by George Case
Led Zeppelin: The Story of a Band and Their Music, 1968–1980, by Keith Shadwick
British music critic Shadwick’s study focuses on Led Zeppelin’s songwriting, recording, and performing history, and is a thoughtful and balanced work for average punters. Though die-hards might quibble with some of the author’s musical judgments, the title is a welcome counterweight to the scandalizing of Hammer of the Gods.
When Giants Walked the Earth: A Biography of Led Zeppelin, by Mick Wall
The longest narrative biography to date, by an English rock journalist who has known and spoken with Page, Plant, and Jones regarding their time in the foursome, Giants is distinguished by Wall’s very thorough research into Page’s occult secrets. Like many Zeppelin scholars, though, he does recycle much material from other sources, and his italicized “first person” passages, purporting to be the inward thoughts of the band members and Peter Grant, feel awkward and arbitrary.
Stairway to Heaven: Led Zeppelin Uncensored, by Richard Cole and Richard Trubo
Avoid. The ex-Zeppelin road manager’s best inside dirt was already dished to Stephen Davis, leaving him to assemble this sleazy rehash of his adventures with the band. Uncensored unintentionally reveals how peripheral Cole was in the Led Zeppelin career arc, and its patently made-up dialogue (“We’re working like maniacs, and you put us in a hotel that’s like a battlefield!”) is cheesy. Page later said he considered suing Cole over this, “but it would be so painful to read that it wouldn’t be worth it.”
Led Zeppelin: The Definitive Biography, by Ritchie Yorke
This reasonably thorough account was revised in the 1990s from a Zeppelin-era sanitized edition. Yorke’s was the first responsible bio from someone who had covered the band firsthand in their early years, but Page’s reaction in 1976 was that it was “a classic case of someone abusing their access to us.”
Peter Grant: The Man Who Led Zeppelin, by Chris Welch
A candid and even poignant life story of Zeppelin’s indomitable manager serves as well as any other book to trace the act’s course from the 1960s to the 1980s. Welch’s book contains valuable anecdotes from such fringe players as Mickie Most and filmmaker Peter Clifton, who nevertheless understood what was going down.
John Bonham: A Thunder of Drums, by Chris Welch and Geoff Nichols
Welch and drummer Nichols do justice to Bonzo’s personal and musical legacy, not shying away from his alcoholic excesses but at the same time dissecting the nuts and bolts of his technique. Useful for Zeppelin fans and drum enthusiasts alike.
Jimmy Page: Magus, Musician, Man, by George Case
Full disclosure: I wrote this. Though the book was hampered by Page’s lack of direct input, most fans and reviewers found it to be a fair chronicle of the guitarist’s growth before, during, and after Led Zeppelin, with special attention paid to instruments and musical development.
Robert Plant: Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page, and the Solo Years, by Neil Daniels
This shaky, unauthorized bio teems with factual errors and pointless opinions from people wholly uninvolved with the subject.
LZ-’75: The Lost Chronicles of Led Zeppelin’s 1975 American Tour, by Stephen Davis
LZ-’75 is more inside dirt from the author of Hammer of the Gods, dug up from his brief accompaniment of their US circuit back in the day. The book contains a few new insights that couldn’t be printed in HOTG, but is mostly rehash.
Scholarly
In the Houses of the Holy: Led Zeppelin and the Power of Rock Music, by Susan Fast
This extremely academic treatise on Zeppelin’s music and showmanship can be valued for giving the group the serious consideration it rarely was accorded during the 1970s. It does, however, contain many sentences like “The fluid approach to text in Led Zeppelin… requires an equally fluid, polysemous approach to analysis, one that shuns unities or fixed homologies” and “Just underneath the surface of the melodic and rhythmic squareness is a harmonic and formal openness and irregularity that is highly significant in terms of the semiotics of the piece,” so be warned.
Led Zeppelin and Philosophy,by Scott Calef
From a series of titles exploring the deeper meanings of famous rock groups’ lives and art, this one puts the Zeppelin canon on the couch. Good fun for Zep-heads, but perhaps baffling to newbies.
