What kind of shift did "The Led Zeppelin" really signify in pop/rock music?

I didn't go around shoving my prejudices down everybody's throat. I just endured Cream every fucking day, "Spoonful" and all the rest of that whiteheap bigdealsowhat.

especially "pop" were their production values and techniques -- layering of sound etc in the studio -- i think the shift they helped set in place, via the marriage of blues-form with pop studio technique, was the popularisation of this much bigger sound (cathedral-sized as opposed to chamber-sized) as rock's basic sense of its own appropriate presence (they weren't the first in here but they were the first to work out ways of getting a richness of detail into this sized sound, i think)

*given that these purists were self-important fanatics as only brit record-collectors can be!

(ie doowop is NOT conservative even though actually a whole decade older, bcz those making it are/were directly addressing the world actually facing them there and then -- and ditto reed but NOT ditto page-plant or whoever wrote the words for cream -- bruce i guess)

(if he had such a thing -- but i took it that that's what you were proposing by quoting him apparently in support of yr first post)

but if conservative vs nonconservative means something a bit more like formalist vs dreamy/ravey/insanenoisy, that works better

*which i think is wrong btw

?? zeppelin were bonkers....i hardly think they were blues purists in any sense of the word.

So, I don't know if I would say "I don't think he thought 'progressive' was a value," but I do think you're right about formalism (at least in the sense of the exercise being an academic - as opposed to a fun - one, and to the extent that it takes on pretentious airs) being the thing that is being criticized.

?? zeppelin were bonkers....i hardly think they were blues purists in any sense of the word.

They were too disparate in their tastes/backgrounds to be a simple blues 'revival' act a la John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. Plant's love of Bert Jansch/Incredibles etc and Page's dalliance with Joe Meek and Jone's numerous sessions (Cliff and Dusty and Cat...) put paid to that.

hmm...yeah i don't know...i guess i have no idea how they should be viewed...but when i got into them when i was around 13, i saw them as having a HUGE cult-like appeal...they seemed like mysterious superheroes to me, that sold their souls to the devil and had orgies in baked beans and fucked women with sharks and all sorts of scary and evil stuff....i didn't see them at all as a chops-worship thing at all...the songs seemed like wierd and strange and powerful to me....hell, I even gave them a pass for what I viewed at the time as real "sloppy" playing on the part of page esp...i was a big metal kid so his solos didn't seem technically superior at all to me, compared to steve vai or whoever, they seems like sloppy, wrangling scrawls.....all this being the late 80s though, different perspective.

i think zep had pretensions to this aesthetic maybe -- sounds like it from what's quoted -- but actually DID something else again

incidentally the first led zep alb sounds VERY beatley to me -- i think there was a definite pull all over progressive rock to get away from the pitfalls of spectacular popstar-type behaviour, that the blanishments of chartlife were a trap and a prison that a return ot proper musicianship would drive out

it's kind of the london mid-60s club-scene's revenge on the mersey invasion -- the london club-scene being incredibly factional and muso-ridden and clustered

if led zep were/are pushing this line, they are somewhat bullshitting of course -- page's early great work was as a pop session-man (contrast clapton/beck/mayall)

Which explains the different between "Rock And Roll" and "Rock" in some MP3 ID tag editors.

hell yeah there was. they were HUGE!

Interviewer, to Bonham: "So, are you the shy one?"

Explain!

(I own no LZ, have a rudimentary knowledge of their work, but ...)

You might as well have said "The beatles were never merseybeat" on that basis, but whvr.

Hmm. I think it goes a bit broader and deeper than that. They sort of were what mark sez when playing live, but I reckon Jack Bruce was pretty pop savvy and wanted to try and write some 'more musicianly and grown up pop songs' (hence Wrapping Paper, I Feel Free) amongst the bluesier stuff. Clapton was a mirror image - broadening into shorter, more pop stuff later on (Badge, Anyone for Tennis), possibly after he became friends with the Beatles/George Harrison.

