Led Zeppelin

Subject: Led Zeppelin Wed 12 Sep 2007 - 14:27

BIOGRAPHY

Credit:The official website

Hollywood, 1973. It was only the second day of Led Zeppelin's stay in Los Angeles. Already, the word was out. Hordes of fans prowled the hallways of their hotel, the infamous Continental Hyatt House. The lobby was filled with photographers, groupies teetering on platform heels, even an impatient car salesman who'd come to deliver a hot-rod to drummer John Bonham.

The cold steel elevator door slid open to reveal the ninth floor. Two beefy security guards stood there, demanding a note of authorization. One had already reached in, ready to smash the button marked "lobby." Luckily, I had a note.

Nine floors up, there was no sense of the furor downstairs. Robert Plant, fresh from the shower, strode to the window of his suite and looked out at the billboards of Sunset Strip. He noticed the gloriously run-down hotel, the Chateau Marmont, where Zeppelin had first stayed upon their arrival in America back in 1968. Plant joked to Jimmy Page, the guitarist leader of the group, that his innocence looked like it needed a paint job. Page had something else on his mind. A representative of their record company, he said, had just called to report that the sales of the new album, Houses of the Holy, were spectacular. Page had been officially told that Led Zeppelin were the biggest-selling group in the world. A silent moment of triumph passed between Plant and Page. Across the hall, an Al Green record played on Jones's portable stereo.

"Well," said Jimmy Page, turning to the visiting writer. "What do you want to know?" I wanted to say "everything." As a fledgling journalist still working at a record store, I'd fought for the opportunity to cover Led Zeppelin for the L.A. Times. The band had provided the soundtrack for my own adolescence, but I kept that to myself. I had a notebook full of questions, and as our interview progressed, Page and Plant seemed to warm from their notoriously press-wary stance. In the coming years, they would invite me to tour with them. We conducted innumerable interviews. Not many journalists were ever offered a front-row seat to the Zeppelin experience, and years later my files are still bulging with volumes of transcripts and passionately-scribbled notes I can barely read.

The Zeppelin attitude had something to do with Peter Grant, their brilliant and imposing manager. A little bit to do with the wicked humor of Richard Cole, their road-manager. Something to do with John Bonham thundering down the aisle of the Starship, performing Monty Python routines. With John Paul Jones, lost in dry-ice, playing "No Quarter." It had a lot to do with Page and Plant, side-by-side, sharing a single spotlight, ripping through "Over The Hills and Far Away."

The reverberations from those days run through most of what passes for rock and roll in the 1990's (and beyond). Led Zeppelin has never been more popular, more pervasive, more omnipresent. They broke up ten years ago, but you wouldn't know it by listening to the radio. Not since Elvis joined the Army has an audience so completely refused to acknowledge an artist's inactivity.

Decades after their formation, the warm glow of myth surrounds Led Zeppelin. Few other than Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, and John Paul Jones remember what a truly difficult road Led Zeppelin traveled in their time.

London, 1968. Noted British session guitarist Jimmy Page had taken an offer to join the Yardbirds, only to see the group splinter on an American tour. He'd vowed to continue the band as The New Yardbirds, and set about rebuilding the group from scratch. Fellow sessionmate, bassist-keyboardist John Paul Jones read an article in Disc Magazine after prodding from his wife and called Jimmy.

Page had also gotten a hot tip on a young blues-singer from Birmingham, and he traveled there to see him perform. "His vocal range was unbelievable," recalls Page. "I thought, 'Wait a minute. There's something wrong here. He's not known." Page laughs. "I couldn't figure it out. I thought, 'he must be a strange guy or something.' Then he came over to my place and I could see that he was a really good guy. I still don't know why he hadn't made it yet..."

At Page's home, they explored each other's tastes by playing favorite records—everything from Buddy Guy to the Incredible String Band to Muddy Waters and Elvis. Then Page broke out an odd choice. It was Joan Baez's dramatic version of the ballad, "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You." Page outlined a plan for a band that could play a song like that. "I'd like to play it heavy," he said, "but with a lot of light and shade."

