Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin were the band that transformed hard rock into a mass phenomenon, but it would be limiting to consider that their only "achievement."

Led Zeppelin changed the history of music by becoming the first mass success that did not rely on radio programming. Before Led Zeppelin, radio and television had been dominated by the "Top 40," the hit parades, and therefore the 45 rpm single. Led Zeppelin became rock stars without ever entering those charts. Led Zeppelin were the first to understand that power was shifting from AM to FM radio, particularly "free form" stations, which played longer songs than the classic three minutes, songs with guitar solos and even without a chorus. Without using the traditional format of the song and radio (which had created all previous phenomena and, in Britain, especially the Beatles, the ultimate commercial phenomenon), Led Zeppelin became a worldwide phenomenon. Not only did their albums sell millions of copies, but their live concerts attracted thousands of people. In this too, Led Zeppelin embodied the changing times. Monterey and Woodstock had already shown what kind of music could draw huge crowds. Led Zeppelin debuted in the year of Woodstock and benefited from this innovation. Their music, completely different from the "free form" radio and Woodstock, proved perfect for taking advantage of the success of free-form radio and Woodstock. In the following quarter-century, free-form radio and mass concerts would largely remain tied to hard rock, the kind that Led Zeppelin had made famous. Even the laconic way Led Zeppelin titled their first four albums represented a break from a tradition that wanted album titles functional to the group’s marketing.

Some credit also goes to their manager, Peter Grant, an old shrewd hand in the music business, who devised one of the most effective publicity campaigns since "Beatlemania."

Jimmy Page, fresh from the Yardbirds and a long apprenticeship with the alternative beat bands (Who, Them, Kinks), met singer Robert Plant in 1968, a promising protégé of Alexis Korner endowed with a peculiar voice, a versatile and hysterical falsetto, which retained the passionate intensity of the blues while combining it with modern hysteria. Taking on bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones and drummer John Bonham, Page structured the new band’s repertoire around the classic British blues style.

What immediately made their live performances legendary was the energy: no band had ever played the blues with such ferocity. Cream had dismantled the concept of the song and pushed blues technique to the limit, but ultimately their music remained cerebral. Led Zeppelin transformed it into purely physical music, a music that unleashed fiery adrenaline. Cream had invented the modern concept of the rock concert; Led Zeppelin upended it, turning it into an orgy of deafening sounds, frantic rhythm, and psychotic screams. Cream had invented hard rock, but it was a genre as heavy as it was slow. Led Zeppelin discarded all intellectual pretensions and added the speed of early rock and roll.

The first Led Zeppelin album, Led Zeppelin I (Atlantic, 1969), generated great excitement, particularly for the pyrotechnic virtuosity of the guitarist (extremely fast and at the same time revolutionary, always in search of devastating effects, even if occasionally redundant), for Plant’s powerful, explosive yet communicative singing, and for Bonham’s Afro-American beat. Their style represented the ideal fusion of blues-rock, the genre launched by the Cream, and psychedelic rock, the genre pioneered by the Pink Floyd. The songs were surreal like those of the Pink Floyd, but charged with epidermal vibrations like those of the Cream.
What initially became legendary was mainly the instrumental imagination and the degree of disintegration they brought to the blues, for example in Dazed And Confused (essentially a cover of Jake Holmes’ song of the same name from his album The Above Ground Sound, 1967, a cover already used in the Yardbirds’ gigs), detonated by alternating lysergic voids and crushing attacks at supersonic speed, and How Many More Times (inspired by a theme of Howlin’ Wolf and borrowing parts from Albert King’s The Hunter and Beck’s Bolero by his friend Jeff Beck), a frenzied bolero propelled by electric shocks and one of the most epidermal riffs in rock history, enlivened by imaginative guitar flights and Plant’s disconnected, shrill outbursts in tumultuous harmonic ups and downs, in terrifying syncopated gallops. The Eastern mysticism of the instrumental Black Mountain Side (an instrumental version with tabla of the traditional Blackwaterside recorded by Bert Jansch in 1965) was less sincere.
These same principles lent vigor to more conventional ballads such as Good Times Bad Times and Your Time Is Gonna Come (with agonizing soul organ), the only original songs on the album (the others are all covers, declared or not).
Between the lines, one could already glimpse hints of raw violence, as in the supersonic acceleration of Communication Breakdown (a variation on the guitar theme of Nervous Breakdown recorded by Eddie Cochran in 1957). Essentially, this first album combined the intense dramatism of the blues with a softer sensibility inherited from the hippie generation, and at times with the sharp neurosis of post-’68 adolescents, merging meditation and audacity into music of discomfort and unease that, without renouncing anti-conformist ideals, brought back those primary, vulgar, and bestial instincts long repressed by the rationalism of progressive movements.
The first album was still a transitional work: the influence of the Cream is very strong in the two long blues that dominate it. The violent nature of their live performances is felt only in Communication Breakdown.