Compendia
Led Zeppelin: A Celebrationand Celebration II: The Tight but Loose Files, by Dave Lewis
These are great reference texts by the founder and editor of the band’s original fan magazine, Tight but Loose. Lewis has long enjoyed special access to the Zeppelin circle and has been exceedingly conscientious in his research. Both books provide timelines, discographies, concert dates, and other data, as well as key interviews with the principals.
Led Zeppelin: The Concert File, by Dave Lewis with Simon Pallett
Exhaustive gig-by-gig examination of Zeppelin’s live work from beginning to end, including set lists, local reviews, and memories from attendees and fellow performers. Not essential for casual fans, but a bounty of info for the committed.
Led Zeppelin: The Press Reports, by Robert Godwin
A gold mine of contemporary newspaper and magazine articles on Zeppelin from the late 1960s to 1980. Many of the reviews and quotations dispel the myths of the ensemble’s absolute resistance to media contacts, and some show the players as mere mortals trying to sell records and concert tickets before they became untouchable rock gods.
The Rough Guide to Led Zeppelin, by Nigel Williamson
Passable but hardly explosive factoids won’t impress most serious listeners.
Picture Books
Whole Lotta Led Zeppelin: The Illustrated History of the Heaviest Band of All Time, by Jon Bream
Whole Lotta Led Zeppelin is a lavish collection of stage shots, backstage passes, and other promo paraphernalia with all-star sidebars from friends, admirers, and critics. Full disclosure: I contributed two essays to this.
Led Zeppelin: Shadows Taller Than Our Souls, by Charles R. Cross
Another gorgeously illustrated coffee-table book, distinguished by pullout facsimiles of tickets and assorted handouts, though the textual filler is less spectacular.
Led Zeppelin: Good Times, Bad Times: A Visual Biography, by Jerry Prochnicky and Ralph Hulett
Though Zeppelin’s staple photographic record has been reproduced in many places, this collection manages to bring out some refreshingly little-seen and private shots to flesh out the usual pictorial evidence.
Led Zeppelin: In the Light, by Howard Mylett and Richard Bunton
This very early (1981) photo compilation set the bar high for subsequent illustrated volumes. Author Mylett also pioneered with a fine Jimmy Page picture book, Tangents Within a Framework.
Jimmy Page, by Jimmy Page
Not the autobiography many fans were hoping for but a limited-edition scrapbook of Page’s personal photos, from specialty publishers Genesis Publications. The book retailed in 2010 at over £300 a pop, but future mass-market pressings are anticipated.
22
And It Makes Me Wonder
Led Zeppelin’s Greatest Song
To Be a Rock and Not to Roll: The Making of “Stairway to Heaven”
The genesis of Led Zeppelin’s most famous work precedes the formation of the band. Rock music’s sophistication had snowballed with the ascendancies of Bob Dylan and the Beatles from 1964 on. Increasingly personal or “poetic” lyrics, more elaborate orchestrations of tunes, more involved utilization of studio technology, and the commercial dominance of the long-playing album against that of the 45-rpm single—all set precedents for “Stairway.” One obvious change that affected the entire medium was the acceptance of pop songs longer than the prescribed three minutes. Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” (1965) was just under six minutes in duration, and the Beatles’ global hit “Hey Jude” (1968) clocked in at 7:11. The Doors’ album cut “The End” (1967) was over eleven minutes long. Before this time most pop tracks either started f
ast and loud and stayed fast and loud, or started slow and quiet and stayed slow and quiet, but by the late 1960s the arrangements were becoming more ambitious, with the climactic structures of the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations,” Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” or the Moody Blues’ “Nights in White Satin” (all 1967), the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” (1969), the Who’s “Pinball Wizard” (1969), the Beatles’ “Let It Be” (1970), and Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sounds of Silence” (1965) and “Bridge over Troubled Water” (1970). Perhaps the most triumphant of these new epics was the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life,” which brought their 1967 landmark Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band to its shattering finale.
