Led Zeppelin: Classic Or Dud?

1971 is an insanely good year in rock music

1971 is an insanely good year in rock music

While I respect kate's perspective, I can't ever share it. Even at their most adventurous, bands in 1965-68 were still trying to get songs played on AM radio. By 1969, that was already fading away, and from roughly 1969-74, rock music was at its most creative and experimental. There were high points after that, of course, but that was when the wave really crested, as far as I'm concerned.

In the case of Zeppelin, they were both creative and experimental, and at the same time absolutely codified the indulgent arena rock experience. Further in the band's defense, I don't think any of their records are bloated.

well except maybe the last one

absolutely codified the indulgent arena rock experience

Oh hell yes. I love most of LZ's studio albums, but a 3 1/2 hour concert by them is my idea of hell. Compare Zeppelin bootlegs to that Yes box of live recordings from 1972 (which I own) and it's two entirely different things. Yes were not self-indulgent at all; they rip through those songs, and I'll bet it was crushingly loud.

You have to be pretty indulgent when Yes is more restrained.

well, the indulgence is already baked into the songs — yes didn’t go turning 20-minute suites into 45-minute jams

Did they have solo showcases live?

Hadrian nice find , thanks

1971 is an insanely good year in rock music

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown)

if we're talking about british bands, totally!

"Did they have solo showcases live?

― Josh in Chicago"

yes

I don't know if I could really choose between 1969 and 1971, if we stick to rock.

I'm not even sure who artists are supposed to be indulging other than themselves. Journalists who write for the music press? They weren't happy with Zep's studio albums either. The audience? Oh wait, they packed stadiums full of paying fans for years on end; doesn't seem like the public was too put off.

They're supposed to be indulging the non-fans, obv.

Well, I suppose a rhetorical question is if anyone was going to the shows *for* the drum/guitar/organ solos.

Just be grateful Robert Plant didn't do vocal solos.

Very much so, yes. No idea what the percentage would be, though.

xp

Yeah, lots of people love those and have bought live albums or collect bootlegs. You can Google people discussing those solos or scroll up in the thread. Doubt people were flocking to see them and skipping half the show bc they hoped for Foreigner-style efficiency and professionalism.xp

Yeah, Yep was never urgent

Goddamn it, ZEP were never urgent. Ruined my own joke with autocorrect

Would totally listen to a bluegrass Yes cover band called Yep.

Sund4r otm

I never got to see either band in their heyday, but I saw Yes on the Union tour and it was some boring, half ass shit. I saw Page/Plant and it was completely badass from start to finish.

Plant was good last summer (and, yeah, his band members took long solos and no one left afaict). I seemed to differ from the crowd, though, in that I liked his own newer material more than most of the versions of Zep songs he played, as he doesn't exactly have the voice he had in his 20s.

Drum solos are so the rest of the band can go take a leak and smoke a joint. Then they come back and do some acoustic thing or long guitar or organ solo so the drummer can go get some.

That's why the loopers are so important. You can just loop up some weird feedback wash and then let the drummer have fun with some bongos and call it space. Or you could just show a cartoon. Union says I get a break 75 minutes in no matter what.

Yeah, lots of people love those and have bought live albums or collect bootlegs. You can Google people discussing those solos or scroll up in the thread. Doubt people were flocking to see them and skipping half the show bc they hoped for Foreigner-style efficiency and professionalism.xp

― Feel a million filaments (Sund4r)

well, uh, speaking as someone who has heard many of those bootlegs and in fact wrote a several thousand word long article for my blog on the topic of led zeppelin bootlegs several months ago, on some of those bootlegs you _can_ hear audience members yelling at the band to "get on with it"

i am happy to follow along with the youtube posters who analyze in depth the variations in the "no quarter" solo section show-to-show in 1975, but if i might hazard a suggestion, that does not necessarily mean that your typical led zeppelin audient were attending in the hopes of experiencing the same rarefied pleasures

"PLAY THE MIXOLYDIAN SCALE!"

I wonder how many people even knew what they were in for in, say, 1975. It's not like there were setlists and youtube clips and so on. I imagine things were a lot more mysterious then. Probably/possibly/maybe lead to more excitement at catching a 20 minute solo or whatever.

Singing to an audient
Can you hear the audients roar?

back then you had to drive to Setlist.FM and wait in line to browse the setlists

huh, I was under the impression that in Zep's heyday bands like the Stones were sorta looked down on by Zep fans for "just playing songs"

Now that we've established that improvisation is both deceptive and lazy, I still think "self-indulgence" is a weird thing to criticize an artist for (cf. "pretentiousness", both of which I know were popular among rock critics at least from the 70s to the 90s). I'm not sure how to read it other than as a bizarro quasi-moral judgment on doing something that might challenge listener expectations. Seriously, who are artists supposed to be indulging?

