{"id":28846,"date":"2025-04-01T00:11:49","date_gmt":"2025-04-01T07:11:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/?p=28846"},"modified":"2025-03-26T12:05:20","modified_gmt":"2025-03-26T19:05:20","slug":"led-zeppelin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/led-zeppelin\/","title":{"rendered":"Led Zeppelin"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"story-images\">\n<div id=\"attachment_28850\" style=\"width: 1210px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-28850\" class=\"size-full wp-image-28850\" src=\"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Led-Zeppelin-Photo.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"900\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Led-Zeppelin-Photo.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Led-Zeppelin-Photo-160x120.jpg 160w, https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Led-Zeppelin-Photo-240x180.jpg 240w, https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Led-Zeppelin-Photo-768x576.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-28850\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Led Zeppelin: John Bonham, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, Robert Plant.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>They were the four winds and corners of the globe to which the wizard guitarist often pointed his bow, each member bringing a more than fully realized and multifaceted quotient to an even larger whole. Their music was an unprecedented, unrepeated, inimitable, and seamless m\u00e9lange of similarly all-encompassing eastern and western flavors, from the blues, jazz, country, and rock \u2018n\u2019 roll of Memphis, Nashville, and the Mississippi Delta, the folk traditions of Laurel Canyon, Greenwich Village, and Tolkien\u2019s England, to the eastern mysticism of India and Morocco. And yet they were so much more.<\/p>\n<p>They and their retinue were a pirate horde, extorting their just rewards by force from an industry that typically treats its indentured artists like cheap whores. The sins of their brazen, mostly unattributed plagiarism can be weighed in the posthumous balance by not only the wildly original, timeless, and myriad masterpieces they themselves created, but also in the way they completely and irrevocably repossessed the scant little they did surreptitiously appropriate.<\/p>\n<p>Their audience was a dazed, devoted mass, initiated into a secret club with a clandestine generational code, separate but not below, and also an integral part of the larger whole. Their band was both a semblance of and antidote to the sixties hangover, reflected in the promise of Woodstock\u2019s utopia broken by Altamont\u2019s disaster, torch carrier of the monolithic Beatles into a more jaded and less innocent era that now craved more breadth, depth, and dynamic power and spectacle in their live and recorded divertissements.<\/p>\n<p>Masters of light and shade, pioneers of long-form, album-oriented rock epics, they were the mighty, one and only Led Zeppelin, and they will be forevermore.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Led Zeppelin-Immigrant Song. Sydney Australia-1972 27 02. Remastered by RudenkoArt\" width=\"740\" height=\"416\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/AwuHPkCyKmg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">**************<\/p>\n<p>Like a newborn foal that drops to the ground and soon after walks, all of Led Zeppelin\u2019s essential characteristics and raw power were there from the get-go. The first electrifying, giddy-grin-evincing rehearsal brought together two seasoned London session musicians with a younger pair of backwoods blues prodigies to ignite the big-bang explosion of hard rock that would echo well into the seventies and beyond.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Led Zeppelin - We&#039;re Gonna Groove (January 9, 1970) Royal Albert Hall\" width=\"740\" height=\"555\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/JOzoLkXl0J8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>James Patrick Page (b. January 9, 1944), the catalytic mastermind behind the assemblage, brought an already well-versed, refined, and unbiased love for many different types of music and apropos guitar styles necessitated by the studio work in which he had been gainfully engaged, and stemmed from an ever curious receptivity that had also prompted him to pay attention to and effectively absorb the tenets of production and engineering witnessed at countless sessions. Having grown tired of that treadmill\u2014and also fed up with being a hired gun in someone else\u2019s group (The Yardbirds, which had also provided a proving-ground platform for several other high profile guitarists)\u2014Page began to broadcast the intention of forming an ensemble that could become an ideal vehicle for his own grandiose vision.