It all made sense to Plant, who suggested they add his hometown pal and former bandmate, drummer John Bonham. The group's first get-together was in a tiny room below a record store on London's Gerard Street. The building has since been torn down, and the district reshaped as the city's Chinatown district, but Page remembers it vividly. "The room was about 18 x 30," remembers Page, "very small.

We just played one number, 'Train Kept a Rolling,' and it was there immediately. An indescribable feeling...." They rehearsed for several weeks at Page's home at Pangborne, on the River Thames. First on the agenda was a two-week tour of Scandinavia, a mop-up of some old Yardbirds commitments. Still playing under the name the New Yardbirds, they soon entered London's Olympic Studios.

It was Robert Plant's first time in a full-service recording studio. "I'd go back to the playback room and listen," he recounts. "It had so much weight, so much power, it was devastating. I had a long way to go with my voice then, but the enthusiasm and sparking of working with Jimmy's guitar...it was so raunchy. All these things, bit-by-bit, started fitting into a trademark for us. We finished the album in three weeks. Jimmy invested all his Yardbirds money, which wasn't much, into our first tour. We took a road crew of one and off we went...."

Their first British show took place October 15th, 1968 at Surrey University. They performed under a new name, Led Zeppelin, coined by the Who's drummer Keith Moon. (As in "you'll go over like a...") An early staple of the live show would be the song "Dazed and Confused", which featured an electric Page solo played in part with a violin bow. The bow later became Page's famous solo-signature, and it's an interesting historical footnote that the idea was first suggested to him during a session by the violinist father of actor David McCallum, of Man From U.N.C.L.E.

Zeppelin performed their intense, bluesy show at several stops around England. The response from the press was mild. America beckoned. Manager Peter Grant had a keen sense of U.S. audiences and the vast underground movement that was sweeping the country. Grant saw an opportunity when the Jeff Beck Group, managed out of the same office, cancelled out on an American tour with Vanilla Fudge. He called the upset promoters and talked them into a new group instead. Now all Grant had to do was convince the members of Led Zeppelin to leave their warm homes at the last minute, on Christmas Eve, for parts unknown. They agreed with gusto. Page and Jones felt like warriors embarking on a new campaign. For Plant and Bonham, it was a long long way from the hills of the Black Country. The band flew straight to Los Angeles for a series of shows at the Whisky A Go Go. They drove to the Chateau Marmont, and came upon a good omen. Keith Webb, a friend from Terry Reid's band, was standing out front in the 80 degree weather. He extended glasses of champagne.

The first reviews of the album were surprisingly skeptical. It was a time of "supergroups," of furiously-hyped bands who could barely cut it, and Led Zeppelin initially found themselves fighting upstream to prove their authenticity. A critical drubbing by Rolling Stone would remain painful for years. It set an ominous tone for the group as they left Los Angeles and headed up to San Francisco to begin their tour.

Manager Peter Grant had a game plan. He'd avoided releasing any singles, and had studiously booked the group into key hotspots for progressive music. This group would not compete on AM radio with Gary Puckett or the Fifth Dimension. Led Zeppelin was more about an entire album. It would be a private experience, a word-of-mouth affair, something to be passed between friends like a good joint. The key piece of this plan would be their show at San Francisco's Fillmore West.

The band was sharing the bill with Taj Mahal and Country Joe and the Fish. They arrived to find they'd been advertised only as "Supporting Act." The mission was clear—do or die—and Led Zeppelin took the stage that night with a vengeance. Jimmy Page could feel something happening in the audience, even from the stage. "It felt like a vacuum and we'd arrived to fill it," he explains. "First this row, then that row...it was like a tornado and it went rolling across the country."

By the time the band hit New York, they were headliners. The first album went top ten and stayed on the charts more than a year. They would tour the US three times in 1969 alone.

