by George Case
Though the Beatles were and remain the most famous rockers ever, they knew Led Zeppelin was around. “Oh, I can just tell where the groups came from, and all that, any of them now,” John Lennon told Rolling Stone’s Jann Wenner in his illuminating 1970 interview. “I can tell, you know, like Zeppelin and Fleetwood Mac, where everything came from.” As Zeppelin rose through the 1970s, ex-Beatles George Harrison and Ringo Starr were sometimes seen in company with one or more of the band members, and John Bonham threw a drunken Harrison into the swimming pool at an LA party in 1973. Bonham and John Paul Jones played at Paul McCartney’s
Zeppelin broke the Beatles’ 1965 attendance record with this 1973 Tampa gig.
Courtesy of Duane Roy
benefit concerts for Kampuchea in 1979; Jones appeared in McCartney’s Give My Regards to Broad Street vanity project in the early 1980s; and Robert Plant and Jimmy Page had a memorable reunion at a 1990 Knebworth show headlined by McCartney.
Led Zeppelin’s players, conversely, respected the Beatles’ music and public impact; they even improvised some of their songs in concert, including “I Saw Her Standing There” and their standard “Some Other Guy.” As studio musicians in the 1960s, Jones and Jimmy Page knew the Beatles as industry leaders (McCartney’s praise of Jones’s arrangements on a Donovan session won the future Zeppelin bassist Donovan’s confidence), although they recognized that the Beatles were not the invulnerable Fab Four the press made them out to be. Page went to a Beatles show in early 1963 and recollected, “They didn’t go down too well and I actually heard John Lennon going past saying, ‘Fuck these London audiences.’” At a 1970 New York press conference, included on 2003’s Led Zeppelin DVD, Page and Plant were quizzed by reporters whose only reference point was the Beatles: “I think they’re great, they’ve done some fantastic statements,” said Page in the rock-speak of the day. “The fact that they got through to so many millions and millions of people has been an inspiration for every performing group in England,” added Plant, “and I should imagine the world.” Huge though Led Zeppelin became, the Beatles’ place at the top of the pops is secure.
The Rolling Stones
Unlike the Beatles, the Rolling Stones were operational over the same decade as Led Zeppelin, and both felt each other as competition. Zeppelin’s players were annoyed that the Stones drew far more publicity when the two acts played North America in 1972: “All we read was the Stones this, the Stones that, and it pissed us off,” John Bonham was quoted afterward. “Here we are, flogging our guts out and for all the notice being given to us, we might as well be playing in bloody Ceylon.” Indeed, during the 1970s and early 1980s the Stones were by far the more visible group, between Mick Jagger’s regular blurbs in the society columns and Keith Richards’s in the police bulletin, and the Stones managed to artistically and commercially come back from a mid-decade slump with a run of excellent albums including 1978’s Some Girls, 1980’s Emotional Rescue, and 1981’s Tattoo You, followed by a triumphant 1981 American tour. By then Led Zeppelin had already declined and fallen. As their ’81 shows commenced in his city to enormous fanfare, a Philadelphia Journal reporter declared, “There’s no other band I know, not the Who, not Led Zeppelin, not the Grateful Dead, can do this. So maybe the Stones really are the best rock band in the world.”
Yet the Zeppelin-Stones rivalry did not end there, and its beginnings went way back. As teenagers, Jagger and Richards actually renewed their childhood acquaintance on a train platform in John Paul Jones’s home of Sidcup, a London suburb, and the first formations of the group they would lead together began then. Even more fateful was a shared expedition between Jagger, Richards, their new accomplice Brian Jones, and Jimmy Page in October 1962, as the young Londoners took a van ride up to Manchester to see American bluesmen including T-Bone Walker and John Lee Hooker at a folk festival there: a tiny cult of earnest fans and collectors, none of them yet twenty years old, who became four of the most pivotal figures in world popular music of the next two decades. “I remember them vividly because Keith said he played guitar and Mick said he played harp,” Page looked back. This episode has been noted in a memoir by Page’s Epsom friend David Williams, in his 2009 book First Time We Met the Blues: A Journey of Discovery with Jimmy Page, Brian Jones, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.
