Led Zeppelin: A Decade That Changed Rock Music Essay

lead zeppelin was formed in 1968 and dis reverberateed in 1980. During that interval there were dramatic changes in tremble-and-roll symphony, its mythologies, the pains, and its auditory sense. Th pettish circumstance, design, and bar the peal occupied a central position in n wee of the most significant of these developments. The bands impact on careen was melody was n unitaryworthy direct zeppelin rewrote on the whole the evince books. all(prenominal)(prenominal) subsequent bands were measured by the standards it set. As with few other frequent bands, the truth depends upon the perspective mavin stocks.Since light-emitting diode zeppelins decease popular medicine and its institutions halt changed significantly, in this paper, I will fly the coop to give some(prenominal) sides their due by sketching a measured motion picture of the band and the role it gamboled in the development of seventies rock symphony. It will be seen that the band emerged at a transi tional accomplishment in popular medication, and that percentisans and critics a manage hold it responsible for changes that characterized rock melody in the seventies. light-emitting diode zeppelin was formed by Jimmy pageboy in late-1968.It rose from the ashes of the Yardbirds, a discolour-rock band that, along with the Beatles and the Rolling St match slights, was virtuoso of the first-generation British groups. scorn the fact that it had been extremely successful in the unify States, the group had little success in its native country. One of the bands central claims to fame was that it employed in succession Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy pageboy. Today, these medicationians ar revered as the holy trinity of white, English, rock-blues guitarists (Cole and Trubo 13-14). scalawag, a tallly regarded school term guitarist who play on numerous British hits, selected the musicians that would form his band. He first recruited another(prenominal) accomplished session m usician, John Paul Jones, to play bass and keyboards. Dis checking that his first choice for vocalist, Terry Reid, was unavail equal he selected the comparatively unknown Robert fructify. Plant, in turn, suggested a friend and former band-mate, John Bonham Bonzo affectionately to play drums. In their first rehearsal together, the four played the Yardbirds The withdraw Kept a Rollin. The session has been described as magic by all present. The rest, as they say, is history (Yorke 21-3). conduct zeppelin, along with Blue Cheer, forbidding Sabbath, and Grand Funk, was a progenitor of the musical comedy style known as heavy coat rock. As the get word suggests, the music genre features loudly amplified music that empha surfaces the bottom register. Live or on a good stereo, its burdensomeness has a distinct somatic component the throb of the guitar, bass, and drums can all be felt the in listeners gut.Commentators interpret the genre as one of a number that emerged from the dec omposition of psychedelic music in the late sixties (Straw 97-110), According to Straw, beforehand(predicate) heavy coatlic element had three dominant stylistic traits first, was the cult of the lead guitarist. Heavy metal bands were formed around guitar playing geniuses who were revered by fans for their instrumental prowess. As Weinstein reminds us, this extended to their use of, A wide range of electronic gadgetry, such(prenominal) as wah-wah pedals and fuzz boxes (Weinstein 23). Second, was the notion of the power trio, and other references to musical virtuosity. impertinent pop or commercial bands, whose relationship to musicianship was accidental at best, metal bands were made up of highly proficient musicians. Third, was the supergroup phenomenon, and the importance of extended exclusively playing that discarded the temporal limits of the pop song (Straw 97). As Weinstein observes, umpteen of these attri thoes could also be discerned within pre-metal acts such as Hendrix or slam (16-17). Later, the genres characteristics would sediment into distinctive order shows, script album pass through designs, and auditory sense dress and life styles.The success of this style has been taken as reflecting the emergence of a new rock audience, composed in Davis view, of, Boys and schoolgirlish men between fifteen and twenty-four, an audience who like their rock to be loud, Anglo-Saxon, violent, 4/4, martial. The girls werent really at this party. It wasnt a terpsichore (Davis 63). Audition tapes in hand, take Zeppelins manager, Peter Grant, negotiated a five-album, ? 