The new thing that LZ did was to come out from behind the song when doing Blues-based material - make it larger than life, more about THEM and less about a blues song as a pass-around token of hardship/authenticity. Less reverential, more flashy. That's only one aspect of what they did, but I think it's important.

well yes, except "THEM" as absurd cartoon gods -- i can't THINK why anyone would argue zep stepped away from the cult of personality, except insofaras beatley personality was rooted in what the four beatles were like in real life, while zep personality was them projecting which michael moorcock character they'd like to be seen as

i think geir's right abt the fraught relationship with hard rock to come -- underscoring as everyone always does when they use the word "influence" what a deeply silly and useless word it is -- and that's bcz i think zep's structure and presence are incredibly (and fairly deliberately) deceptive

this is what makes them interesting of course, bcz a cynical effect that works so strongly is always fascinating

i love em -- cream bore the tits off me

Yes, I meant THEM as cartoon gods - Kiss took it to the limit later.

exactly. tho I read 20 yrs ago, IIRC Stephen Davis' bio Hammer of the Godz is v. good on this perceptual shift. the "mysterioso" appeal of runic album covers, epic Valhallan sonic crunch & all that. right up my alley as a sci fi obsessed 15 yo in 1973 and from what I've heard the little girls understood as well.

i seem to recall that zep bought their stage amp system from TOMORROW -- who broke up on tour -- and the system was the biggest then being used on tour

Yes, interesting reading Townshend in last months Mojo about Hendrix. He reckons (and this could be rewriting history) that Beck and Clapton were intimidated and discouraged, whereas he realised that he couldn't outdo JH's persona and playing, but could differentiate himself in songwriting (never Clapton and Beck's strong suit). It might explain Becks' subsequent failure to engage with the mainstream, Clapton's retreat into AOR (after a half-hearted attempt at supergroupdom with Blind Faith) and Townshend's love of the big concept.

Yes.

Also, the whole "boy next door" was SO marketing, even if that was the only way bands were sold back then.

i don't entirely agree abt zep's relationship with punk, unless dada is just stating a personal position: they just WEREN'T't the primary enemy, any more than metal was -- (possibly bcz they didn't have pretensions to intelligence the way a lot of prog did; punk was saying, look, being smart isn't THAT, it's THIS --- but even if you thought zep were AWESOME, no one thought they were SAYING INSIGHTFUL THINGS ABOUT THE WORLD)

and plus: for the faction who thought punk wz about wild misbehaviour, and "badness", they got a bit of a free pass there

Do you think that's because it's uncomfortably hard to sort out what is or isn't prog at that point? (But I guess that would be true for most accounts of genre origins?)

I don't think I've read any extended accounts of prog, so I don't know what sort of slant is taken.

Did anyone really think Jon Anderson was??!?! Ha ha.

dada: me too, totally! it has become a far-too-easy lame meme BUT then i think it always was, even from early on -- zep wd have been a better foe, bcz bigger and tougher and more slippery (you'd be up against STRENGTH rather then complexity or pretension), but as i recall it they just weren't -- they were kind of off the table a bit, as regards "things to be overthrown"

my best friend at school who was my mentor in all things rock, and my co-conspirator in all things punk, loved zep (tho he loved sabbath more) (not that he is in any way typical of anything)

I'm quite sure this is false.

In fact, punk was partly about rebelling against the cock-waving *musicianship* emphasized by bands like Zep.

Of course I read in Sounds and the NME that punk was a reaction to Emerson Lake and Palmer, LZ, PF and their ilk, so I assumed that it must be true. I mean someone in LONDON said it, and I was in Yorkshire. Bit I didn't feel that these remote gods needed opposing, they weren't really important or real enough.

i wd say csm and (especially) farren lost purchase on where punk mutated quite quickly (also csm was/is a BIG real-blues fan: but i think zep's version of blues -- as described by dr c -- was more actually more congenial to punk than actual real blues or old skool R&B) (bcz zep wz kind of a wing of glam maybe)

haha farren once googled his name on ilx and came and posted!

obv not underground in that they were major label etc but underground i that wenner didn't give seal of approval

i think i got this idea from dave marsh so ymwv

That'll be 'The Titanic Sails at Dawn' by Farren. I've got the NME it's in, but not to hand so I'm not 100% sure who the target is. From memory I thought it was Rod the Mod for some reason. Rocksbackpages has it but you need to be registered to read it.

"Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" the centerpiece of the first album... This softer wounded poetic folk contrasted against the wailing stomp-boogie rock side hybrid which operates somewhat as the band's mission statement.