The second album, Led Zeppelin II, broke the mold, focusing decisively on speed and violence. Their rock sounded raw and aggressive compared to the music dominating the charts.
The drum solo in Moby Dick (perhaps the most famous in rock history) and the sequence of short songs on the second side (Heartbreaker) became iconic, even though in reality they didn’t invent anything not already present on the first album: they simply compressed those ideas into a more commercial format. (Many tracks were copies of blues classics, like Bring It On Home, stolen from Willie Dixon, and The Lemon Song, which is the classic Killing Floor by Howlin’ Wolf).
Whole Lotta Love (with lyrics taken from Willie Dixon’s You Need Love) is the archetype of the emerging cliché: endless guitar riffs and bass cannonades while the voice blasphemes and writhes without restraint, with an interlude of psychedelic harmonies and breathless orgasmic screams. Yet the thunderous howl that explodes in a neurotic flurry of notes only proclaims with the eloquence of frustration the archaic, anxious, and breathless blues spasm. Plant had coined an “open” language for singing, and Page had discovered an equally “open” dynamic for the guitar. Both were children of the blues, but after stretching it into psychedelic magma.

III (1970) softened that fierce and vehement sound, which was already achieving phenomenal success, diluting it with folk melodies and psychedelic harmonies, retaining only Immigrant Song in the hard-rock basket; while instead aligning the traditional ballad Gallows Pole and the Eastern tenderness of Tangerine, revealing Page’s two secondary inspirations (British folk tradition and Indian spiritualism).

The return to folk roots is even more evident on the fourth album, Led Zeppelin IV (Atlantic, 1971), clearly influenced by traditional repertoire in the acoustic ballads Going To California and Battle Of Evermore (with Sandy Denny), soft and refracted through nervous psychedelic effects. When The Levee Breaks, a crescendo whipped by Page’s titanic guitar work and driven by skewed drum and bass cadences, remains one of their masterpieces. Despite yet another epileptic burst in Rock And Roll (with a drum intro borrowed from Little Richard’s Keep A Knocking) and the chaotic bacchanal of Black Dog, the band was now moving toward a more contemplative soft-hard style, exemplified legendarly by the long, mystical Stairway To Heaven: the melody takes precedence, the anguished singing displays the full repertoire of Black vocal intonations, and Page weaves solemn chords over solemn chords (not at all like Taurus by Spirit, despite a 2016 lawsuit). Yet mysticism had gotten the better of him, and his passion for Aleister Crowley’s esoteric cult did not fit well with the folk tendencies of the others.
The brash nervousness of Page and the high, visceral singing of Plant, modulating the blues emphasis with a quiet mystical sensitivity, always demonstrated an ability to expand their music, giving it dynamics, breadth, and emotion.

The band could effortlessly sell 4–5 million copies per album. The following records were even more careless. Led Zeppelin often limited themselves to playing a riff and a melody for a few minutes, with no other purpose than to give it a title.

In 1972 Page moved to a new home: Crowley’s former residence on the shores of Loch Ness in Scotland.

Houses Of The Holy (Atlantic, 1973) is an album that is perhaps overly eclectic and at times seems to repudiate their own career, but it still includes some textbook tracks (No Quarter, Dancing Days, and Over The Hills And Far Away).

Continuing in their ambitious frenzy, the double album Physical Graffiti (Swan Song, 1975) is practically a collection of extended tracks in the vein of Stairway to Heaven, but only Kashmir (another “mystical” outburst from Page), Boogie with Stu (a 1971 jam featuring Ian Stewart on piano), and Houses Of The Holy stand alongside the classics of the past.

Presence (Swan Song, 1976) finally marked a return to the grit of their early days, with Candy Store Rock, For Your Life, Achilles' Last Stand, and the usual cover (Nobody's Fault But Mine is actually by Blind Willie Johnson). However, these songs would have been much less impactful on the first four albums.

Led Zeppelin had become the model supergroup of hard rock. Stars of exhilarating shows (as documented by the double live album The Song Remains The Same), they ruled stadiums even more than the Rolling Stones, while continuing in the studio to produce routine music.

Plant withdrew into isolation after the death of his son. It took 18 months before the band reconvened to record a new album, In Through The Out Door (Swan Song, 1979), and naturally the mood was not the best.
Nevertheless, In The Evening is one of the masterpieces: after a few raga-like chords, Page unleashes a thunderous riff that relentlessly drives Plant’s lascivious blues. Success, however, comes from a confused power ballad like Fool In The Rain, which after a few minutes of nonsense erupts into a feverish calypso, immediately followed by the pompous ballad All My Love. Hot Dog parodies ragtime and rock and roll. The ten noisy minutes of Carouselambra, drowned in waves of electronic keyboards, recall the less inspired Rush. These tracks are genuinely embarrassing for a band of this stature (and even for lesser bands).

