I’m 55. My high school years lined up with the very tail end of Led Zeppelin’s run - In Through The Out Door was released the summer before my freshman year, sophomore year saw Bonham’s death and the disbanding, the outtakes album Coda came out senior year.
Although I liked and still like them, I never saw any reason to actually purchase any of their albums. They were pretty much unavoidable on rock radio in the 70s and 80s, back when the format was AOR (Album Oriented Rock) before the boomers hit their 40s and the format ossified into Classic Rock. And they continued to dominate the classic rock format. It felt like I could mentally pull up all their songs just from radio memories. So until a few weeks ago, I had never listened to an entire Zeppelin album, with the exception of ITTOD, which was all over parties in high school.
A few months ago, I found a ranking of all their songs on some clickbait site, and saw a lot of titles I did not recognize. Maybe I wasn’t as familiar with them as I thought. So I decided to go through their entire studio output on Hoopla. Turns out they have a lot of songs I know but didn’t know the names.
Final tally:
Led Zeppelin - Knew 8/9 - New to me: “Black Mountain Side”
Led Zeppelin II - 8/9 - New: “Bring it on Home”
Led Zeppelin III - 5/10 - New: “Since I’ve Been Loving You”, “Tangerine”, “That’s The Way”, “Bron-Y-Aur Stomp”, “Hat’s Off to (Roy) Harper”
Non-album B-side 1/1
Led Zeppelin IV - 8/8
Houses of the Holy 8/8
Physical Graffiti - 11/15 - New: “Bron-Yr-Ar”, “Night Flight”, “Black Country Woman”, “Sick Again”
Presence - 3/7 - (only one below 50%) - New: “For Your Life”, “Royal Orleans”, “Candy Store Rock”, “Tea for One”
In Through the Out Door - 15 year old me reminds me the first time I saw the 8-track in my buddy’s car, it was 6/7 - New: “I’m Gonna Crawl”
Total for their initial run: 58/74 or 78% just from listening to the radio.
Coda adds another 4 of 8, which pulls it down to 75%
I can’t think of any other act that had over 3/4 of their output constantly played over such a long time frame. Even The Beatles don’t come close.
I still don’t have any need to buy a Zeppelin album.
Interesting post. I’m in pretty much the same age group (a couple years older) and Zeppelin was on the radio a lot in my teen and college years, but if I had to list album tracks that I never heard on the radio, I think mine would be a lot closer to 50%.
From LZ II I’m surprised that “Bring It On Home” was on your hadn’t heard list and “Moby Dick” was not. It would have been the other way around for me – I don’t ever remember hearing Moby Dick on the radio but heard Bring It On Home quite often.
I’m a year older than the OP, and went through a similar arc- I liked their music well enough but heard it so often on the radio that I didn’t feel compelled to buy their albums. We used to have a rock radio station in the Detroit area with the call letters ‘WLLZ’ that played Zep so much the joke was it stood for “We Love Led Zeppelin”.
Quite a while later I bought the entire Led Zep CD box set and had a Zepiassance in which I’d load up the whole thing in a multi-CD player and play the entire catalog while playing pool and drinking beer in my basement with friends. I was like this guy, only older:
I’m only a couple years younger than the OP, but for me, Led Zeppelin was un-ubiquitous: I can’t remember hearing any of their songs before sometime in my 20s.
(I didn’t really have any exposure to rock, at least non-soft, non-pop rock, before my teen years in the 1980s, and by then, Zep were no longer current.)
I’m only a couple years older than the OP, but in the LA area, I don’t remember AOR stations like KLOS and KMET playing a whole lot of deep tracks from Zep like they would other bands like Deep Purple or Blue Oyster Cult. It was mostly just Stairway, Whole Lotta Love, and Communication Breakdown.
As for my experience, judging by the LZ tracks I’ve heard on the radio, it would scarcely more than scratch the surface of their material. I began to get to hear LZ albums friends had and it whetted my appetite to the degree that I began buying their albums, though I didn’t buy them in chronological order, when I was able to afford them. As it happened, my favorite of all their tracks received less and in most cases no airplay.
‘In Through the Out Door’ came out during my senior year in HS. There was a 3 year “dry spell” of sorts of an LZ release of a studio album and it was a much anticipated album. Alas, I was profoundly disappointed when I got to hear the whole thing…as such it’s the only LZ album I never bought. My friends and fellow burgeoning hard rock fans were as well. The only people I knew who liked it were either people who liked less heavy, less hard rock, or rabid LZ fanboys who were just glad to get their hands on something new the band put out.
In summation though, I find it difficult to comprehend how one can have a broad and deep exposure of the band’s material based on what is heard on radio airplay, unless it was like one of the cool college stations one might happen upon here or there.
OP here: That’s really weird. I grew up in the LA area and those were my two main stations in high school (+ KWST before they changed formats, KROQ when I wanted some punk, and KEZY when I was stuck in a car that had AM only). Did you listen to Jim Ladd? We used to joke the guy was cursed to drop dead unless he played Zeppelin, Doors or Pink Floyd at least once every 30 minutes. Heck, he even played all of Plant’s solo debut the week it was released.