For the first 3-4 albums, LZ's sampling of not just blues but also so many epic folk passages :"Reynardine", "Black Water Side", "She Moves Through The Fair", "Go Your Own Way My Love".... all the while playing "guess who" with all the then-obscure blues/folk references is definitely more of a "musicians' music" game that continues today in the sample-databases and break-spotters subcultures.

After 3-4 albums, (well there's "Stairway" which is essentially them having another stab at "Babe..." and then hey, let's get Sandy Denny!), things become loose and experimental... meringue, punk, reggae, prog, indian reed musics, bakersfield trucker country but even still never giving up the ghost, interspersing these exotica/genre-hoppers within yet more blues devotion "Tea For One" and west coast psych folk "Going To California".

So yeah, blues-rock! bombastic solos! jamming! but that is a pretty one-sided angle at their music.

yeah but since when is punk about open-mindedness and complexity?

They were great songwriters.

Oh go light a joss stick, hippy

When punk came along, all my Zep friends made the transition with little difficulty, btw. We were ready for something new. No one made us turn in our Led Zeppelin LPs.

I was only ten and living in Miami in '78, but the sort of Tolkien and thelema rumors surrounding the band are what I first heard of the band, and what they seemed to represent. It was held up to be scary and illicit, music that might actually make you go to hell (Miami's the fake-south but it's still the South). Zeppelin and Sabbath were both what the older burnout kids listened to. Kids would tell mythic variations on the Mud Shark story, and the whole Page having Crowley's castle on Loch Ness lake stuff, and took that side of it really seriously.

My first prolonged exposure to LZ came from a kid whose folks were kind of fundamentalist, via an anti-rock tape that guides the listener through "Stairway" -- playing it backwards, of course, but mainly railing against the idea that there are "two roads." The tape totally made me go buy my first Zep album, naturally.

They talked about Zeppelin and analyzed the Stairway to Heaven lyrics. Also Motley Crue, (weirdly enough) "Lovin' Touchin' Squeezin'" by Journey (who as a young metal fan I already considered out of date pussy rock)...wierdest claim: On the cover of Who's Next by the Who, the band has just pissed on a memorial to dead UK WWII veterens.

though others had done it before them, aren't LZ generally credited with pioneering the arena tour as a basic rock staple?

Oh go light a joss stick, hippy

Go stick a baby pin through your cheek, punk

Of course, you know why LZ were the first elevated to the status of Gods is because they were magic, see. If they weren't, people would've ignored them.

So were Tommy James and the Shondells.

Anyway, forget the blues angle, when LZ did the Blues it was OK, but their real roots are just like the Move's: West Coast hippiedom, Love, Moby Grape, like that. I suppose later on in the era of their being in every issue of Creem magazine they were perceived as both mega-musicians, which they kind of were, and mega-personalities.

Their relationship to the Beatles and similar stuff is exactly like that of Big Star to the Beatles and similar stuff. It was all just bigger and more cleanly recorded, big drum sound. You could say the same about Badfinger. The thing about LZ's records, as we all know, is that they're really not that bombastic, in fact they're quite often droll. Cream had all that bad Jack Bruce poetry and they weren't very well produced compared to what Page did in LZ. Or, Savoy Brown, they played blues and so did Canned Heat. At least Canned Heat sounded like they really were hapless and on the road.

What Led Zeppelin killed or presaged the end of is in fact haplesness, or any kind of self-deprecation that the audience wanted to acknowledge. The break in rock-time fabric or whatever you want to call it was the same old Beatles thing, the Beatles broke up and the rest of the rock world was bent upon making everything bigger and better all the time, that was progress. The English, they play their blues in castles, man.

I'm struggling with this. You may be right about the Move (at least 1967/8 version) being kind of a Brit take on a flowers in the hair vibe. (But not Night Of Fear or Fire Brigade). Roy was of course a HUGE Beatles fan too. But the folksy side of LZ just doesn't seem remotely West Coast to me. Maybe I'm missing the point.

Oh, and "Go and honour the fire, KJ boi"

Should these be a new thread?

As on the "Extras on the Shazam CD"?

"Going to California"????

I like Family, in fact I love "Bandstand" and "It's Only a Movie."

