Led Zep - heads up

Sounds Awful

And there's 650 pages of it.

Not a Zep fan I take it?

It's a very good book, believe me - and those 650 pages just fly by!

I own Led Zeppelin 1, 2, 3 and 4. But I don't play them anymore, but then again, I rarely play any of the 70's rock albums I grew up with.

I just don't agree with the notion that they where the greatest rock band on the planet, galaxy or universe. My memory is not what it was but I'm sure they where no more popular in the 70's than a lot of other rock bands. The myth is perpetuated by generation after generation of music journalists. What journalist would have the bottle to stand up and say the equivalent of the emperors wearing no cloths.

The same journalists that wrote about the beatles I guess!

Possibly.

I heard Srg Pepper for the first time last month, played it a couple times but not impressed would be an understatement. Although, bought Please Please Me at the weekend, that is an excellent album.

I don't know, but Zep is one of the few 70's bands that still has some traction with the current generation.  Hendrix seems to be another.  I even hear them in the gym on the current rock stations that the 18-28 crowd favors.

I was in Yalta in the Crimea in 2008, and heard Stairway to Heaven twice coming from establishments  on the Black Sea beach front.  (I was going to say drinking establishments, but in Ukraine - or at least Yalta, that would even include the zoo!) That says a lot for the groups impact and staying power, n'est pas? (Or better, Это правда?)

And last year, when I stepped outside of MSG in New York having come into Penn Station, there on the side of a building was a gigantic mural of the Beatles, and the announcement that iTunes now had them...hard to imagine anyone from today getting that kind of billing & fanfare a full 40+ years since they were together & made any music.

You can like or dislike 'em, but their impact has been large and lasting. I am definitely interested in reading the book.

Thanks for the heads up Kevin. I was reading in Record Collector Magazine (I've progressed from the Dandy and Beano )  only yesterday that there is another Led Zeppelin book coming out in November by Danny Somach called Get The Led Out: How Led Zeppelin Became The Biggest Band In The World. I just had to laugh when I saw fatcat's reply above. Looking at his avatar I guess he prefers the Pussycat Dolls in his old age. There weren't any bigger or more popular rock bands around when Zep were at their peak in the '70s. Their Earls Court Concert was one of the best I ever went to. I for one still enjoy listening to them. They were still popular enough to have filled the O2 Arena 10x over if there were enough tickets in 2007.

ATB

Steve

The record sales according to Wikipedia do back up just how much Led Zeppelin sold, only bettered by Elvis, The Beatles and Michael Jackson, and only equalled by Queen among rock bands.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...elling_music_artists

Led Zeppelin could all play as well as any rock musicians, and there are few drummers who would not rate John Bohham as one of the greatest for technique and feel. If you like his style that is a different matter, but that is your own choice.

I do hope this book is not by the journalist who did that article in some music magazine last year where he went on about The Clash for the first page.

As for myths of the music journalists, that punk swept away all the happened before, pah! It catered for a market that no one else had, which is good as its fans didn't relate bands like Led Zeppelin. It didn't kill of the bands that went before, many sold more in the late 70's than they had before punk, although it bring some great people to the fore. Music journalists to this day don't seem to be able to get over that though.

Steve.

Munch also went to those Earls Court gigs, the soundboard recordings of them the circulate are superb. I think they are possibly the best live performance I have ever heard a recording of.

Led Zep were by far and away the most successful group of the 1970s - even the Floyd couldn't come close. Latest estimates (by the RIAA, BPI and other bodies) are that they've sold around 300 million albums worldwide - of groups, only The Beatles have done better. Overall, they have only been outsold by Sir Elt, the Fabs, Elvis, Wacko and Madogga. No band, not even the Fabs, had six albums (all of them, at the time) in the Billboard chart, as Led Zep did in 1975. Their popularity is/was no myth I'm afraid.

They broke many of the Beatles' attendance records in the US, and many of those records still stand, almost 40 years later. In the UK they didn't really play that many mega-gigs, apart from Bath Festival in '70, the Earls Court residency in '75 and Knebworth in '79. Back then stadium gigs were rare in Blighty.

With a few exceptions, Led Zep's stock was pretty low among rock hacks when they were still operating. Early on in their career they were seen as a sell-out, a manufactured band like The Monkees. Later on they were seen as bloated, decadent, remote and self-indulgent. Apart from Cameron Crowe, Rolling Stone loathed them. As did most of the American press. They had greater support in the UK but much of that evaporated after 1976. Strange to think - given their reputation today - that their critical stock was very low in the 1960s and 70s, although the album-buying public adored them.

The reason why you can't recall them being that popular in the '70s was that their media profile was very low - they were rarely written about outside of the rock weeklies and never appeared on TV. To hear Zeppelin, you had to go to the gigs and buy the records. They were like the biggest underground act in the world.

It wasn't until the 1990s that they began to be reappraised - and their critical reputation was finally sealed in 2003 with the release of the two-disc Led Zeppelin DVD (still, incidentally, the biggest-selling music DVD of all time) - if you watch that set, you might begin to understand why they were (or at least, regarded by many as) the greatest rock band of all time.

I'll concede though that slagging off Led Zep is much less common (to the point of being very rare) these days, although critical opinion on their music and legacy is by no means totally unanimous.

As for your contention that no hack "would have the bottle to stand up and say the equivalent of the emperors wearing no cloths", I can tell you - as a journalist - that that's garbage. There is, never has been or never will be, a shortage of people willing to give a sacred cow a good kicking.