Led Zeppelin II was largely written and recorded on the road, no small feat considering the pace of their touring. The album sported more of a band personality—they were getting to know each other—and Plant had honed his vocal approach. "Whole Lotta Love," the explosive first single from the album, would be the first big hit.

Today, none of the band members is sure when the monster "Whole Lotta Love" riff first appeared. John Paul Jones ventures that it probably came from a stage improv during "Dazed and Confused." Says Plant: "Wherever it came from, it was all about that riff. Any tribute which flows in, must go to Jimmy and his riffs. They were mostly in E and you could really play around with them. Since I've been playing guitar myself, I've realized more than ever that the whole thing, the whole band really, came straight from the blues. Everything."

Subject: Re: Led Zeppelin Wed 12 Sep 2007 - 14:34

By 1970, Zeppelin's popularity had spread to England and parts beyond. They had even unseated The Beatles in the prestigious annual Melody Maker readership poll. Singles were rarely released in the US, never in the UK. Concert ads were rarely taken. To be a fan of Led Zeppelin was to be a member of an exclusive club. The information traveled not in newspapers, but in the back of cars, on the telephone and on the radio. "My basic attitude toward performing live is the same now as it was then," he told me in 1990. "I don't know if you can put it in print, but it's this—shit or bust. You do it. No nerves...you just do it."

Led Zeppelin toured for two-and-a-half years straight before finally taking a break. When a vacation was planned, it was a working vacation. Plant had the idea of traveling to a cottage in the mountains of Wales for a songwriting session with Page. (Plant: "I thought we'd be able to get a little peace and quiet and get your actual Californian, San Franciscan, Marin County blues without ever actually going there.") The name of the cottage was Bron-Y-Aur, so-called for the stretch of sun that crossed the valley every day. "Bron Y-Aur" would become a title for a certain kind of Zeppelin music—acoustic, bluesy, and soulful.

Led Zeppelin III contained echoes of Sunset Strip, of the Byrds and the Buffalo Springfield, of-Joni Mitchell and Moby Grape. Crossbred with their essential blues foundation, this was a new direction that truly pushed the envelope of hard-rock. They were rewarded with their least-selling album yet. It didn't matter to Jimmy Page. The stage shows expanded to feature the new material in an acoustic set.

Led Zeppelin's concerts became legendary affairs. "Dazed and Confused," still the roller-coaster centerpiece, could last as long as 45 minutes. When the floodgates opened, it was sometimes difficult for Page to close them again. Likewise for John Bonham's nightly solo, "Moby Dick." The "boogie" section of the show came late in the set, and it tended to feature whatever music the band was listening to at the time. (Some of the surprise songs played by Zeppelin: "Woodstock," "Shaft," "Feelin' Groovy," and "The Star Spangled Banner.") There were few effects, no tapes, just brute musical strength. Zeppelin live was a direct descendant from Elvis's early shows. Raw, direct, a reminder of when rock was young.

Undaunted by the sales of the third album, Page kept to his original goal of bringing hard rock and musical drama to an essentially acoustic base. It was all about depth of feeling, he says today. In 1990, it's that same depth of feeling that keeps the many Zeppelin imitators just that. Like with a great comedian, you can retell the jokes but the laughs just aren't the same.

The next album, "Led Zeppelin IV", was a watershed moment in the band's history. The LP slipped into stores in 1971 with little fanfare. Here was a more "mature" work that also rocked as hard as any of their previous efforts. It was remark able music for a band that was still, essentially, a trio with a great singer.

Bonham and Jones had begun to feel their confidence. It was Bonham who spontaneously interrupted work on another (never-finished) track by playing the drum-part from Little Richard's "Keep A-Knockin'." And Jones had brought in another idea, inspired by the Muddy Waters album Electric Mud.

