I’m 54 and I think Led Zeppelin is probably the best rock band ever.
There is music I like more, songs I like better, but, overall, Led Zeppelin is un-paralleled. Fast songs, slow songs, early metal to ballads. The band had amazing talent (even if you say they ripped off others).
If you could only take one complete collection to a desert island I’d have to pick Led Zeppelin. Again, there are bands I like better. I love Pink Floyd but do I want them as my only listening on a desert island? Probably not.
I know it is painting with a broad brush but if pressed I would have to say Led Zeppelin is the best rock band ever (Fleetwood Mac is the best pop band…I note that for a distinction I am arbitrarily drawing).
Worth a watch (focuses on the drummer John Bonham but still highlights their overall talent):
I’m 60 and saw one of their last live shows as my first concert (Oakland collesium saturday show 1977). And they were freaking awesome live even with 50,000 of my closest friends.
I doubt if there is a Zep albumn song out there I haven’t heard before, and in my high school days probably could have named 90%. I didn’t listen to music for decades, went back to Zep and discovered to my surprise that I think Presence is by far my favorite albumn. I thought it would have been Physical Graffitti, which has some great songs (Kashmir) but it clearly lost out to Presence.
Me, I’d quibble that to 50%, given that a lot of Houses of the Holy, Physical Grafitti and Presence didn’t get a whole lot of airplay, while fair amounts of ZIII and ITTOD didn’t get a whole lot of airplay either.
Heh - given that, though, yeah - I’d still put the Beatles at an even lower constantly-played percentage.
Indeed, Zep were amazing in that regard.
Neat!
Too lazy to look it up now, but wondering if it’s the same gig where there were some financing shenanigans involving Peter Grant.
Deraily first memory of Zep - '69, dad gets home from office and kicks back with us annoying rug-rats, his tie still on. Then older brother Alan storms in.
“Hey! I got an album here by this incredible band Led Zeppelin.” (or something close to that effect, I’m sure)
Throws it on, and us rugrats become even more annoying. This four-year-old is on dad’s lap. I’m looking at the back of the album; he has his double scotch and soda.
“They have a woman in the band?” I ask, pointing to Jimmy.
“Nope. That’s a guy.”
I wasn’t buying it, and kept insisting that it was a woman, and the more he kept negating me the more frustrated I got, to the point of near-tantrumming. It’s possible I was getting a little amped up, as it were, with what I distinctly remember was (heh - somewhat coincidentally) the “Dazed and Confused” solo tearing along in the background.
Don’t get me wrong, I love LZ. I would probably say they are my favorite rock band of all time. But it goes without saying they most assuredly ripped off others.
LZ was overplayed, but then in the mid-70’s everything was unless you were willing to go against the grain, like I was at 2AM sneaking Pink Floyd onto the turntable at parties, or the girl who convinced the teacher of our Creative Writing class to give a presentation of Zappa.
LZ was the band that came on when the boys and girls reached a point after age 16 when they could relate to each other. The girls would listen to Glam or Boston, and the guys would put up with the gender dysphoria or sappiness, respectively, and they’d put up with Ted Nugent’s hyper-masculinity. As a group LZ was mutually enjoyable, while Black Sabbath was the band for guys who couldn’t get girlfriends, and Supertramp and Styx were for kids whose parties were held while their parents watched TV upstairs.
I completely agree. For a band considered one of the hardest of hard rock bands, they have a very versatile range of musical styles. That would make a good post in itself— what would your ‘desert island’ pick be if you could only listen to one band for the rest of your life? Zep would probably be my pick too.
That was the next day, the sunday show. Peter Grant beat the everliving fuck out of one of Bill Graham’s staff for grabbing some memorabilia at the end of the show.
I have also never felt the need to purchase a Led Zeppelin album. The only song of theirs that I have bothered to buy is “Over the Hills and Far Away,” which kinda hit that sweet spot where it was played often enough for me to know it and like it, but not so much that I got tired of it years ago. The only other Zep in my collection is a handful of treats from the first disc of the boxed set that I snagged back in college, and some selections from How The West Was Won that are a complete mystery to me as far as when or where I might’ve acquired them.
