I’ve just discovered Led Zeppelin. I know this sounds ridiculous. How have I managed to go through life without listening to any Led Zeppelin? I’ll tell you how. At school there was a guy in my study who was learning to play the acoustic guitar, and, you guessed it, Stairway to Heaven was played very heavily. I now realise that he enjoyed massacring the opening bars to Babe I’m Gonna Leave You too. It also goes without saying that he couldn’t sing, and even if he had been able to sing whatever tortured wail emanating from him would be nowhere near Robert Plant. I don’t know why he bothered. He also broke the tip off my penknife blade when he tried to pry some amp lead off that guitar and then didn’t own up which is almost as bad as putting me off Led Zeppelin for seventeen years.
I can’t think of a worse introduction to a band. I mean it doesn’t help that this guy dressed like Jimi Hendrix and had bona fide hippies for parents. He didn’t wash either and actually attempted to test the urban myth about unwashed hair cleaning itself. No, it just gets greasier. All in all it was a bad scene. Ever since I have studiously avoided all things Led Zeppelin but embraced Pink Floyd which is pretty much from the same kind of thing. So one lot did heavy metal and the others were progressive rock but they were both pioneers in their fields and both had a similar approach to album production, that albums should be listened as a whole and not broken up into singles.
Led Zeppelin 1 is fantastic. I’m not going to attempt to review it as a) I’m crap at reviewing music and b) it has been reviewed about a million times and one more opinion stating how great it is will not be remotely enlightening. As for being crap at music writing. There’s only so many ways I can say, hmm, that’s a great sound before I’ve got 700 words saying stupid stuff like ‘I really like that bit where the drum comes in and then there’s a gap for one beat and then a funky bass starts up and then the song really rocks’. If you really need to know how good Led Zeppelin 1 is then I suggest you buy it or download it. I’m no purist so I’ll be buying the remastered version as there’s nothing more irritating than bass distortion due to crappy production. Take ‘You Only Live Twice’ sung by Nancy Sinatra. It’s a brilliant song but I bet you can’t find a version which isn’t distorted to hell and back. And not clever distortion either. No, they buggered up the recording plain and simple. It distorts on the soundtrack on the dvd and its all wrong on the official Bond compilations.
Where does this leave me?
Bad production sucks
Led Zeppelin are great
All hippies must die