Themselves for sure, if the point was at least partly to give their members time to get stoned/laid.

xxpost Iirc you had runners who left their seats, poked their heads out of the venue and yelled to a buddy in the parking lot who was writing it all down. "Still doing 'No Quarter'!"

I don't know about rivalries between Stones fans and Zep fans, but I do know Zep's long shows reportedly set the new standard that bands like the Stones had to try to adapt to. The band itself reportedly almost never interacted with any of other big acts on the road at the time, since they were always on the move, always touring, which in turn supposedly built up its own resentments, as it made it seem like the Zep juggernaut thought itself better than everyone else.

I'm not really a big fan of long jams live (my mind wanders), but if I go to see a band that's kind of known for it, I'm sure I could buckle down

Themselves for sure, if the point was at least partly to give their members time to get stoned/laid.

You know, they could have given themselves even more time for this if they finished an hour earlier and just played the hits. Bring along an opening band and, presto, you get an hour before the show too.

Trust me, if I could go back and see all those long, indulgent Zeppelin shows, I totally would.

xxxp I don’t know that to be true. They weren’t part of a celebrity scene but there are countless stories of them hanging w assorted Stones and LA people, Kim Fowley et al and Ringo, Keith Moon etc.

Speaking of, the forthcoming Goats Head Soup reissue has a song Page played on.

I'm sure they hung with some of the usual nuts, but as I heard it/read about it they were often at some remove from many of their touring peers.

Heh, I was just reading about the longest Zeppelin shows, and one of them is apparently Seattle 6-19-72, where the band, among other things, played "Dancing Days" twice. That's pretty hilariously indulgent. I'm trying to think of shows I've seen where the act did a song twice. I know Paul Simon did "You Can Call Me Al" twice on one of his tours. I last time I saw Joe Strummer he had the audience vote which of the Clash songs they'd already played that they should do again. I'm trying to think of other examples.

You know, they could have given themselves even more time for (getting stoned/laid) if they finished an hour earlier and just played the hits.

given Page's uh predilections as discussed elsewhere maybe the endless jamming truly was for the best

they were jamming to cover up the sounds of the fucking

I saw Link Wray a few years before he died, and his set was "Rumble" three times spaced out, "Raw-Hide" twice spaced out "Jack The Ripper" twice spaced out, and a few other songs once. I think one of those "Rumble"s was 15 minutes long, and some of the others pushed 10.

The funny thing was that I was early enough to the club I heard him soundcheck while waiting to get in, and he ran through a instrumental cover of "Shakin' All Over" which then he didn't play at the show proper.

"PLAY THE MIXOLYDIAN SCALE!"

but I do know Zep's long shows reportedly set the new standard that bands like the Stones had to try to adapt to.

well, uh, speaking as someone who has heard many of those bootlegs and in fact wrote a several thousand word long article for my blog on the topic of led zeppelin bootlegs several months ago, on some of those bootlegs you _can_ hear audience members yelling at the band to "get on with it"

Ftr, the question I was replying to was "if anyone was going to the shows *for* the drum/guitar/organ solos" (italics mine), not whether everyone or even the majority were. That said, fwiw, the Song Remains the Same double live album went platinum in the US in 1976 and 4x platinum by 1997; I was still seeing the 26-minute "Dazed and Confused" on MuchMusic in the late 80s. I don't doubt that there was a range of expectations but, if a ballet crowd could riot over Stravinsky, I expect crowds that included thousands of inebriated young males could have done more to express their outrage than some isolated cries of "get on with it" or tossing paper airplanes (acc to an anecdotal report from a member of a rival band) if they really were alienated en masse by this band's self-indulgence. I wasn't there, though; maybe people really did want them to keep the tunes to their snappy eight-minute studio runtimes.

Not sure drum solos at rock gig were ever been popular - once the novelty value had worn off. Kind of a standing joke weren't they?

I remember years ago seeing a journalist reminisce about Zep's live shows - he commented that he'd quickly learned that when Page headed for his Theremin, it was the thinking punter's cue to head for the bar.

I maintain that available evidence shows that a nonzero number of people enjoy them and most of the rest at least tolerate them enough that more than one official live release has been a consistent platinum-level seller, despite decades of changing pop music trends, whether bc novelty or whatever else; beyond that, I don't really care.

