extended into the next day, and some of the fish (allegedly small mud sharks or red snappers, no more than three feet long) caught by John Bonham and Zeppelin tour manager Richard Cole had accumulated in the closet of the room they shared. Others hanging around included Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, and singer-keyboardist Mark Stein and drummer Carmine Appice of Vanilla Fudge (who’d also been billed at the Seattle Pop Festival), though on the periphery rather than at the center of the action.

  At some point during the day’s festivities one of the women—she’s been named as a Jackie from San Francisco, but no one has confirmed it—may have mentioned bondage, and at any rate she disrobed and sprawled on a bed, whereupon Cole grabbed a fish and introduced it into her nether orifices. She may or may not have been tied to the bed, and Bonham, Cole, or the Fudge’s Stein and Appice may or may not have also had conventional sex with her. Most versions of the story (including his own in Hammer of the Gods and Stairway to Heaven) place Cole as the ringleader. All those involved were either drunk or stoned or both. A supposed bystander, photographer Michael Zagaris, recalled for Spin that there were also live partridges in the room, and that as well as the Edgewater catch there were fish entrails from a Seattle market tossed into the mix. “Everybody was just going along with it,” he was quoted. “They were pretending they were bored. When weird shit is happening, you don’t want to be the guy who says, ‘What the fuck is going on?’”