Yeah, I listened to Jim Ladd and most of the other shows on the “Mighty Met” until I discovered Punk in 1979 and moved over to KROQ and 91X. Maybe Ladd expanded his zepertoire after that.
I grew up when they were first active; I remembered Led Zep II when I was in high school, and listened to the album in art class. But LZIII was a disappointment. LZIV, OTOH, was very successful and one track (guess) was always being played on our radio station. But I lost interest after that (though I did lean about LZI). I didn’t start hearing their later stuff until years later.
I’m a couple years older than Chuck, and I bought albums 1, 2, and 4 when they came out. Zep spoiled me for all future hard rock/metal. They were so superior that the rest sounded like mere noise.
But radio play obviously depends on where you lived, what stations you listened to, and how old you are. I’ve heard every Beatles track from every album multiple times. I don’t think there can be an unfamiliar track. I hear only a handful of Zeppelin tracks, though, even on oldies channels. Probably most of their stuff would be unfamiliar today.
I listen to “classic rock” stations a lot (and have for like 30 years), and I agree with this. They play Zep an awful lot, but only certain songs; it’s fairly uncommon to hear “deep tracks” from a LZ album, even on that format.
Looking at the band’s catalog, by album, these are the songs that get played regularly (i.e., often played to death); the other songs are heard far, far less often on most of the classic rock stations I’ve listened to:
Led Zeppelin: “Good Times Bad Times,” “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You,” “Dazed and Confused,” “Communication Breakdown”
Led Zeppelin II: “Whole Lotta Love,” “What Is and What Should Never Be,” “Heartbreaker,” “Living Loving Maid (She’s Just a Woman),” “Ramble On”
Led Zeppelin III: “Immigrant Song”
Led Zeppelin IV: “Black Dog,” “Rock and Roll,” “Stairway to Heaven,” “Four Sticks,” “Going to California,” “When the Levee Breaks”
Houses of the Holy: “Over the Hills and Far Away,” “D’yer Mak’er,” “The Ocean”
Physical Graffiti: “Houses of the Holy,” “Trampled Under Foot,” “Kashmir”
Presence: “Nobody’s Fault But Mine”
In Through the Out Door: “In the Evening,” “Fool in the Rain,” “All My Love”
It’s less than half of the songs on nearly every album, and two of the albums have only a single song that gets regular play. This, unfortunately, doesn’t make Led Zep any different from any of their contemporary bands that are staples of that format; unless you catch a “deep track” play or show, programmers tend to stick closely to the narrow list of songs that have been played innumerable times.
I think if I were 10 years younger, my totals would be a lot lower. My peak rock radio consumption lined up with when the “deep cut” mentality peaked as well. (In addition to already knowing 6 out of 7 In through the Out Door tracks the first time I heard it, I also knew 7 of 10 songs from Queen’s The Game and everything from Cheap Trick’s Dream Police. Yet I’d guess in the last 35 years, radio has only played “Another One Bites The Dust”, “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” and “Dream Police” from those albums.)
I’m sure nothing from Coda has gotten airplay since 1984 or so, yet “Darlene”, “Ozone Baby” and “Wearing and Tearing” all got extensive airplay when I was in high school.
Also, early 80s KMET was the last gasp of free form radio when DJs still had the ability to choose a large portion of the music they played. And as mentioned before, KMET’s late night host Jim Ladd was a LZ fanatic.
Not very often, if at all, in my experience. There are probably some classic rock stations out there which make a point of mixing in a certain percentage of deep tracks into their regular playlist rotation, but what seems to be more common is to have a show or two that focus on such tracks, for a few hours a week, max.
And, such shows seem to typically run late at night, or on the weekend; it’s even rarer to hear deep tracks during the morning drive or afternoon drive periods (radio’s equivalent of “prime time” for TV stations).
I’m a year older and that pretty much describes my relationship with Led Zeppelin. I do have a CD of IV but for years, if I wanted to hear something by them, I’d just turn on my local classic rock station and, at most, wait 10 minutes for one of their songs to come on. In fact, every couple of months or so, this station had a “Led Zeppelin A to Z Weekend” where the group’s entire song catalog would be played in alphabetical order several times from Friday night to early Monday morning.
I haven’t listened to the radio lately, but the classic rock station here would do a LZ hour every weekday night around 9pm. I’m pretty sure they broke into some deep cuts.
Also, about once a year they would do “LZ from A to Z” over the weekend. Basically playing every LZ song in alphabetical order.
One of the former classic rock stations here in Chicago (they changed format a few years ago when the station was sold, and it’s now a Christian station) had a similar show, “Get the Led Out,” every weeknight at 9pm. They’d play four or five Zep songs in that show, and I suspect there, too, would be a few deep cuts mixed in with the well-known songs.
I am 53 and in High school, there was this stoner guy I knew who would quote Zeppelin like it was
Holy Scripture. A group of us would be in a conversation about whatever and he would chime in with
an appropriate quote on the topic and start with, “Well, what Zeppelin says is…”
He could’ve been a character in Dazed and Confused.