The highlight of the album, of course, was "Stairway to Heaven." The most-played track in radio history, it began like many Zeppelin classics...on a tape from Page's home studio. Recording at Headley Grange, a converted poorhouse in Hampshire, Page first played the track to John Paul Jones. "Bonzo and Robert had gone out for the night, and I worked really hard on the thing. Jonesy and I then routined it together, and later we ran through it with the drums and everything. Robert was sitting there at the time, by the fireplace, and I believe he came up with 80% of the lyrics at that time. He was just sort of writing away and suddenly there it was....

Plant picks up the story: "Yeah, I just sat next to Pagey while he was playing it through. It was done very quickly. It took a little working but, but it was a very fluid, unnaturally easy track. It was almost as if uh-oh—it just had to be gotten out at that time. There was something pushing it, saying 'you -guys are okay, but if you want to do something timeless, here's a wedding song for you."

Houses of the Holy came next. Released in May of 1973, this richly atmospheric album was not an easy first listen. ("It usually takes people a year to really catch up to our albums," Page once said.) The band hit the road again with the new material. Their popularity was now so great that they served as a test-case. They were selling out massive stadiums that had never hosted rock and roll before.

The "Kashmir" riff first appeared on Page's home-studio work tapes. It was first a tuning, an extension of a guitar-cycle that Page had been working on for years. (The same cycle that would produce "White Summer," "Black Mountain Side," and the unreleased "Swan Song.") "The structure of it was strange, weird enough to continue exploring," remembers Page. Jones had been late for the sessions, and Page used the time to work on the riff with John Bonham. Plant added the middle-section, and Jones later added the ascending bass riff in overdubs and all the string parts.

Originally called "Driving to Kashmir," the lyrics were inspired by the long drive from Goulimine to Tan-tan in Southern Morocco, the area once called Spanish Sahara. "the whole inspiration came from the fact that the road went on and on and on," Plant explains. "It was a single track road which cut neatly through the desert. Two miles to the East and West were ridges of sandrock. It basically looked like you were driving down a channel, this dilapidated road, and there was seemingly no end to it. 'Oh, let the sun beat down upon my face, stars to fill my dreams...' It's one of my favorites...that, 'All My Love' and 'In The Light' and two or three others really were the finest moments. But 'Kashmir' in particular. It was so positive, lyrically.

Bad luck struck when Plant's car plunged off a cliff on the Greek island of Rhodes. Plant's wife suffered a fractured skull, and a broken leg and pelvis. Plant fractured his elbow and broke his ankle. They were taken to a small local emergency ward. Just how pervasive was Zeppelin's popularity? "I was lying there in some pain," Plant says with understatement, "trying to get cockroaches off the bed and the guy next to me, this drunken soldier, started singing 'The Ocean' from Houses of the Holy."

Plant's accident would thrust the band into their darkest period. For 18 months, it wasn't known if he'd be able to use his leg again. Plant spent a lengthy period of time drinking beer and "tinkering on the village piano." Clearly, Zeppelin needed a new album, and needed to feel their ability to make a great one. The plan was to record fast, to push the limits, to paint themselves in a corner and dare themselves to escape.

Rehearsals for Presence began in Malibu, California. It was an odd sight - Led Zeppelin with Robert Plant in a wheelchair. The band soon moved to Munich for the sessions. Every waking hour was spent in the studio, located in the basement of their hotel.

A dangerous period of inactivity followed Presence. ("You gotta keep your mind active," said Page at the time, "you can never just 'go on holiday.") Plant continued therapy on his ankle. Jones tried farming. Page retreated to Switzerland to produce "Bonzo's Montreux" with John Bonham. Each member was being asked the same question with alarming frequency—had the band broken up?

The days of gardening would soon come to an end. Plant's leg improved, and the band held their collective breath when he elected to get up on stage with Bad Company at a New York concert. It was a triumphant evening for Plant. He found he could still move the way he wanted to on a stage. It was a little wobbly, but it would improve. Yellow lights were switched to green. A Led Zeppelin tour was planned for the next year.