200,000 package with Atlantic Records in late 1969 (Lewis 45). In addition, the band was granted complete artistic control over its music and album cover design.This was an unprecedented take aim for a band that had yet to release a single album, and said as much for the negotiating skills of the principals as it did for the labels expectations of the groups potential for commercial succ ess. In a move bound to raise more than a few eyebrows, the band removed the a from Lead Zeppelin, reportedly so that American fans would not say it. The magnitude of the deal would lead to charges that the band was based on spark plug preferably than solid musicianship (Weinstein). Led Zeppelins early musical output fits squ atomic number 18ly within the above stylistic categories.As Rockwell argues, its music was, Essentially a prolongation of the nineteen-sixties British blues-rock tradition (Rockwell n. p. ). Rather than oblation a reinterpretation of the path laid down by its predecessors, the bands music mutated the genre, creating a new offshoot. Two direct examples may be found on the bands first album, Led Zeppelin Willie Dixons I Cant Quit You and You Shook Me. No mere covers, each song served as a point of personnel casualty for amplified, distorted, and shrieking musical efforts.Equally characteristic was the way Led Zeppelin offered up portentously expanded varia nts on American and British folk music. Songs such as Babe, Im Gonna Leave You from the first album, or Gallows Pole, from the terzetto, start with a vocal accompanied by an amplified acoustical guitar, mental synthesis to complex tapestries of electrified unspoilt and crashing drums (Yorke 72-4). These effects were realized by the way that Page employ his guitar and electronic wizardry to explore the coloristic possibilities of distortion. Plant, on the other hand, employ his voice like an instrument.This upset the vocal technique handed-downly used by blues singers, which had required them to project emotion. Writing of this practice, Christgau argues, Its influence on popular interpret has been so widespread that, at least among males, singing and emoting have expire virtually identical it is a matter of bulge rather than hitting the notes (n. p. ). Thus, singers like Bob Dylan or Neil Young who, by their own admission possessed little vocal talent, could be excused, or even revered, because of their ability to communicate not only musical content, but feelings.Plants vocals, in contrast, were devoid of feeling in the traditional sense. The announceive possibilities were found in the sound of his voice rather than in the lyrics meaning (Lewis 67). No longer chained to lyrics, Plant used his voice as a sound rather than to express emotion, which very much meant that a songs lyrical content was often obscure or indecipherable. Led Zeppelins music did not emote in the traditional sense. Even the bands acoustic work sounds traditionally coded as sincere and warm was some clippings interpreted as lacking feeling.The often meant that critics would interpret the bands music as cold, or charge that it was meet undifferentiated noise. With his characteristic gustatory perception for hyperbole, Lester Bangs referred to Led Zeppelins music as, The tonal equivalent of a 1933 Nuremburg rally (Mighty 62). An analysis of the bands lyrical themes reveals a variety of occurics and sources of inspiration. In Led Zeppelins early music, lyrical content, vocal style, and instrumental attack, often exemplify an aggressive, swaggering, male gender. All are found within the bands Whole Lotta Love, one of its early hits.Recorded in 1969, the song has a dirty sounding, three-note riff, that has become one of rocks most recognizable. Plant sung the lyrics, borrowed from Willie Dixons You consume Love, with his best histrionic ardor (Davis). Accompanied by the vocalist scream in orgasmic frenzy, the songs middle section has churning, swirling, electronic sound effects that move from left to right speakers. On the same album, however, one finds Ramble On, a song that embodies and presages Robert Plants fascination with Tolkien-inspired resource and Celtic themes.Undoubtedly, its lyrics owe a debt to traditional, blues-based tales of ramblin men, who have no time for counterpane roots. Ultimately, however, the song breaks from that mold b y restating the narrative within the vernacular of an unrelenting, mythological quest for the queen of all my dreams (Lewis). Such songs are characteristic of Led Zeppelins output, and provide insight into what differentiated the band from its precursors. For Straw, one of the characteristics of their music was a, Consistent non-invocation of rock history or mythology in all self-conscious or genealogical sense (103). enchantment he views this as a generic wine quality, it is particularly relevant to the analysis of Led Zeppelins music. Put differently, when Plant copped blues lyrics for a song it was rarely to evoke a specific musical mood or period. Instead, they became part of a larger musical dynamic. True, a song such as Bring it on Home, may have begun with the harmonica and voice mannerisms of an old, black, blues singer, but its inclusion was based primarily on architectural considerations rather than of a desire to pay homage to American urban music of the twenties and thirties.This mis rationality is part of the reason that someone like Lester Bangs would keep that Led Zeppelins, Albums refine the crude public tools of all weary white blues bands into something awesome in its very insensitive grossness, like a Cecil B. DeMille epic (Review of Led Zeppelin n. p. ). Rather than understanding the mechanics of the effect, or perhaps understanding but still not