Clip of Bonham about the timing on "Black Dog" is v cool.

I think the deal is that the drum chart is like this:
https://imgv2-2-f.scribdassets.com/img/document/428557172/original/a35f0ab269/1587692189?v=1

And if the guitar is written in the same metre, it looks like this:
https://cdn3.virtualsheetmusic.com/images/first_pages/HL/HL-199501First_BIG.png

But when I tried to transcribe the guitar riff for a student so that it reflects the phrasing and accents of the guitar melody on its own, it came out more like this (with a simplified version of the drum beat and location of bass and snare hits written above; cheated on the 5/8 bar in the drum line for this purpose): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rGOjLBqN6Se0CTZ3JokXLLaSk8j6JY6o/view?usp=sharing

Ofc, if you're transcribing the whole thing, you'd go with the metres in the drums and vocals but I think the off-kilter feel comes from the polymetric aspect (gets even trickier in the prechorus: https://external-preview.redd.it/nUWMfWCKgRJwTBTknxfCIPN1JKbK74PbMbcLmAFnRns.jpg?auto=webp&s=675e8928c0cad0e58e4d39a525d6bf9342de2b96).

Heh, I was just reading about the longest Zeppelin shows, and one of them is apparently Seattle 6-19-72, where the band, among other things, played "Dancing Days" twice. That's pretty hilariously indulgent. I'm trying to think of shows I've seen where the act did a song twice. I know Paul Simon did "You Can Call Me Al" twice on one of his tours. I last time I saw Joe Strummer he had the audience vote which of the Clash songs they'd already played that they should do again. I'm trying to think of other examples.

― Josh in Chicago

when i saw cheer-accident they played the same song three times in a row, it ruled

"That said, fwiw, the Song Remains the Same double live album went platinum in the US in 1976 and 4x platinum by 1997; I was still seeing the 26-minute "Dazed and Confused" on MuchMusic in the late 80s. I don't doubt that there was a range of expectations but, if a ballet crowd could riot over Stravinsky, I expect crowds that included thousands of inebriated young males could have done more to express their outrage than some isolated cries of "get on with it" or tossing paper airplanes (acc to an anecdotal report from a member of a rival band) if they really were alienated en masse by this band's self-indulgence. I wasn't there, though; maybe people really did want them to keep the tunes to their snappy eight-minute studio runtimes.

― Feel a million filaments (Sund4r)"

they _did_ express their outrage in other ways. peter grant had _ample_ opportunity to beat the shit out of audience members, and by the '70s he had plenty of professional help in this. on early gigs you can hear plant pleading with the audience to for god's sake chill the fuck out already... i mean, that who concert where people were crushed to death, that didn't come out of nowhere, that wasn't an aberration, that was how things _were_ back then

as for "eight minute studio runtimes", before 1975 (at which point their songs got much, much longer), they had precisely two tracks that topped out at or near eight minutes - stairway and "how many more times". they were indeed a _great deal_ more concise in the studio - live, even a song like "communication breakdown" could run to six minutes!

"Now that we've established that improvisation is both deceptive and lazy, I still think "self-indulgence" is a weird thing to criticize an artist for (cf. "pretentiousness", both of which I know were popular among rock critics at least from the 70s to the 90s). I'm not sure how to read it other than as a bizarro quasi-moral judgment on doing something that might challenge listener expectations. Seriously, who are artists supposed to be indulging?

― Feel a million filaments (Sund4r)"

like literally i am _happy_ to hear zep play "dazed and confused" for half an hour if it's any fucking good. the "self-indulgence" comes from the experience i've had that it often wasn't. members of the band would play even when they were too incapacitated to perform at all. i'm not opposed in theory to hearing jimmy page solo unaccompanied for half an hour, but when he's too fucked up to play the goddamn mixolydian scale? who the hell wanted to hear robert plant come up on stage and croak out the hits the way he did in indianapolis in 1975? oh, sure, they could have had an opening band, but then they would have had to _pay them_, and how would they meet their cocaine and airplane budget that way?

that is what strikes me most about zeppelin - they were absurdly, insanely rich. i do feel a lot of the critical animus towards them is based on their obscene wealth and opulence, while at the same time the blues musicians whose work they "improved" on, if they were around to play their music at all, were playing in places like memphis hotel rooms. now that there is no more reality to zep, only myth, now that bonham and grant are dead, page is easily ignored, and robert plant has aged into a lovable old hippie, the critical animus seems utterly bizarre and elitist, but zeppelin, '70s rock, was a brutal spectacle.