Though “Stairway to Heaven” is ultimately the achievement of all four Led Zeppelin members, the song’s basic premise was first conceived by Jimmy Page. Hearing other acts expand their sound fired his competitive spirit, and by 1970 he was moved to plan his own effort in the field. Already he had premiered his beloved “light and shade” constructions with Led Zeppelin’s “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You,” “Your Time Is Gonna Come,” and the lengthy “Dazed and Confused,” as well as Led Zeppelin II’s “Ramble On,” “What Is and What Should Never Be,” and “Thank You.” All of these were either acoustic-electric hybrids or long explorations of contrasting dynamics, where the volume, tempo, and instrumentation were built up and toned down as the songs played out. In April of that year Page told a reporter, “Insomuch as ‘Dazed and Confused’ and all those things went into sections, well, we want to try something new with the organ and acoustic guitar building up and building up to the electric thing.” As the album that became Led Zeppelin IV was prepared at Headley Grange, following his and Robert Plant’s second visit to the Welsh cottage of Bron-yr-Aur, the opening chords of “Stairway” were tried and perfected on Page’s New Vista home studio tape deck. “I’d been fooling around with the acoustic guitar and come up with different sections, which I married together,” recalled the guitarist. “But what I wanted was something that would have the drums come in at the middle, and then we’d build up to a huge crescendo. Also, I wanted it to speed up, which is against all musical—I mean, that’s what a musician doesn’t do, you see.” Although the song was performed on a guitar tuned to the standard E–A–D–G–B–E, Page later said that the droning modalities of “White Summer” and “Black Mountain Side” formed “Stairway to Heaven”’s bottom steps.
The next stage in the song’s creation was to bring it to Led Zeppelin’s other players. At Headley Grange John Paul Jones was the first after Page to work on the piece, and he quickly grasped its structure. Armed with the cache of acoustic instruments he always brought to studio sessions, he pulled out a bass recorder—something never played before or since on a Zeppelin track—and accompanied Page’s trial runs. Considering how it is this wooden pipe that imbues the song with its unforgettably archaic mood, it’s interesting that neither Jones nor John Bonham received any songwriting credit on “Stairway to Heaven,” but the final ascription somehow suits its soft-heavy, light-shade, rural-urban duality: man-made Page coupled with the organic Plant.
The work was rehearsed and demoed at Headley Grange but conclusively recorded at Island Studios, with the probable date of its taping sometime in January 1971. “I was very much into doing tracks that built, and you would add extra layers to the song, and it reached a crescendo at the end,” recalled engineer Andy Johns. “I mentioned that to [Page]. ‘I’ve got a song that does that…. Wait ’til you hear it.’” In addition to Page’s Harmony acoustic guitar
“Stairway to Heaven” remains Led Zeppelin’s greatest and most famous statement.
Author’s Collection
and Jones’s double-tracked recorders, there is also Jones’s Hohner electric piano underlying the middle portions of the track, and Page brings in a Fender XII electric twelve-string guitar, directly injected into the mixing deck without amplification for a chiming texture, from 2:14 on. The two other key components of “Stairway”’s music, Bonham’s drums and Page’s electric guitar solo, were put down at Island. “We really couldn’t have done the acoustic guitar and drums at Headley—we needed a nice big studio,” Page explained.
John Bonham’s entry at the song’s 4:19 mark is a simple fill by his standards, but resounds with such force after such suspenseful absence in the previous verses, that “Stairway to Heaven” turns into a heavy rock ’n’ roll cut from the instant he appears. Other classic tunes benefit from dramatic percussive fanfares—Ringo Starr’s in the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life” and “Hey Jude,” Charlie Watts’s in the Stones’ “Wild Horses” and “Sister Morphine,” Nick Mason’s in Pink Floyd’s “Time”—but Bonham’s is absolutely volcanic. According to assistant engineer Richard Digby-Smith, Page requested a retake of the drummer’s first attempts, to Bonham’s annoyance. “This always happens,” he complained. “We get a great take and then you want to do it again.” But the master version hears him taking out his impatience on the snare and toms, with spectacular results. “And when they play it back,” Digby-Smith said, “Bonham looks at Jimmy like, ‘You’re always right, you bastard.’”