As the Rolling Stones gained notoriety in the mid-1960s, Jimmy Page was admitted to the group’s inner circle and recording studios, as were neighborhood friends like tea-boys and tape operators Glyn and Andy Johns. Page demonstrated for Richards a guitar solo used in their 1964 hit “Heart of Stone,” was prominent on sessions overseen by the Stones’ manager and producer Andrew Loog Oldham, and played on Brian Jones’s 1966 soundtrack for the movie A Degree of Murder. Home jams between Page and another suburban boy, Eric Clapton, were later released by Oldham’s Immediate label after being overdubbed with drums, bass, and harmonica via Rolling Stones Jagger, Charlie Watts, and Bill Wyman. Some tracks on a 1975 album of ’60s Stones rarities, Metamorphosis, featured Page and were noted thusly. According to Wyman, Page was even a candidate to replace the troubled Brian Jones before his 1969 death. John Paul Jones, too, was one of Oldham’s go-to session players—it’s said Oldham himself suggested Jones adopt his stage name after seeing a marquee for the 1959 movie about the American naval hero—and was given credit for his arrangement of “She’s a Rainbow” on the Stones’ 1967 psychedelic album, Their Satanic Majesties Request. Robert Plant was singing with the Stones’ old friend Alexis Korner when Page tapped him for the New Yardbirds.
Throughout the 1970s, Page, at least, remained close to various Rolling Stones. They had sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll in common, not necessarily in that order. Underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger had been toyed with by the Stones before hiring Page to compose the music for his Lucifer Rising opus. The head Zeppelin and Keith Richards were both taking heroin in the middle years of the decade, and Page, Richards, new recruit Ron Wood and ex–Blind Faith bassist Rick Grech reportedly taped a late-night jam named for Page’s daughter, “Scarlet,” around the same time Page began his affair with Wood’s wife, Krissy. She wasn’t the only female to be passed between the rockers—Pamela Miller and Bebe Buell also got to know both the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin from very private perspectives. “Didn’t I tell you he’s a devil?” Buell quoted Jagger after her dalliance with Page fell through. “You’re just not kinky enough for him, not weird enough.” Richards and Wood’s sideline band, the New Barbarians, were an opening act at Zeppelin’s 1979 Knebworth performances. In 1985 Page provided a guitar solo for “One Hit (To the Body)” from the Stones’ so-so Dirty Work, and by 2007 Wood and former bassist Wyman were billed as opening acts at Led Zeppelin’s O2 reunion concert. The art school dropouts and blues-loving adolescents from the bedroom communities of south London had traveled a long way together.
In that long run, it appears that Led Zeppelin may have surpassed the Rolling Stones as rock music’s second most influential band. The Stones certainly were aware of the newer band’s ascendancy from 1968, and their rejection of Led Zeppelin as a guest act on their Rock and Roll Circus film that year (they picked Jethro Tull instead) may well have been driven by a perceived threat that Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones’s new assembly would steal their show. Drummer Charlie Watts has acknowledged that the Stones’ entry into the stadium circuits of 1969 was affected by Zeppelin: “[I]n ’69 you really had to be on top of it to play. That’s how Hendrix and bands like Led Zeppelin came about…. I call that tour the Led Zeppelin tour, because it was the first time we had to go on and play for an hour and a half…. Led Zeppelin had come to the States, and they would do a twenty-minute drum solo and endless guitar solos.”
Although Robert Plant has spoken in the 2000s of maintaining a friendship with “the singer in that band,” the Stones themselves have made the odd crack at Zeppelin’s expense, Ron Wood in his autobiography recalling his first impression of John Bonham’s resemblance to “a farmer,” and Keith Richards commenting in 19
86, “Now, I don’t like Led Zeppelin at all, piss on ’em,” and characterizing Plant and Bonham as “a pair of clueless Ernies from the Midlands.” Though the Stones have lasted considerably longer than Zeppelin and have a deeper catalogue of instantly recognizable hit songs, they have sold fewer records and have a less consistent history, which now includes appearances on The Simpsons and in the Pirates of the Caribbean movie franchise, and at the Super Bowl halftime show, plus the licensing of their music to the Hallmark greeting card company along with Windows and Starbucks. The first of the English blues-rock bands to find international fame, the Stones made a deeper impression on the social movements of the 1960s and ’70s, with their historic sexual, racial, and pharmaceutical provocations, and they set the precedent of the debauched vocalist-and-guitarist duo that became a classic stage pose with Zeppelin and so many other groups. But Zeppelin’s music has probably shaped the subsequent course of the recording and performing businesses to a greater degree: The Rolling Stones are the one and only Rolling Stones, whereas Led Zeppelin are often named as the true instigators of a whole hard rock genre. Barring a surprising reinvention as they approach their seventies, the Rolling Stones now have to take a backseat to the briefer but therefore less diluted accomplishments of Led Zeppelin.
