Led Zeppelin influenced by J.R.R. Tolkien?

I was driving out to a job site yesterday and threw in one of my Led Zeppelin CD’s to pass the time. I was singing along to “Battle of Evermore” when a lyric I’ve heard a hundred times finally made sense to me. About 3/4 through the song Plant sings this line “The drums will shake the castle wall,
The Ring Wraiths ride in black, ride on…”
. I don’t know but I’m pretty sure that “Ring Wraiths” are only found on Middle Earth. I then replayed the song from the beginning and listened more carefully and am positive that the song is about the Battle of Middle Earth in Lord of the Rings. Is this well known?
I certainly never knew of any relationship between my favorite band and favorite movie before. Is there anything any one can add to this connection?
You can find the complete lyrics here. http://display.lyrics.astraweb.com:2000/display.cgi?led_zeppelin..complete_studio_recordings..the_battle_of_evermore

Welcome to the boards, UnclePoo!

Try doing a search and I think you’ll find several previous threads dealing with this very subject.

Sure there are references to Tolkien in Led Zeppelin. They’re even more explicit in “Ramble On”:

As to why – Tolkien was massively popular when Led Zep was writing and the evidently read LOTR.

I would say, UnclePoo, that the lyrics drew inspiration from a lot of places. I’ve always thought “The Battle of Evermore” was set in a realm where the dieties of several pantheons could ally against dark forces.

This could be Galadriel, but it could be Artemis or Our Lady of the Wild Things.

Christ is sometimes called the prince of peace. It could also be Baldur for all I know.

Could be Sauron, but it could refer to Set, Satan, or the Master of the Wild Hunt, among other dieties.

This is most definitely not a reference to The Lord of the Rings, but to Celtic mythology.

Could be a reference to the apples of the Book of Genesis. I understand that scholars think that legend is based on Sumerian creation myths. Could also refer to the Apples of the Hesperides, one of which Heracles took to Atlas.

Kind of reminds me of Joshua before the walls of Jericho, except he used a trumpet.

I would agree that this refers to Tolkien’s work. However, remember Tolkien based LOTR on old Nordic and English myths.

P.S. Welcome to the Straight Dope.

I don’t know about that. I think that there’s an important Elf City in Tolkien mythology called Avallone.

Then, Ray, he stole it from Old English legends. There were legends about Avalon at least 1,500 years before Tolkien or the Zeppelin members were born.

You don’t need a question mark after this thread title. Led Zeppelin, in particular Robert Plant, were really into Tolkien.

Tol Erresia, an island off the coast of Middle-Earth inhabited by Elves, is indeed also known as Avallone, meant to imply that Tol Erresia is the origin of the above-mentioned English/Celtic stories about Avalon. Likewise, the island of Numenor, which was destroyed by Iluvatar for the “sins” of its inhabitants, is also called Atalante.

Y’all got it backwards. Tolkien obviously stole his material from Led Z’s records, due to his amazing ability to prognosticate.

While there are loads of Tolkien allusions in Led Zeppelin songs, I’m not quite convinced that Robert Plant ever read much Tolkien- or anything else.

Look, I’ve been a Led Zeppelin fan more than half my life, but Plant doesn’t strike me as an erudite guy. If he’s read more than a handful of serious novels in his life, I’ll be surprised. My hunch is, he had a vague interest in mythology, and had heard about LOTR (which all Plant’s fellow hippies at the time were into), and combined half-remembered images from LOTR with various images from other myths and legends he knew of.

Think of “Ramble On,” for instance, Does any Tolkien fan think the Evil One would’ve teamed up with an insignificant git like Gollum, for the mere purpose of kidnapping a girl? The line makes little sense to begin with, and less to anyone who’s read Tolkien and really knows who those characters are.

My opinion is, Robert Plant HASN’T read much Tolkien and DOESN’T know much about the places and names he’s alluded to in his songs.

My guess is that Plant did indeed read Tolkien, as well as some Celtic mythology and some books about occult magic. He didn’t understand them very well. That may have had to do with all the drugs he was using at the time. When he wrote the words to his songs, he was free-associating and pulling the images out of his vague memories of the books he’d read, I suspect.

Indeed, yes, even being a long, LONG time Zeppelin fan I have to concede that lyrically, they were pretty bland. Either their lyrics were all about bonking some woman and just plain being sex addicts, or they were totally mystical imagery laden stuff which ultimately amounted to not much at all.

But musically? Totally fucking awesome. Excluding Robert Plant, they were 3 of the tightest, most inventive, versatile musicians of all time.

My understanding is that Misty Mountain Hop is about the only song in the entire Zeppelin repetoire which actually related to a public event which was tangible and current AND which took place in real time during their career.

Public social commentators they definitely were NOT - but hey, who cares? I’m sure they had as much fun fucking with our heads as they did with fucking all those groupies.