Meanwhile, rock had changed. Punk was raging through England, threatening to sweep all the old-time arena-size acts under the carpet. While Page admired the work of the Sex Pistols and the Damned, he was surprised to see that some of the younger musicians had their guns aimed directly for Zeppelin. (Said a member of the Clash: "I don't even have to listen to their music. Just looking at one of their album covers makes me want to vomit...") After winning the Melody Maker poll at the outset of 1977, Page had earnestly explained that "Zeppelin is not a nostalgia band." They rehearsed for two months, carefully assembling the set that would prove it.

The 1977 Zeppelin show was a three-hour tour de force. Page's guitar blazed, Plant's soul was on nightly display, Jones and Bonham swung. It was a thunderous break in the two-year silence. For the first time, critics and audiences agreed. This was Zeppelin at their tightest and loosest. The response was overwhelming. As Plant joked on-stage at Madison Square Garden, plucking up some roses left by a fan: "I didn't know you cared."

In Los Angeles in 1977, Page gave a particularly stunning description of the Zeppelin alchemy: "The motto of the group is definitely 'ever onward.' If there ever is to be a total analysis, it's that. The fact is that it's like a chemical fusion...there's so much ESP involved in it. It sounds pretentious, but it's true. That's just what it is. When there are three people playing on stage, instrumentally, and I'm in the middle of a staccato thing, and Bonzo just for some unknown reasons happens to be there doing the same beats on the snare drum... that sort of thing is definitely a form of trans-state...it is a sort of communication on that other plane. People get so scientific about it, I experience it every day. There is such a creative thing there within all of us, you just want to keep going. People really bring it down to earth when they say 'Have you ever really thought of splitting up?'.

But things would never be easy for Led Zeppelin. Tragic news hit as the band was preparing to leave the U.S. at the end of the tour. Plant's young song Karac had died suddenly from a virus infection. The effect was devastating. Plant disappeared into the country to mend the wounds. His bandmates worried about him, wondered about the future of the group, but within a year Plant had re-emerged with new dedication.

In November of 1978, Zeppelin flew to Stockholm to begin recording a new LP. In Through The Out Door was an album of new sounds and wide style-shifts, odd directions and even the gorgeous Zeppelin ballad "All My Love." "The whole search is for the unknown," Page once said. "We're always looking..."

The band came roaring back to full-power in the summer of 1979. The seventies had been their decade, and they were closing it out in style. In August, two huge appearances at Knebworth had turned out to be emotional affairs for the homeland audiences. The band swept the Melody Maker polls again. "Fool in the Rain," a rare Zeppelin single, was released in December.

After Knebworth, what would be the next step for the biggest band in the world? The answer came that next July as the group stealthily began their first European tour in three years. "Zeppelin Over Europe 80" opened with little fanfare—it was almost a dream for the Zeppelin faithful. There was a playful and generous spirit about the show. (Page had even handled some of the stage introductions himself.) The set opened with "Train Kept A Rollin'," the first song the band performed together twelve years earlier.

On September 25th, the band was locked in rehearsals at Page's home. The work was over for the day. John Paul Jones and Zeppelin associate Benjie LeFevre had playfully decided to visit John Bonham's room "just to watch him sleep." They found him dead. Bonham had turned the wrong way, accidentally, after a night of drinking. The tragic sight, according to Jones, looked shockingly arbitrary.

The decision to end the band came instantly. In a group this close, the loss was immeasurable. When the three members met in a London hotel room, it was only a matter of wording the statement.

"It was impossible to continue, really," says Page today. "Especially in light of what we'd done live, stretching and moving the songs this way and that. At that point in time especially, in the early 80's, there was no way one wanted to even consider taking on another drummer. For someone to 'learn' the things Bonham had done...it just wouldn't have been honest. We had a great respect for each other, and that needed to continue ...in life or death."

