Led Zeppelin
 It's
been three decades and the lyrics still don't make much sense -
what is a "bustle in your hedgerow" anyway? - but
there's probably never been a song with such chart-topping impact.
All the more incredible, since Stairway to Heaven
was never released as a single.
So love 'em or hate 'em, Led Zeppelin simply have to go down as
one of the most successful and influential bands in the history of
rock music.
When The Yardbirds broke up in 1968, Jimmy Page formed The New
Yardbirds (the bands' working title), first recruiting John Paul
Jones, another respected session player, on bass and keyboards.
Initially they had Terry Reid in mind as the singer, but when
he declined a friend recommended Birmingham-based Robert Plant.
Plant was singing in a group called Hobbstweedle (remember
them?) and also provided drummer John Bonham (the pair had
previously played together in a band called Band of Joy).
Their first British tour won them few friends, and they
immediately decided to focus on the American market, where page's
reputation had greater cachet and other British bands like Cream
and The Jeff Beck Group had made considerable impact. By their
second tour they had an impressive debut album in tow.
The band recorded their first album (Led Zeppelin I) in
30 hours. The record set a standard in high-energy rock that has
been rarely surpassed but often imitated.
 By
early 1969 it was in the US Top Ten album chart.
Led Zeppelin II (1969) was in much the same vein, and when
critics dismissed Zep as blustering rock bozos, the band retreated
to Bron-Yr-Aur, a cottage in Snowdonia, North Wales, that Plant
had often visited as a child.
With no electricity or running water, they spent days walking
in the hills and nights sitting around the fire plunging hot
pokers into cider, smoking hash and writing.
So important was the cottage and its setting that not only did
they write a song about it (Bron-Y-Aur Stomp), but gave
it a thank-you on the cover of the subsequent album (Led
Zeppelin III) which was filled with acoustic subtlety. The
critics - never satisfied - accused them of going all Crosby,
Stills & Nash . . .
Their fourth album broke a few rules - Its sleeve carried no
band name and no title, just four Runic symbols. The album
contained Stairway To Heaven, the song which became so
entrenched as a rock standard that to this day many guitar shops
carry signs prohibiting it being played on their premises!
 They
planned their 70's career extremely carefully, releasing one album
a year and timing their tours to build anticipation for it, never
performing on TV (apart from one appearance in their first year),
and never (officially) releasing a single.
Their rise - rapid and phenomenal - attracted the disdain of
music critics, who never acknowledged the excellence of some of
their ensuing albums, particularly IV (1971) and Physical
Graffiti (1975), which were surprisingly diverse in content.
The band formed their own label in 1974, called Swansong, and
by the mid-70s they were arguably the most successful group in the
world and offered a blueprint for all the subsequently successful
British heavy metal acts, such as Black
Sabbath, Deep Purple, Ten
Years After and, more recently, Rainbow.
No other group has sustained such a huge following for so long
by repeatedly withdrawing from the limelight and then returning
with a near-perfect master plan.
By late 1979 it had been four years since Led Zeppelin's last
studio album and three years since their last tour. The public's
appetite was whetted for something new, and In Through The Out
Door - recorded in a mere three weeks at ABBA's Swedish
studio - entered the album charts at Number One. The album would
turn out to be their swan song (no pun intended).
On 25 September 1980, on the
eve of their US tour, drummer John Bonham was found dead in bed in
guitarist Jimmy Page's house in Windsor, England, after a 12-hour
drinking session. The autopsy reported the cause of death as
pulmonary oedema. He was only 32.
Apparently the unstoppable
Bonham had downed some 40 measures of vodka before quite literally
calling it a day.
Trivia Note: Before
becoming Led Zep's manager and terrifying hapless promoters around
the world, Peter Grant was a professional wrestler who went by the
name of His Highness Count Bruno Alassio of Milan. He also
body-doubled for Anthony Quinn in The Guns Of Navarone.
|