<\/p>\n<p>Fellow session man John Paul Jones (originally Baldwin)(b. January 3, 1946), the only member to use an alias (and the only one who came out on the other side unscathed), caught wind of Page\u2019s machinations first and proactively threw his hat in the ring as a master multi-instrumentalist (fretted and fretless basses, 8-string bass, upright bass, bass pedals, piano, organ, Mellotron, synthesizer, six- and twelve-string acoustic guitar, and mandolin) and adept arranger who had also grown tired of the financially stable but aesthetically staid hamster wheel of London studios.<\/p>\n<p>John Henry \u201cBonzo\u201d Bonham (May 31, 1948\u2013September 25, 1980) and Robert Anthony Plant (b. August 20, 1948) came from the west Midlands as already battle-hardened veterans of various regional bands. Both were possessed of the kind of tempered raw power only serendipitous genetics and hit-the-ground-running refinement can bestow, and both ended up as pioneers in their respective roles as a result, as no high profile precedent yet existed. What\u2019s more, each possessed a multifaceted versatility in their own right, with Bonham able to either groove enormously in the pocket like no other drummer before or since, or bring his instrument to the forefront as a renowned soloist (and oh yeah, he could also sing close harmonies with Plant on select songs, most notably \u201cBron-Y-Aur Stomp\u201d and during the a cappella breakdown on \u201cThe Ocean,\u201d and with Plant adding not only another instrument\u2013\u2013harmonica\u2013\u2013to the more authentic blues-rock stew but also setting the new standard for frontmen as the rightfully self-proclaimed \u201cGolden God,\u201d with his leonine beauty\u2013\u2013replete with bared chest and anyone-can-see-his-religion crotch bulge\u2013\u2013on full unabashed display. As a result of this attractive magnetism embodied by Plant and also Page, Led Zeppelin drew more female punters than one would think possible for a hard rock band (and as everyone had learned from the Beatles, Elvis, and Sinatra, the money is where the women are).<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Led Zeppelin - Bron-Y-Aur Stomp (Live at Earls Court 1975)\" width=\"740\" height=\"555\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_PFmGicOEeY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Also already in place, thanks to Page\u2019s time served in the Yardbirds, was manager-cum-gangster Peter Grant (April 5, 1935\u2013November 21, 1995). Heavy-set in both his ex-professional-wrestler physicality and concomitantly forceful personality, Grant guarded his charges with the borderline felonious fierceness rarely seen in the music business before or since. The record deal with which he steamrollered Atlantic\u2019s Ahmet Ertegun is the one every great band should have, as it put the balance of power squarely with the barely tested but already totally realized Led Zeppelin in the form of a higher than usual royalty rate on a multi-album deal, and with full artistic control thrown in for good measure. Another related and equally significant concession Grant secured was Atlantic\u2019s blind acceptance of Jimmy Page as the as of yet unproven producer of their records.<\/p>\n<p>(On the concertizing front, Grant would manage to force hands and broker a similarly favorable deal with venues and promoters, who were given the lower share of the door receipts, which was more often what the artists received. And woe betide any nefarious producers and distributors of unauthorized band merchandise! Tales of Grant ferociously taking bootleggers to task are an integral part of Zeppelin\u2019s buccaneer lore.)<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Peter Grant of Led Zeppelin - Rock &amp; Roll&#039;s Dodgiest Deals 2017 (BBC Segment)\" width=\"740\" height=\"416\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/GbyvBo0afgY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>By the time the fledgling phenomenon group hit London\u2019s Olympic studios to record their fabled major label debut in October 1968, they had already amassed enough suitable original and cover material for a cohesive long-playing album, had some touring experience under their belts during which they had honed said material (and whatever controlled chaos happened within it), and had all but gelled as a unit, enabling them to complete the entire process in just the 30 cumulative hours for which they were billed.