Yes, this is true

If asked what type of music I like, I usually say rock music. I can guarantee everybody under 30 will reply Oh, yes, I love Led Zeppelin. I then ask if they've heard OF Robin Trower, Groundhogs, Montrose, Rory Gallagher, Little Feat etc. Nobody ever replies yes.

Have you considered why this is so.

I have the full set of five, Steve, plus, pro-shot films of two of the gigs in full. They are, as you say, magnificent. Probably the band at its very peak.

LOL

Close, but it's actually Faster Pussycat Kill Kill.

As regards to actual popularity in the 70's, Zep members always came pretty low down in the readers polls carried out by NME, Sounds and Melody Maker.

Well, Robin Trower is technically billiant but an unoriginal pasticheur; Montrose were crap and always will be; the Feat were magnificent but not really rock except in a very notional sense; Gallagher was too self-effacing; and the 'Hogs were a bit too left-field. Mags such as Mojo, Word (RIP) and Uncut have all written about RG, LF and the Groundhogs, but they are cult acts and will never be known by casual rock fans. Despite the fact that you like them, and may see it as an injustice, Trower and Montrose are very minor figures and unlikely to be remembered.

Led Zeppelin are remembered today because they were the biggest and the best.

And your point is? I always thought record sales, and ticket sales, were a reasonably good indicator of "actual popularity" as you call it. I didn't realise it was measured on MM readers' poll votes in the Best Singer, Best Bass, Best Guitar and Best Vocal categories. Silly me! Silly everyone!

Members of the Floyd, another huge 1970s act, never figured at all in those music paper polls either.

Are you trying to say Pink Floyd weren't popular as well? Or are you just back-pedalling?

Of coarse Floyd where popular, didn't say they weren't. I was in my teens in the early 70's, As far as I can remember, Zep where no more popular than purple or sabbath amongst rock fans who I knew. In the popularity stakes, at the time no rock band was as popular as T Rex or David Cassiddy

Led Zeppelin's plundering of old blues and folk material - much of it without credit - has been written about many times over the past 44 years. It is perhaps the most problematic aspect of their legacy. It has also cost them a great deal of money over the years, and credits on later pressings have been amended accordingly

However, it is by no means restricted to them - plenty of the bluesmen they ripped off had themselves ripped off older bluesmen in turn; same with many folk musicians (John Renbourne springs to mind).

Thing is, they always transcended and transformed the material they stole (eg "When The Levee Breaks", "Whole Lotta Love", "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You", "Lemon Song" etc) into something new and extraordinary.

What point are you trying to make? That LZ plagiarising some of their material somehow makes Robin Trower a more interesting or innovative Hendrix pasticheur guitar player?

Talking of blues plagiarism, many blues based pop and rock groups can be accused of this from Elvis to the Stones. Arthur Crudup was only paid 20 dollars for recording 'That's Alright Mama' and wasn't even credited by Elvis when he recorded it. Buthe many of the black blues legends were grateful to the British Bands, including Led Zep, for bringing their music to the world, and their own country, as well as getting some monetary remuneration in royalties.

Steve

Wow, this is brilliant. Good old You Tube!

Interesting, but not that unexpected, this happens all the time throughout out the history of music and writing and painting, but I take Fat Cats point. What really pisses me off is using You Tube as some kind of truth commission. You Tube is (if used in that way) effectively a propaganda tool to shore up ones own personal opinion(s). And the amount of patriotism expressed over the most absurd things, the ridiculous postings of bad jokes and the overtly voyueristic medium that it has become, is depressing.

I suspect that if one wanted to enough and with enough time and research one could montage exactly the same thing about many great bands. Of course Page would have been influenced by songs that he heard. There are lyrics, riffs, melodies ripped in most songs I hear, there really are far too many examples to mention, we all know this is the case.

I believe Led Zep were astounding as a band, that is the collective group, they were the precursors to heavy metal and that changed music by creating a new genre if you like,  okay they had a little help from their friends, but than where would we be without our friends help. 

Okay, lesson learned please credit your friends chaps.

Led Zep had 7 UK and 6 US number one albums in the '70s. T Rex and David Cassidy had one each in the UK (excluding '60s reissues). Neither of the latter made much impact in the States, but were popular with British teenyboppers at the time - step forward Fatcat!

Keith

Fatcat, I don't get the point of this, yes Led Zeppelin wee influenced by others before, as have been a great many bands, Oasis for instance.

We get that you don't like Led Zeppelin, but do you have some objection to other people on here liking them? We do, and it is our choice.

Some of the bands you like, we may not like, or may have done tracks that can be pulled apart in some way too.

There used to be a thing on this forum that when someone posted about a band you don't like, then you passed the thread by, and posted elsewhere, lately that seems to have gone, and frankly much of the enjoyment of this forum.

I was also a teenager 'round this time. fatcat is right on the money in terms of pop ularity. The point about LZ is not so much if they were any good, or popular, or sold lots of records but that they knowingly "borrowed" other people's music without giving them any credit. JP in particular - session musician, blues devotee and actually covering some of the songs before LZ! The Hunter was rapidly taken up by British blues-based bands e.g. Free.

BTW - Robin Trower is a good guitarist but not a Hendrix copyist - no one sounds like Jimi!

But how many No.1 singles did they have. Or doesn't that matter.

They didn't release any singles.

No, 1´s do not matter, they were an album band and refused to release Stairway to Heaven as a single and yet it has become the most requested rock song on radio..................thats astounding is it not?