On another thread a long time ago, I said they sound "magic" and of course this statement was met with riotous references to JRR Tolkien (as if this influence ran through the entire catalog).

Why they are great: the music has power and energy, yet the lyrics avoid cynicism and hostility. They're monstrous without being angry or depressing.

This occured to me just after listening to Motorhead now for a good few weeks straight. Looking at all my cd's I began to wonder if there was any heavy music that wasn't all pissed off.

So, the "shift" LZ signified might be all the things that came to be classified as metal without the bad attitude (at least lyrically, I mean)? The power, the speed, the drama and the Valhallian glory. Although basically peaceful, like most hippy music, it had the warm glow of victory to it.

Although Houses of The Holy is one of their best and has the brightest glow about it, yet is far from metal by any standards. Maybe the shift was just taking up where Beatles had left off with intricate, powerful and emotional rock?

Baroque. The stripped-down, jaded punk reaction would make sense in that case, too.

There was a time when the labels could dress up any group of blokes in tights & fringe, remark that they were from England and played "the rock and roll" and you'd get a fair enough crowd to come & listen because we did not have ubiquitous access at that point. Do you hear? Our parents were forcing us to listen to Mantovani, or if you were lucky, Stan Getz. The radio was Amplification Modulation and was slightly bigger than an iPod and sounded like a conversation on the inside of a submarine.

You could still see bands like the Mothers & Canned Heat playing together to a club capacity of 1000 in Chicago, fer chrissakes. Just two years before that, you could have seen the Yardbirds at the Ridgeland Ice Arena in Oak-Freaking-Park. With the McCoys opening.

Where's my cane? Where's my hot milk? I have to dodder off now.

They may not have been the first--I was barely aware of my own ass in 1970--but to a lot of us, they signaled that Rock was getting to be a force. FM stations went from having a couple of hours of rock programming from 10pm-midnight to changing programming to offer rock all day and overnight, and Friday nights playing entire albums through for home tapers.

Again, I am not arguing that LZ were the ones who started this--just that the groundwork laid by the mid60s not-pop rock bands (Airplane, Cream, Hendrix, others are surely mentioned up thread) seemed to come to fruition at the time of Led Zeppelin.

The economics of this are intriguing. The agent says, "sure, my band are not megastars, but that doesn't mean we can't fill a stadium"... and then they just start booking stadium dates?

The economics of this are intriguing. The agent says, "sure, my band are not megastars, but that doesn't mean we can't fill a stadium"... and then they just start booking stadium dates?

I know that doesn't sound right, but that's just my po' ass way of explaining it. LZ were of course not unknown and they had great word of mouth. But the promoters wouuld put together a show with, say, Traffic & Jethro Tull together or Procol Harum & Fairport Convention. But while Fleetwood Mac (original & pre-Buckingham Nicks) was still playing the Aragon Ballroom, as were Alice Cooper and Savoy Brown, LZ played the Auditorium, an acoustic marvel, but still smaller than the contemporary idea of a stadium show.

Everyone seems to miss the humor in Led Zep.

Oh yeah, why did I love Zep as a pimply teen? They were f-----g loud!!!!

Maybe I'm concentrating too much on LZ's blues roots, since they were Bert Jansch worshipping hippy-dippy folkies too. They were always at their best when they fused both styles.

weren't Zep the ultimate post-Altamont band? the band that came into prominence (or "cashed-in" if you believe mark s) when rock and roll began spooking out more than just the parents? the huge monster riffs, the mystical and occult references...they turned British electric blues into the aural equivalent of those pre-Marvel monster comics?

which is why Bangs hated them so. in one of his two "definitive" essays--either Psychotic Reactions or James Taylor Marked for Death--(I think it might have been the former) he imagines a youth movement that runs Page out of town after taking a viola bow to his guitar one too many times. I don't think it was this darkness or hugeness that Bangs hated as much as it was the cartoon aspect...at least in this specific context. As you can imagine, in the aftermath of Altamont, Bangs was cheerleading the death of the hippie ("the peace-and-love thing is wrongo to the liver"), but I think what he expected would happen was that rock would lose all of its high-falutin pretenses to "creating a higher society"* and take a look at what was going on around it, ie what mark s said about doowop/Vu. What he wanted was punk. What he got instead was AM's bounce becoming a thud. Louder and quasi-scarier versions of the hippie bands who, their ideals having thus disintegrated, dove headfirst into Tolkien fantasy.