<\/p>\n<p>Page and Grant had the leverage-bestowing shrewdness to pay for the studio time themselves, so that when the opportunity did arise to approach a label they wouldn\u2019t have to ask the record company for anything other than manufacture, promotion, and distribution of what would eventually come to be known as <em>Led Zeppelin I<\/em>. Additionally, whoever ended up signing them would have to accept the finished album as is, since it was already in the can. Not needing as much help from a record company would definitely give the band an enticing bargaining chip, but the initial investment would also have the fine-print benefit of getting all the extra pork past Atlantic\u2019s accountants. The band would do the rest, with its spectacle-laden, sure-thing live show and hard-rock-christening intensity firmly in place, and they would do it quickly to the vast benefit of all involved.<\/p>\n<p>(Later, this dividend-coveting, production-value-increasing frugality would manifest in their opting to bypass the exorbitantly expensive and often excessively sterile studio environments of London in favor of more affordable options like the vibe-laden manor house Headley Grange, where they brought in studio gear\u2013\u2013and Page\u2019s adopted distance-equals-depth miking techniques\u2013\u2013to utilize and capture the deep, natural reverb of the lobby stairwell for the gigantic drum sound on \u201cWhen the Levee Breaks,\u201d for instance.)<\/p>\n<p>It was a good call (though somewhat antithetical, as Page was single-averse) to put the self-penned, surprisingly poppy \u201cGood Times Bad Times\u201d as the lead-off track on <em>Led Zeppelin I<\/em>, as it set the precedent that this band was going to be hanging their hat on the rack of their own sound and contemporary compositional efforts, not leaning on their adroit appropriation of archaic music. Everything is in there, from Page\u2019s stand-alone riffs and incendiary solo runs, Plant\u2019s burly vocal hooks, and Jones\u2019 complementarily roving bass motifs to Bonham\u2019s eclectically heavy groove and unprecedented sixteenth note triplet kick-drum stutters (an effect which, for his contemporaries, usually necessitated the simultaneous working of two separate kick drums). The lyrics would get there eventually, but \u201cGood Times Bad Times\u201d and others of its type (i.e., \u201cSince I\u2019ve Been Loving You,\u201d etc.) show substantial imagination in their depiction of a cuckolded narrator railing indignantly in blues-trope clich\u00e9s against a profligate lover, when in reality Plant was already married with children and about to head off to America, where he would find himself neck-deep in an interminable stream of groupies. (\u201cI know what it means to be alone\u201d? <em>Right<\/em>.)<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Led Zeppelin - Good Times Bad Times (2023 Remaster)\" width=\"740\" height=\"416\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/lctde_I0kZs?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\u201cBabe I\u2019m Gonna Leave You,\u201d a folk tune written by Anne Bredon and popularized by Joan Baez almost a decade before, encapsulates several facets of the Zeppelin formula that would prevail across the rest of their oeuvre. For a start, it\u2019s an unexpected, somewhat counter-intuitive choice for a record\u2019s second track, ergo a nice curveball surprise adding to the album-as-art-form\u2019s world building. It\u2019s a predominantly mellow acoustic piece clocking in at almost seven minutes (most of the nine songs are well over the three minute pop cap, setting an instant standard for the album-oriented rock format, and signifying the band\u2019s improvisational and theatrical proclivities for milking every last drop of dynamic and thematic excitement out of the material in concert), which fully explodes during the interludes and outro. This song, \u201cDazed and Confused,\u201d and \u201cHow Many More Times\u201d would establish a precedent for what might be called a \u201cset piece,\u201d a song arrangement so long, elaborate, and cinematic in scope and production as to be a continent unto itself, almost like an album within an album. This would manifest throughout the discography in masterpiece epics like blues fugue \u201cSince I\u2019ve Been Loving You,\u201d dynamically brilliant but overplayed-to-clich\u00e9 generational anthem \u201cStairway to Heaven,\u201d fusion standard \u201cThe Rain Song,\u201d the cinematically ominous \u201cNo Quarter,\u201d Delta slide-guitar odyssey \u201cIn My Time of Dying,\u201d desert paean \u201cKashmir,\u201d the by turns despairing and hopeful, opium-den sleaze of \u201cIn the Light,\u201d the down-but-not-yet-out rallying cry \u201cAchilles Last Stand,\u201d the cathartic lounge blues of \u201cTea for One,\u201d and finally the sprawling, synth-drenched \u201cCarouselambra.