On July 13th, 1985, the band performed at Live-Aid, at JFK Stadium. There were priceless moments, but I'll remember Page's smile when Robert sang his familiar added-line to "Stairway to Heaven" - "does anybody remember laughter." It was a look that came from way down deep, and it carried with it a memory of a hundred Zeppelin shows gone by. In subsequent years the band would sometimes perform with Jason Bonham on drums, popping up at the 40th Anniversary concert for Atlantic Records or at Bonham's own wedding party.

"I look back at it all and laugh," Robert Plant says today. "I was just 19 when I got off the plane. It's like having a child, and I'm part of that child. The answer to it all is growing up, developing a balance. So much of the time was like being in the middle of a knitting pattern which hadn't been finished. There were no instructions, and the pages were re-written every day...."

Subject: Re: Led Zeppelin Wed 12 Sep 2007 - 14:55

DISCOGRAPHY

LED ZEPPELIN(1969)

TRACK LIST

01. Good Times Bad Times
02. Babe I'm Gonna Leave You
03. You Shook Me
04. Dazed And Confused
05. Your Time Is Gonna Come
06. Black Mountain Side
07. Communication Breakdown
08. I Can't Quit You Baby
09. How Many More Times

LED ZEPPELIN II (1969)

TRACK LIST

01. Whole Lotta Love
02. What Is And What Should Never Be
03. The Lemon Song
04. Thank You
05. Heartbreaker
06. Living Loving Maid (She's Just A Woman)
07. Ramble On
08. Moby Dick
09. Bring It On Home

LED ZEPPELIN III (1970)

TRACK LIST

01. Immigrant Song
02. Friends
03. Celebration Day
04. Since I've Been Loving You
05. Out On The Tiles
06. Gallows Pole
07. Tangerine
08. That's The Way
09. Bron-Y-Aur Stomp
10. Hats Off To (Roy) Harper

LED ZEPPELIN (Untitled) (1971)

TRACK LIST

01. Black Dog
02. Rock and Roll
03. The Battle Of Evermore
04. Stairway To Heaven
05. Misty Mountain Hop
06. Four Sticks
07. Going To California
08. When The Levee Breaks

Houses of the Holy (1973)

TRACK LIST

01. The Song Remains The Same
02. The Rain Song
03. Over The Hills And Far Away
04. The Crunge
05. Dancing Days
06. D'yer Mak'er
07. No Quarter
08. The Ocean

Physical Graffiti (1975)

Disc1
01. Custard Pie
02. The Rover
03. In My Time Of Dying
04. Houses Of The Holy
05. Trampled Underfoot
06. Kashmir

Disc2
01. In The Light
02. Bron-Yr-Aur
03. Down By The Seaside
04. Ten Years Gone
05. Night Flight
06. Wanton Song
07. Boogie With Stu
08. Black Country Woman
09. Sick Again

Presence (1976)

TRACK LIST

01. Achilles' Last Stand
02. For Your Life
03. Royal Orleans
04. Nobody's Fault But Mine
05. Candy Store Rock
06. Hots On For Nowhere
07. Tea For One

The Song Remains the Same (1976)

Disc1
01. Rock And Roll
02. Celebration Day
03. The Song Remains The Same
04. Rain Song
05. Dazed And Confused

Disc2
01. No Quarter
02. Stairway To Heaven
03. Moby Dick
04. Whole Lotta Love

In Through the Out Door (1979)

TRACK LIST

01. In The Evening
02. South Bound Saurez
03. Fool In The Rain
04. Hot Dog
05. Carouselambra
06. All My Love
07. I'm Gonna Crawl

Coda (1962)

TRACK LIST

01. We're Gonna Groove
02. Poor Tom
03. I Can't Quit You Baby
04. Walter's Walk
05. Ozone Baby
06. Darlene
07. Bonzo's Montreaux
08. Wearing And Tearing

Others:

Box Set / Remasters (1990)
Profiled (1990)
Box Set II
Complete Studio Recordings (1993)
How The West Was Won (2003)

DVD:

"Led Zeppelin : DVD" (2003)