Bob Dylan
The former Robert Zimmerman was, with the Beatles, one of the two most important rock artists of the 1960s, and his innovative lyrical experiments opened up the possibilities for every songwriter that came later—it’s unlikely Robert Plant could have penned such personal or imaginative songs as “That’s the Way,” “Over the Hills and Far Away,” “The Rover,” “Tea for One,” or “All My Love” if not for Dylan’s example. Though Plant and Page both expressed admiration for Dylan’s work his most conspicuous link with Led Zeppelin is his version of “In My Time of Dyin’,” from his self-titled 1962 debut album. The song was credited as “Traditional, arranged by Dylan,” unlike the Physical Graffiti take that was down to “Bonham-J. P. Jones-Page-Plant.” Dylan’s unvarnished blues and folk covers of the early ’60s popularized two styles that were later to be given the distinctive Zeppelin treatment. The other anecdotes of the Dylan-Zeppelin connection are Peter Grant’s flummoxed reaction circa 1974 when he introduced himself to the singer as Led Zeppelin’s manager (“I don’t come to you with my problems, do I?” Dylan snorted), and a 1969 tale of the up-and-coming British band bumping into “Bobby” Dylan’s proud mother in Florida.
The Who
In some ways, the Who almost were Led Zeppelin. The group was one of the very first whose aural assault was an integral part of their music, and drummer Keith Moon and bassist John Entwistle were to be the rhythm section for an ensemble conjectured in 1966 by Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck, the one both Who members expected to go down like the world’s biggest lead balloon. Studio musician Page played on some of the Who’s first tracks, Richard Cole had been a Who roadie, and guitarist Pete Townshend later said he and Page had known the same girlfriend in the mid-’60s. “She’d obviously fucked him to death, and then proceeded to fuck me to death,” he said. Moon sat in at one of Zeppelin’s last American concerts in 1977. Into the 1970s the Who were known for their extreme volume in concert, for Moon’s wild behavior offstage and unstoppable drum work onstage, for Entwistle’s quiet demeanor and expert musicianship, for singer Roger Daltrey’s flowing curly hair, bare chest, and macho postures, and for Townshend’s obsessive spiritual interests and idiosyncratic leadership of the band. Substitute those names for John Bonham, John Paul Jones, Robert Plant, and Jimmy Page, and the descriptions would still apply.
In fact, for most of the decade the Who were thought to be the superior quartet, one of rock’s reigning triumvirate (along with the Beatles and the Stones) who’d led the original British Invasion. Led Zeppelin, on the other hand, were seen as money-mad upstarts purveying the reductive formula of heavy metal. The Who had already amassed several classic rock songs to their name, among them “I Can’t Explain,” “Magic Bus,” “I Can See for Miles,” “Substitute,” and the anthemic “My Generation.” They’d played at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival with Jimi Hendrix; their ambitious 1969 rock opera Tommy was heard as rock’s most compelling bid yet for artistic sophistication; and they reliably filled stadiums and sold albums in quantity, among them such superb discs as Who’s Next, Quadrophenia, and The Who by Numbers. It was not until Moon’s death from a drug overdose in 1978 and his replacement by Kenney Jones that the Who’s status began to slip, as Townshend battled his own demons. At this point the band’s continued output could only pale next to their older records. They staged a supposed farewell tour in 1982, a second one in 1989, and Daltrey and Townshend are still performing as the Who even after Entwistle’s 2002 death. From sharing a single bill in Columbia, Maryland, with Led Zeppelin in 1969, the Who co-headlined a joint American tour with Jimmy Page and the Black Crowes in 2000. While Townshend’s chordal electric guitar work has won him many admirers, his technique is less advanced than Page’s, and although the Who (like the Rolling Stones) have a deserved place among the rock ’n’ roll immortals, time and public opinion have given Led Zeppelin the edge.