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBabe I\u2019m Gonna Leave You\u201d is also the first assertion of the light-and-shade, multi-genre, and wide-amplitude dynamic imperative that would go on to spur the proliferation of other acoustic-incorporating numbers like \u201cThank You\u201d and \u201cRamble On\u201d from <em>Led Zeppelin II<\/em>, continuing through the predominantly unplugged <em>Led Zeppelin III<\/em> and the more modestly blended <em>IV<\/em> with \u201cFriends,\u201d \u201cGallows Pole,\u201d \u201cTangerine,\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s the Way,\u201d \u201cBron-Y-Aur Stomp,\u201d \u201cHat\u2019s Off to (Roy) Harper,\u201d \u201cThe Battle of Evermore,\u201d \u201cStairway to Heaven, \u201c and \u201cGoing to California,\u201d manifesting on <em>Houses of the Holy<\/em> as \u201cThe Rain Song\u201d and \u201cOver the Hills and Far Away,\u201d and finally ending on <em>Physical Graffiti<\/em> with \u201cBoogie with Stu\u201d and \u201cBlack Country Woman.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Led Zeppelin - That&#039;s The Way [Live at Earls Court 1975] (Official Video)\" width=\"740\" height=\"555\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/G6wLf0ucCaY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou Shook Me,\u201d though not as much the aural equivalent of blackface as <em>Led Zeppelin II<\/em>\u2019s \u201cBring It on Home\u201d or <em>III<\/em>\u2019s \u201cHat\u2019s off to (Roy) Harper,\u201d is the inaugural blues appropriation to wit, and features the first of many production innovations on Page\u2019s part (backwards reverb, where the tape is flipped when the effect is applied, gave the treated vocals and instruments an otherworldly aura that evoke Page\u2019s subsequent immersion in the occult, the creation of his Zoso Capricorn symbol for <em>Led Zeppelin IV<\/em>, and an obsessive fascination with the life and effects of infamous English occultist and libertine Aleister Crowley), Page and Plant\u2019s trademark unison and call-and-answer runs, Plant\u2019s blues harmonica, and MVP Jones\u2019 criminally underrated, song-serving multi-instrumentality (bass and Hammond organ). The breakdown call-and-answer vocals feature some of the highest chest voice singing Plant or anyone else would ever attempt, setting the stage for subsequent songs like \u201cCommunication Breakdown\u201d and \u201cHow Many More Times\u201d later on the album, and \u201cThe Lemon Song,\u201d \u201cImmigrant Song,\u201d \u201cFriends,\u201d \u201cOut on the Tiles,\u201d \u201cBlack Dog,\u201d \u201cRock and Roll,\u201d and \u201cFour Sticks\u201d down the line (though just about any track off the first six albums could fit this bill).<\/p>\n<p>Jake Holmes\u2019s \u201cDazed and Confused\u201d (and to a lesser extent, the Howlin\u2019 Wolf-derived \u201cHow Many More Times\u201d) had already cemented Page\u2019s bow-wielding reputation as an arcane musical alchemist and mage as far back as the Yardbirds, and was the first Zeppelin cut to signify the progressive leanings embodied in subsequent pieces like \u201cOut on the Tiles,\u201d \u201cBlack Dog,\u201d \u201cStairway to Heaven,\u201d \u201cFour Sticks,\u201d and the mostly 9\/8 \u201cThe Crunge\u201d in terms of their use of odd time signatures, Lennon-esque shortenings of phrases, janky syncopations, Hendrix-adjacent jazz freakouts, and rhythmic modulations. The mostly triple-metered tune would quickly become a showcase track not only for Page and his work with the cello bow, which he took to new, almost Wagnerian heights, but also for the band as a whole through the ever-expanding and evolving arrangement that extrapolated an often 20-minute-exceeding, emphatically explosive live version from the album iteration\u2019s subtler sections.