Have I mentioned yet that I deem Zep Deppelin completely overrated?
I see them as broadly comparable with Metallica (stay with me here...). A
necessary band, for marrying multiple musical camps together, and who achieved their best work at the start of their career. A band that then didn't have the good grace to vanish in smoke, instead endlessly diluting their sound and image whilst never quite delivering the same quality product.
Led Zeppelin took the emerging trends of pared down boogie rock, abstract fuzzy psychedelia and bloated 'heavy' rock like Vanilla Fudge and Iron Butterfly, and condensed all of these into an accessible product that didn't detract or necessarily cheapen any of these core genres. They were the band that fans of these genres were waiting for, really, where Jeff Beck and co had failed to do so. The early-to-mid 1969 Led Zeppelin stirred up a fervent, angry Beatlemania in the US as the music was faster and more aggressive than Vanilla Fudge
et al, but still as heavy.
Very cleverly (or by sheer accident) the band were able to create a mysterious, occult image. They were both ubiquitous and curiously absent, hiding behind odd symbology, opaque lyrics and spooky studio production whilst still delivering stabs of explicit hard rock. Perhaps this is down to the pairing of two posh introverts and two working-class loudmouths? If you wanted bellicose hotel smashing then you worshipped Bonzo, and if you wanted impenetrable mysticism then you studied Page; all of this in a band that was far more 'Pop' than Genesis, Gentle Giant
et al.
I think Led Zeppelin should have dropped the first four albums, an astonishing live album and then vanished forever. When the albums start to take years to deliver, have weird pastiche tracks and generally sound like shit then the writing is on the wall. When the band take a year off between tours (okay, there was some personal turmoil involved I know) and dedicate a half-hour solo spot to Page dicking around with a Theremin and a violin bow then
the writing is on the wall.
What bothers me, firstly, is the cynicism that must have taken root in the band. You have mobsters running security and surround yourselves in a climate of fear. You then give astonishingly bad performances, safe in the knowledge that fans will turn up anyway and your fat, crooky manager can still have each venue over a barrel and ask for
anything financially and probably still get it. Page's playing took a nose dive in 1975 (it was already pretty unsteady before then), and he got to the stage that it sounds like his two hands are playing different parts. His right hand feverishly struggles to get up to speed during solos, blindly reeling off 16th notes whilst his left hand fires out a miasma mis-judged country bends and the exact same dinosaur licks he committed to tape for that meandering, unimpressive solo in Hearbreaker on LZ II years previously. That stuttering, ricochet sound of one note in three actually hitting the mark, further highlighted by that stringy, undercooked guitar tone he seems to have become smitten with, all delivered by a sweating skeleton of a man surrounded by an impenetrable dope fug.
That is basically giving your audience two fingers, in my opinion.
Black Sabbath made the mistake of having the younger, thirstier Van Halen support them on latter '70s tours; Led Zeppelin didn't take the same risk.
What bothers me secondly is the vast number of Led Zeppelin fans willingly to become paedophile apologists to defend Page's behaviour during that period. Morals and tastes were so different in the '70s (apparently) that multiple sources indicate, and openly boast, that Lori Maddox was all but abducted by the band and then secreted off to Page's hotel room when he was in the area. Her parents were fine with farming off their barely-teenage daughter to a smack-ravaged guitarist with an unhealthy sexual appetite, which says more about them than anything else! What shitty parents, frankly.
I'm 26, and I have absolutely nothing in common with 14 year old girls, have zero interest in them, their tastes or ideas. I dare say the public wouldn't be so endlessly forgiving if I coerced one of them into weird cod-Satanic sex rituals. Guys in their mid-to-late 20s shouldn't be involved sexually with girls that have to ask the teacher before they are allowed to go to the bathroom. That is utterly messed up.
Evidently if you pen some radio-friendly rock music then you have a free pass to groom underage girls, and your fans will back you up all the way.
That seems unbelievably shady. In general I see Led Zeppelin as a band that put in a couple of years' solid work, then basket off the proceeds for years after in an excessive and indefensibly shitty manner.
Just my $0.02.