Bonham died on September 25, 1980, from an alcohol overdose. In the preceding years, both Plant and Page had suffered personal tragedies. This tragedy led to the dissolution of what had by then become a British institution (even though it had been transplanted overseas).

Coda (Swan Song, 1982) is a collection of rarities and unreleased tracks. Led Astray (Connoisseur, 1999) documents the “thefts” of Led Zeppelin (riffs and melodies stolen from other musicians).

By 2025 Led Zeppelin had sold more than 300 million records worldwide.

After the band broke up, Robert Plant, whose intuition had created the original Led Zeppelin sound, was the most successful of the former Led Zeppelin. On Pictures At Eleven (Swan Song, 1982) he even tempered his vocal excesses, which had become embarrassing on the later Zeppelin albums. At least Burning Down One Side and Worse Than Detroit would be worth of any Zeppelin album. The Principle Of Moments (Es Paranza, 1983) was more successful, thanks to the hit Big Log, but most of the songs were derivative if not carbon copies of blues-rock stereotypes. The injection of hip-hop rhythms and electronic arrangements on Shaken And Stirred (Es Paranza, 1985) introduced a new artist. Hip To Hoo, Kallalou and Too Loud have little in common with Led Zeppelin, while the rock and roll of Little By Little is Led Zeppelin for the punk-rock age. But the experiment did not last, and Now And Zen (Es Paranza, 1988), co-written with keyboardist Phil Johnstone, is the most Led Zeppelin-inspired of Plant's solo albums: Tall Cool One is, de facto, a post-modern reflection on Led Zeppelin's style. Plant's retreat in old-fashioned rock and roll ended with Manic Nirvana (Es Paranza, 1990), whose Hurting Kind, Tie Die On The Highway and Nirvana are barely passable. Then Plant adopted chamber instruments and a pastoral stance (the celtic Colours Of A Shade, the romantic 29 Palms, the catchy Calling To You) for Fate Of Nations (Atlantic, 1993).

In 1984 Page, Plant and Jeff Beck formed the cover band Honeydrippers. In 1985 Page was also the guitarist in the Firm, featuring Paul Rodgers on vocals. Not counting the soundtracks Lucifer Rising (1975) and Death Wish ii (1984), Page's first solo was Outrider (Geffen, 1988), and it was mostly disappointing, despite Wanna Make Love and the instrumentals Liquid Mercury and Blues Anthem. His collaboration with David Coverdale, Coverdale Page (A&M, 1993), is embarrassing (Shake My Tree and Whisper A Prayer For The Dying simply reenacy his Zeppelin ghosts) and his "reunion" albums with Robert Plant, No Quarter/ Unledded (Atlantic, 1994), where they revisit Zeppelin classics from a middle-eastern and Indian perspective (and deliver the new Yallah), and Walking Into Clarksdale (Atlantic, 1998), makes one wonder why Plant wasted the time. On the latter, the middle-eastern tinged Most High and the guitar showcases Burning Up and Heart In Your Hand are mediocre at best.

John Paul Jones recorded an album with Diamanda Galas, The Sporting Life (Mute, 1994), and two prog-rock albums, Zooma (DGM, 1999), an all-instrumental display of cerebral fervor (Zooma, Goose), and The Thunderthief (DGM, 2001), a less engaging and often ridiculous attempt at sounding "modern" (Leafy Meadows).

Robert Plant's Mighty Rearranger (Sanctuary, 2005) continues to search for the equivalent of Led Zeppelin's sound for the new century. It ends up sounding like a bunch of Led Zellelin clones who can't quite play the guitar like Page and (more embarrassingly) can't quite sing like Plant.

Raising Sand (2007) was a (terrible) collaboration between Robert Plant and bluegrass fiddler Alison Krauss, mostly devoted to covers (like Tom Waits' The Trampled Rose), from old-fashioned blues to medieval-like ballads with a crystalline chorus in the style of the 1930s.

The Foo Fighters' Dave Grohl, Queens Of The Stone Age's Josh Homme and Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones formed the supergroup Them Crooked Vultures (2009) that sounded like a Led Zeppelin tribute band.

Jones also formed Them Crooked Vultures, scored a ballet for Merce Cunningham and worked on an opera.

Robert Plant's Band of Joy (2010) was mostly a colletion of covers.

Robert Plant reunited with folk-singer Allison Krauss on Raise the Roof (2021).