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Led Zeppelin - Dazed And Confused Live (HD)\" width=\"740\" height=\"416\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6DnGQHGLzYQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Plant once said in an interview something to the effect that each of the four members had their turn steering the ship, and even the unassuming, support-relegated, feloniously overlooked utility man Jones would come to the forefront on <em>Led Zeppelin I<\/em> with \u201cYour Time Is Gonna Come,\u201d executing a nice long organ intro\u2013\u2013and thereafter covering the bass line simultaneously with his feet!\u2013\u2013that would lay the tracks for the you-don\u2019t-notice-until-it\u2019s-pointed-out genius of his parts on subsequent songs like \u201cSince I\u2019ve Been Loving You,\u201d the all but self-contained \u201cNo Quarter,\u201d the sublimely orchestrated \u201cKashmir,\u201d and the boogie-rock concerto \u201cTrampled Under Foot.\u201d These are massive compositional and concertizing accomplishments in and of themselves, until one realizes that Jones also pulled off stunts like adding mandolin, bass pedals, and a third vocal to \u201cThat\u2019s the Way\u201d on stage, and both 6 and 12 string acoustic guitar and bass pedals to \u201cTen Years Gone,\u201d among other songs (if you look at old show photos and videos, you\u2019ll see him with various triple-necked guitars used to facilitate such feats)! Each member was no doubt one quarter of Zeppelin, but Jones is even now the un(der)sung 25% because what he brought to the table\u2013\u2013the space he subtly filled\u2013\u2013was predominantly, unwaveringly supportive (even though it occurred across the widest frequency range). No offense to Page, but if that support had been removed, especially live, punters would have heard and felt a glaring, gigantic void in the soundscape.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Led Zeppelin - Ten Years Gone - Seattle 07-17-1977 Part 7\" width=\"740\" height=\"416\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/MM3L4WwyQb4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Jimmy Page takes the helm on the instrumental sojourn \u201cBlack Mountain Side,\u201d a Bert Jansch-derived acoustic guitar interlude bursting with the east-meets-west fusion of sounds (tabla drums played by Viram Jasani\u2013\u2013one of only two outside musicians to appear on a Zeppelin album\u2013\u2013provide an Indian-adjunct, hemiola\u2019d accompaniment for the guitar\u2019s extensively modified accordatura) that would manifest later in similarly exotic-sounding numbers like \u201cFriends,\u201d \u201cKashmir,\u201d the like-minded solo piece \u201cBron-Yr-Aur,\u201d and \u201cIn the Light,\u201d and in some of Page\u2019s live improvisations and studio leads. Even on this cover of a cover (Jansch had nicked it from a traditional Irish folk melody), one can feel the self-containment of Page\u2019s all-encompassing musical vision, with stand-alone melodic content and low-end reinforcement that required no backing (he generally wasn\u2019t leaving anything to his bandmates in the writing process; \u201cThe Song Remains the Same,\u201d for instance, was initially composed as an exclusively instrumental overture called \u201cThe Campaign\u201d until Plant butted in with his vocals), though he did overdub a brief solo.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBlack Mountain Side\u201d is also the first manifestation of Page\u2019s assimilation of the altered guitar tunings of various blues and folk influences that would show up in several subsequent numbers (including companion instrumental \u201cWhite Summer\u201d). Though he spent more time in standard tuning (E A D G B E), D A D G A D and others he had gleaned from both the jazz-folk of Joni Mitchell and the juke-joint blues of Robert Johnson\u2014and reinforced by the hundreds of hours of studio work\u2014would become somewhat of an obsession for Page, who was always on the lookout for anything that would give his compositional imagination an eclectic edge and enhance his 6-string sorcerer\u2019s mystique. D A D G A D not only widens the available pitch range but also gives the guitarist access to more evocative intervals and chord voicings that are miles beyond the purview of standard tuning (try playing \u201cKashmir\u201d or \u201cIn My Time of Dying\u201d in E A D G B E and the attempter will be indubitably thwarted). The Danelectro guitar he left in D A D G A D (and also D A D G B D, an open G chord similar to what Keith Richards put to ample use with the Rolling Stones) added to the sonic grandeur in its sitar-esque, transistor-y timbre.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Jimmy Page&#039;s best performance of &quot;White Summer&quot;\" width=\"740\" height=\"416\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/kJQ_rJR3yCs?