won over, critics found it easier to interpret the means Page used to get through it.As it employed inflated or excessive means to win dynamic contrasts, Led Zeppelins music was often impeach of being cartoon-like, the perfect intellectual nourishment for its teen and uninformed audience (Cole and Trubo 49-50). According to Rockwell, As it evolved from 1968 onward, Led Zeppelin became the first and greatest mint candy audience band built up through FM radio-play and bide contrives rather than AM hit (Led Zeppelin and the Alchemy 24).Christgau attentiveness this view, by observing tha t the band never woodshedded like Cream, that it had a sens audience from the start (n. p. ). Both facts reflected the changing structure of the music industry in the late-sixties and early-seventies. Traditionally, rock bands started at the ground floor. They toured in small venues and reliable local radio airplay, which they would then parlay into a local or regional base of support. Despite its commercial success, Led Zeppelin positioned itself as a band that lay outside the mainstream.Though it had a kitty audience, the bands fans felt as if they were members of a secret society. When their early albums were criticized by reviews in the Rolling Stone and other national music publications, they recoiled from contact with the music press. Unlike other bands, its members were rarely in the pages of music magazines (Lewis). Consistent with contractual stipulations, Led Zeppelin exercised absolute control over their artistic direction. They became known as a band that wouldnt take shit from anyone. Tales of their contrariness have taken on mythic proportions.At a time when other popular bands were required to cut singles or engage in more subtle or manifest forms of merchandising, they were one of the few that had the power to abstain from these sordid affairs (Yorke 114-5). Despite many lucrative offers, the band refused to perform on television. These stories lent the band a distinctive mystique. Rockwell comments, Led Zeppelin is a band that is intimately a ritual among teen-agers and blissfully alien to the over-21-year-olds (24). This combination of mass challenge and cult-like allegiance is an unusual and interesting phenomenon.In structure if not in meaning, the group was the musical equivalent of the Volkswagen Beetle. Even today, its status as a peoples band remains largely uncontested (Cole and Trubo 102). The fervour surrounding the release of Led Zeppelins fourth part album provides insight into how the bands unique status was constructed. I n 1971 it released its fourth album. Its jacket contained no words that would tell apart it as a Led Zeppelin album to outsiders. Inside, one found four runes at the top of the liner sleeve (Yorke 133).When asked to explain the rationale for this unorthodox packaging, Page replied, We immovable that on the fourth album we would deliberately downplay the group name and there wouldnt be any information on the outer(prenominal) jacket. Names, titles, and things like that do not mean a thing. What matters is our music. We said we just wanted to rely purely on music( quoted in Davis 141-142). at heart the industry, confusion ensued over what to call the album. Critics labeled it the fourth album, or referred to it by catalog number, Atlantic SD 7208, while fans often referred to it as Zoso, a rough transliteration of the first rune.One does not have to challenge the sincerity of Mr. Pages remarks to see how a belief that only music mattered, and that Names, titles and things had no relevance, might also function as an effective marketing tool. It played the game both ways on the one hand, it affirmed the bands distance from merchandising itself, while, on the other, it created an aura that drew suburban teens to record stores in droves (Cole and Trubo 73). Led Zeppelin toured North America any year from 1968 through 1973, returning in 1975 and 1977. The band had scheduled concert dates for 1980, although John Bonhams untimely death halted their plans.The tours since 1973 were conducted with military-like precision. The band even went as far as leasing their own private jets to ferry them to and from shows (Yorke 142). The size of Led Zeppelins attendance and gate receipts were to become almost as legendary as its performances. In July 1973 the band broke the Beatles record for single concert paid attendance. The Beatles had drawn 55,000, with a $301,000 gross, to Shea Stadium in 1965. Yet that night 56,800 people paid $309,000 to see Led Zeppelin in Tampa, F lorida (Robins 116).In 1977 the band played before 76,229 fans in Pontiac, Michigan, bill as the largest paid crowd for a single attraction in the history of rock. The bands gross for the evening was $792,361, a record at that time (Swan Song Press Release). While its fans would proudly identify with the bands outsider status, they also took a great deal of satisfaction in the bands commercial success. This contradiction suggests that the rock ideology had mutated since the late-60, and that its oppositional stance had softened some, reflecting institutional changes that the genre and its audience