Cream
This great power trio was a direct forerunner of Led Zeppelin, one specifically cited by reviewers and Atlantic Records publicity when the New Yardbirds were taking flight. Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton, both ex-Yardbirds, had been friends since the early 1960s after jamming at London’s Marquee Club, and John Bonham was in awe of drummer Ginger Baker’s abilities. Clapton was a guitar hero before most listeners had ever heard of Page, and Bonham’s “Moby Dick” was likely conceived as the successor to Baker’s “Toad.” Instrumentally, Cream’s virtuosity was emulated by many acts, including Zeppelin; for years afterward, serious rock groups were expected to be very skilled musicians who played imposing racks of equipment at high volumes. Man for man, Clapton, Baker, and vocalist-bassist Jack Bruce were all as good or better on their instruments as Page, Bonham, and John Paul Jones.
Where Led Zeppelin differed from Cream was in their personal cohesion, which carried the four players together over ten years, while the fractious Clapton, Baker, and Bruce barely held on from 1966 to 1968. The result was a deeper and more diverse collection of material, much stronger managerial authority maintaining a more loyal fan base, and a more lucrative recording and performing career. Eric Clapton sounded a little jealous in later complaining that Zeppelin were “unnecessarily loud…. They overemphasized whatever point they were making.” Jack Bruce sounded a lot jealous (and maybe a bit loaded?) at a 2008 awards ceremony hosted by Classic Rock magazine, where he was quoted as saying, “Fuck off, Zeppelin, you’re crap. You’ve always been crap and you’ll never be anything else. The worst thing is that people believe the crap that they’re sold. Cream is ten times the band that Led Zeppelin is…. You’re gonna compare Eric Clapton with fucking Jimmy Page?” No sunshine in his love.
In fairness to Clapton, Slowhand has had a more productive and diverse career since 1980 than Jimmy Page, and is still performing and recording new material. As of 2010 he had embarked on a shared concert tour with another ex-Yardbird, Jeff Beck. Though neither Clapton nor Beck has racked up the drawing power or record sales of Led Zeppelin, both men have put themselves and their work before audiences more often than Page, whose halting output as a solo artist has left his Zeppelin years to stand as his defining musical achievement. Of the three star Yardbirds, Page went on to form the biggest sequel, but Clapton and Beck have enjoyed the more durable professional lives.
Jimi Hendrix
Hendrix, like Cream, was a definite commercial and musical model for Led Zeppelin: distorted electric blues for the sex, drugs, and protest generation. James Marshall Hendrix is debatably a more crucial rock ’n’ roll figure than Zeppelin. His technological innovations of amplification and effects; his firm straddling of the rock, blues, funk and jazz genres; and his tragic, drug-related death at age twenty-seven are as iconic as anything in the four Englishmen
’s mythology. Jimmy Page himself believed Hendrix to be “the best guitarist any of us ever had,” and millions would agree that Hendrix’s command of his Stratocasters was superior to Page’s of his Les Pauls. Page never saw Hendrix perform, due to their conflicting schedules of the late 1960s and early ’70s, although there’s a story that the two guitarists were introduced at a New York bar when Hendrix was completely out of it, as he often was.
Hendrix was said to have praised John Bonham’s bass drum footwork, but he, like his friend Eric Clapton, found Led Zeppelin’s extremely heavy riffs too far from authentic blues for his tastes. Asked about Zeppelin in one interview, he only rolled his eyes. “When you have the once-in-a-lifetime chance to work with an artist whose stature is so huge and overwhelming, it kind of overshadows everything else,” recalled engineer Eddie Kramer of his Hendrix collaborations, “even though I loved working with Zeppelin, the Stones, Traffic, and, in fact, everyone.” Page paid tribute to Hendrix with a version of the Woodstock “Star-Spangled Banner” at some 1977 American shows, while Hendrix’s death the previous day was acknowledged by Robert Plant from the stage at Madison Square Garden on September 19, 1970. “A great loss came about for the whole of the music world,” he told the fans. “And we would like to think that you, as well as us, are very sorry that Jimi Hendrix went.” If Led Zeppelin collectively was a stronger band than Hendrix’s Experience, Hendrix himself—singer, guitarist, songwriter, producer, showman—was closer to an individual rock ’n’ roll genius.
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!.