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">**************<\/p>\n<p>Though much of their music could be considered timeless, Led Zeppelin was very much a band of its time. If the road hadn\u2019t killed John Bonham (and by extension, the band itself), the eighties would have; already perceived as bloated-relic dinosaurs by the early-punk release of 1976\u2019s <em>The Song Remains the Same<\/em> soundtrack and accompanying self-indulgent but still exciting puff-piece film, and even despite the reactively stripped-down <em>Presence,<\/em> which also came out that year, the drummer and band\u2019s bombastic sound would have found itself incongruent with the more subtly nuanced new-wave and dream-pop romanticism coming out of England and beyond (Alex Van Halen and Phil Collins came the closest to emulating Bonham as laudable acolytes in their respective bands). Anyone who caught their set or watched footage from the 1979 Knebworth festival could see they had become aged and bruised cavemen frantically flailing about inside the Louvre, anachronistic bulls in the music industry china shop, a once mighty mammoth backed in a corner and frozen into the glacier of history along with their incoming karma and all of the excesses that had once defined them and that they themselves had helped define. They\u2013\u2013a visibly aged, vocally degraded frontman; a sloppy-fingered, pallid, smacked-out guitarist; a bloated drummer who would die of homesickness-alleviating alcoholism just over a year later; and a hapless multi-instrumentalist and arranger who had for a fleeting moment held and immediately dropped the ball with his cheesy musical mores (<em>In Through the Out Door<\/em> suffered mightily under his schmaltzy, decidedly uncool leadership in Page\u2019s doped-up absentia)\u2013\u2013had gone as far as they could under their unsustainable ethos, and were visibly\u2013\u2013and legally\u2013\u2013atoning (the fallout from the 1977 Oakland dust-up and other perpetrated corporeal violence could no longer be avoided, and plagiarized artists were coming out of the woodwork for their settled-out-of-court royalties).<\/p>\n<p>The current musi-cultural climate is the <em>exact opposite<\/em> of how things were in Zeppelin\u2019s laissez-faire prime. Whereas the contemporary scene revolves around shallow, poorly educated, too-early-groomed solo artists releasing overproduced, over-edited, robotic disco singles and filming themselves to death in the mystery-destroying promotional process, using backing tracks at the live performances, and a disproportionate emphasis on image over watered-down, often mumbled songs, Led Zeppelin were an all-in, pedal-to-the-metal, press-shunning, character-rich, mystique-laden, album-oriented force of collective nature whose live shows were earth-shaking spectacles that walked the for-better-and-worse unedited tightrope between perfection and folly (to paraphrase Page, \u201cI deal in emotion, not technique\u201d), pulled no punches, and made attendees feel like they too were part of the history they had just witnessed. There\u2019s absolutely no way, in this crisis era of the Offended Individual (so much of Plant\u2019s and the band and crew\u2019s lyrical and lifestyle-imbued braggadocio is now redolent of a hushed-up, embarrassingly chauvinistic mudslide of \u201cMe too\u201d revelations and declassified mob-style fisticuffs), that a band like Led Zeppelin could possibly exist now, let alone become the biggest act on the planet.<\/p>\n<p>The major label system, which they helped shape as the \u201cit\u201d band of the seventies, first with Atlantic and then via their own vanity imprint (Swan Song), is also nowhere near a semblance of what it once was, other than it being as exploitative as ever, if not more so. Now even more unwilling to take chances on undeveloped artists (ironic, considering Zeppelin emerged from Zeus\u2019s cranium fully formed), much less quartets of male virtuoso marauders who would obviously become a liability (the scandals of Page\u2019s underage-favoring love life and Bonham\u2019s Jekyl and Hyde, spoiling-for-a-fight proclivities aided and abetted by crew and management alike would scare off every tour insurer now), and having fully transitioned from the once profitable record-store model to pittance-revenue streaming, the modern music industry would hold no place for an ascendant Led Zeppelin, who would middle-finger-reject today\u2019s extant industry and inattentive, cell-phone-addicted listenership in kind.