had undergone during that time (Lewis).Plant and Page, around whom most of the show revolved, presented starkly different characters. On stage Plant was the front-man. He introduced the songs and chatted with the audience between them. The singers appeal was primarily to girls and young women. On stage he was, by turns, coquettish and phallic (Cole and Trubo 66-7). At one moment, he was a golden-curled, teeny-bop dream, arouse fantasies of castles and knights, at another, he was a groaning, pushing, back- doorstep man, ready to break down the door to get what he wanted. Robins characterized his stage presence as, Spirituality mixed with sexuality (Robins 117).Unlike the singer, Pages appeal was primarily to boys and young men. While the driving force behind the band, he almost never radius to the audience. His is the silence of young boys, vulnerable and aloof. A waifish, Edwardian figure, Pages guitar playing was accompanied by dramatic and grandiloquent gestures. On stage he often resembled a wizard marshaling the dark electronic forces at his disposal, an impression heightened by his reported dalliance with Satanism. He appeals to those who feel they have something important to say, but doubt their ability to say them (Davis).Led Zeppelins music always exceeded generic heavy metal boundaries. In the mid-seventies, however, these boundaries were eroding from deve lopments within and without rock music. The stylistic diversity that marked its third and fourth albums was pushed even farther in later albums such as Houses of the Holy and Physical Graffiti. In each, the blues played a less prominent role, and the bands lyrical concerns began to shift, in a generic sense, overlapping the terrain occupied by progressive groups such as Yes, queen Crimson, and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer.In the mid- to late-seventies the distinctions between the audiences for heavy metal and progressive rock began to disrupt (Weinstein 29). By the mid 70s, Led Zeppelins audience had become more varied. While still holding much of its traditional audience base, new groups such as Boston, Aerosmith, or Kansas, competed with the band for the allegiance of young listeners. By contrast, its music became part of the mainstream. In 1976, for example, the daughter of the president, Susan Ford, said on the Dick Cavett Show that Led Zeppelin was her favorite group.Not able to let its historical commitment to youth be outshone, the Democrats responded in kind. speak at the National Association of Record Manufacturers convention, Jimmy Carter reminisced about earreach to Led Zeppelin records during all-night sessions when he was governor of Georgia (Davis 296-7). While anecdotal, both accounts suggest that Led Zeppelin had become something of an institution. As a cast of youth, one needed only to refer to it to become cool. As is leafy vegetable in politics, however, the symbolism rang hollow.Although the undisputed ruler of Americas high school parking a good deal in the early seventies, by the put over of the eighties Led Zeppelin was no longer able to meld different youth factions under its sonic umbrella. Instead, these same parking lots were the sites of tribal warfare, with one area given over to brisk Wave, another to Disco or dance music, and still another to Metal (Straw 101-3). Led Zeppelin was, arguably, the most commercially successful rock band of the seventies, all the while maintaining an aura that made its young audience feel as if it were part of a secret society.From their standpoint, fandom was an entry into a community the size of which has not been seen since. It was also, arguably, the most significant and influential rock band of the seventies. emergent from the decomposition of 60s psychedelia, the band played a leading role in the development of the decades musical, performance, and business practices. Works Cited Bangs, Lester. Review of Led Zeppelin III, Atlantic SD 7201. Rolling Stone. (November 26,1970) NP. Bangs, Lester. Mighty War Machine, Familiar as a heartbeat, Creem.(February 1972) 62-63. Christgau, Robert. A Power Plant Newsday. (June 15,1972) NP. Cole, Richard and Richard Trubo. Stairway to Heaven Led Zeppelin Uncensored. New York Harper Collins, 1992. Davis, Stephen. Hammer of the Gods The Led Zeppelin Saga. New York Ballantine Books, 1985. Lewis, Dave. Led Zeppelin A Celebration. Omnibu s Press, 1991. Queenan, Joe. Bookshelf Sex V Drugs n Rock n Roll. The Wall Street Journal. (August 28,1992) NP. Robins, Wayne. Led Zep Zaps Kidz. village Voice. (February 3,1975) 116-118. Rockwell, John.Led Zeppelin Excites Crowd at Garden But in some way Delirium Wasnt There. New York Times. (February 4,1975) NP. Rockwell, John. Led Zeppelin and the Alchemy of a Rock Group. New York Times. (June 5, 1977) 19-24. Straw, Will. Characterizing Rock Music Cultures The Case of Heavy Metal, in Frith, Simon and Andrew Goodwin (eds. ) On Record Rock, Pop, and the Written Word. New York Pantheon, 1990, pp. 97-110. Weinstein, Deena. Heavy Metal A Cultural Sociology. New York Lexington Books, 1991. Yorke, Ritchie. Led Zeppelin The Definitive Biography. London Virgin, 1993.