Of course, the same could be said for KISS and Black Sabbath, both of whom he loved. But KISS were so over-the-top abt being stadium-rock, too crass to be even remotely calculating, that it prolley reminded him of the artlessness of his favourite garage-groups. And even tho Sabbath were in league with the fantastic, they used the demons and monster that they were engaged in as acid-inspired metaphors for the shittiness of real life. (Not entirely unlike the Fall, if you think about it.)

Which is why Sabbath >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Zeppelin.

*my best stab at summing up Bang's rhetorical/critical stance: when rich hippie rockstars said stuff like "rock and roll can change the world" Bangs heard an omen and a dire warning.

the same could be said for KISS and Black Sabbath, both of whom he loved.

Anybody that's read that now-legendary review of the first Sabbath LP in Rolling Stone knows that Lester did NOT love Black Sabbath.

This is a great thread.

white power

all the ppl i knew that listened to this were from the boondocks and associated with neo-nazis and also listened to bob marley, totally lacking interpretive guile. this music is worthless and embraced by people who could never comprehend its lyrical force.

Don't condemn Zeppelin because some of their fans were/are clueless.

I think what happened at the end of the sixties was a further fragmentation of the music market. Whereas the Beatles appealed to both rock and pop fans, Zeppelin's audience were strictly rockers.

...and folkies

What he got instead was AM's bounce becoming a thud.

But Bangs dug thud, no?

Sabbath >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Zeppelin
sad. zeppelin meant no more having to make jokes or charm coy/shy types like ed sullivan/lester bangs. if you like hobbits write jams about them. fuck taste. have fun

That last post is too good not to Babelfish:

sad. the zeppelin meant must more nonsense or types stopping/shy as and n' welcomes enchant sullivan/more recently. as you the jam to the subject d' keeps; she posts hobbits. fuck taste. the loan have

and again.

Is sad. Zeppelin where means in order to hesitate nonsense or the type which stops or like the thing and n' Must do; The illusion fascinates sullivan or recently. Your subject d' Jam; Maintains; She arranges hobbits. Sexual intercourse taste. The godfather is having

It's worth mentioning here that at Glastonbury 2008, Buddy Guy told the crowd he was going to do his Eric Clapton impression, and proceeded to nail it - playing high, sighing bends on his high E string with a perfectly clean tone, and giggling the whole time until his high E snapped.

Did he also do the "vote B*P" routine?

Buddy Guy supports the BNP? It sounds... unlikely

Um, Trace, I put the asterisk in there for a reason (Google-proof and all that)...

I meant if he's going to do a full-depth Clapton impression...

(before presumably turning round, announcing "and this is me" and crooning "Fly Me To The Moon"...)

Oh sorry! Maybe it was just me, but it seemed like there was something a little.. fun-poking about it.

upXhuX to thread.

Musically Led Zeppelin were first and foremost crucial in influencing heavy rock and what would later become metal, but as a marketing phenomenon they were breaking more ground by being the first rock band (or any popular music act for that matter) to ignore singles altogether. This may not be seen as such a crucial thing today, particularly not in the age of digital downloading. But until the mid to late 70s, this was a very important phenomenon because the "album bands" were actually those who sold the largest number of records.

"Robert Plant apparently still thinks that having Led Zeppelin considered historically alongside a group like Black Sabbath is insulting."

Quote from the third post. He should be honored to be mentioned with them, because his band can't shine the Sabs' shoes.

I think Plant resented Led Zeppelin being called a heavy rock group (being lumped in with the likes of Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, and Vanilla Fudge) because 1/4 of their music was acoustic.

zeppelin meant no more having to make jokes or charm coy/shy types like ed sullivan/lester bangs. if you like hobbits write jams about them. fuck taste. have fun

Zep didn't loose the rings of sodoman because they were getting in touch with their nerdy side. No, they thought it was a cool hippie thing to do and maybe it'd help in casting magic missiles inna few more granola chickies bags of holding.

Actually Plant is the main reason why they are being called heavy rock. His vocal style more or less "invented" heavy rock screaming.