<\/p>\n<p>The ironically, chronically detached connectivity of this modern age is offset by the since-1970-doubled world population that has been tempered by experience and socialization on both sides of the earbuds to go it alone, losing themselves in the production and consumption of a burgeoning sea of all too readily available songs that feel more textural than substantial. The scant few that do rise to the surface of the pop ocean and give the people what they want now are mostly attractive young women singing about infatuation and heartbreak in a way that is predictable, surprise-free safe, and utterly soporific, and contribute nothing unique to a deeper discourse (and though Zeppelin were sometimes guilty of this, perhaps more so in the early days, they at least had other assets on tap). As with the current political regime in the US, the people receive the entertainments they both wish for and deserve, and this modern world doesn\u2019t deserve Led Zeppelin.<\/p>\n<p>The way Zeppelin should be enjoyed now is the way they wanted you to enjoy them half a century (!) ago: within the time-honored ritual of pulling the 12 5\/16-inch vinyl-protecting and enhancing gatefold sleeve off the shelf, being immediately confronted by the stunning artwork you can actually see and experience along with the music, extracting the fragile disc from the elucidating inner sleeve (which often contained lyrics and edifying\u2013\u2013yet not demystifying\u2013\u2013album credits), and placing it carefully, reverentially on the turntable, lowering the stylus, and listening to the album in its 40-plus minute entirety via speakers or headphones with undivided attention. This all seems like a laughably quaint notion in our modern ADD age, considering the pathetic 35-second focus limit statistic that recently came to light via YouTube analytics.<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019d rather have visuals to stare at, go see the still in-theaters documentary <em>Becoming Led Zeppelin<\/em> about their shot-out-of-a-cannon early days on an IMAX screen near you, or seek out clips from\u2013\u2013or the entirety of\u2013\u20132003\u2019s <em>DVD<\/em>, or investigate it and other live and rare TV-appearance footage of the band that has resurfaced on YouTube since the site\u2019s inception almost two decades ago. Either way, you\u2019ll be astounded by the sheer creative spectacle and prodigious power of a band that has rightfully, volubly, and indelibly carved its name into the G.O.A.T. tree of rock and roll history.<\/p>\n<p><em>Simeon Flick is an award-winning music journalist and a decades-long contributor to the <\/em>San Diego Troubadour<em>, as well as a San Diego Music Award-nominated singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, classical guitarist (he holds a Bachelor of Music in Classical Guitar Performance degree from the University of Redlands), and home studio owner and operator. He lives in La Mesa with his wife Allison and their two cats, Louis Winthorpe III and Billy Ray Valentine, Capricorn.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>They were the four winds and corners of the globe to which the wizard guitarist often pointed his bow, each member bringing a more than fully realized and multifaceted quotient to an even larger whole. Their music was an unprecedented, unrepeated, inimitable, and seamless m\u00e9lange of similarly all-encompassing eastern and western flavors, from the blues, jazz, country, and rock \u2018n\u2019 roll of Memphis, Nashville, and the Mississippi Delta, the folk traditions of Laurel Canyon, Greenwich Village, and Tolkien\u2019s England, to the eastern mysticism of India and Morocco. And yet they were so much more. They and their retinue were a pirate horde, extorting their just rewards by force from an industry that typically treats its indentured artists like cheap whores. The sins of their brazen, mostly unattributed plagiarism can be weighed in the posthumous balance by not only the wildly original, timeless, and myriad masterpieces they themselves created, but also [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":27275,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[138],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-raider-of-the-lost-arts"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28846"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28902,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28846\/revisions\/28902"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}