Then came Page’s turn. The descending rhythmic base underneath the guitar solo and final verses, a simplified arrangement of the same A-minor pattern with which “Stairway” starts, was played on his Gibson Les Paul in tandem with Jones’s Fender bass. But Page’s climactic lead lines were played on his Fender Telecaster, which he’d put aside after the 1969 Led Zeppelin II sessions. This was a wise move, as the Telecaster had a distinctly piercing tone that could cut through the fatter riffs of the Gibson. Plugged into either his Supro or Marshall amplifier, Page first sketched a basic outline of his solo while listening to the playback, warmed up, then taped three in quick succession. “I remember sitting in the control room with Jimmy,” said Andy Johns. “He’s standing there next to me, and he’d done quite a few passes, and it wasn’t going anywhere. I could see he was getting a bit paranoid, and so I was getting paranoid…. It was a silly circle of paranoia. Then bang! On the next take or two, he ripped it out.” Richard Digby-Smith likewise recollected Page slouched on a speaker as he played his part. “I had the first phrase worked out, and a link phrase here and there, but on the whole that solo was improvised,” Page reported.
Beginning at 5:54, Page mainly uses a pentatonic blues scale for the part (the notes A, C, D, E, and G), but he also incorporates the additional notes of F and B that impart a minor or classical feel. The resultant Aeolian implications of the solo make it more melodic than his leads for “Good Times Bad Times,” “Since I’ve Been Loving You,” or his other Chicago and Delta tributes; though other guitarists would do even more baroque solos in the future, the trend toward quasi-Romantic electric guitar runs took a giant leap forward from “Stairway to Heaven.” A cyclical set of fast bluesy licks in the middle of the sequence makes more tension, a Hendrix-like device done to perfection here by Page and soon a standard move in long rock guitar exhibitions. The repeated four-note “sighing” fills at 6:24, 6:28, 6:33, and 6:38 were punched into the solo after Page’s completed take (the overlapped sounds of two separate guitars are audible), but in concert, Page was able to replicate all tracks of the studio solo almost exactly. Listen, too, for how the descending A minor-G–F progression (which reminded Page of that for Ray Charles’s “Hit the Road, Jack”) becomes more syncopated when the vocal line returns after the Wagnerian blast of E–C–A sextuplets that concludes the solo.
From a musical standpoint, what makes “Stairway to Heaven” so effective is the seamlessness of its sonic expansion. Note how the opening acoustic guitar and Robert Plant’s first verses are recorded with an almost “dry” intimacy, but then more and more echo is added throughout the song, so that by Plant’s octave-jumping declamations from 6:43 he seems to be singing from atop a mountain in a thunderstorm. Because the fundamental key of A minor is maintained from beginning to end, it is impossible to dissect “Stairway” as merely two or
more compositions stuck together, as might be said of “Dazed and Confused”; instead the listener is forced to reexamine any preconceptions of folk versus rock or acoustic versus electric, since each different section blends so subtly into the next. Young people whose parents or teachers derided their music as “noise” could play them “Stairway” with no introduction and watch as their elders slowly realized the peaceful, poetic ballad was in fact the work of long-haired rock ’n’ rollers. When mass-marketed pop records seemed to be indistinguishable from traditional Celtic madrigals, the grown-ups might think, Maybe these kids have better taste than we assumed.
If this was not the first rock song to rise to a resounding crescendo—even Zeppelin’s “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” does that pretty powerfully—“Stairway to Heaven” contains the broadest sweep of styles, in its nearly eight-minute journey from quiet pastoral to screaming hard rock, or from the year 1500 to 1971. Musicologist Robert Walser has written, “Musically, ‘Stairway’ fuses powerful ‘authenticities,’ which are really ideologies…. The narrative juxtaposition of the sensitive (acoustic guitar, etc.) and the aggressive (distorted electric guitar, etc.) has continued to show up in heavy metal, from Ozzy Osbourne to Metallica.” According to a 1986 analysis of the song in Guitar for the Practicing Musician magazine, no less a figure than Herbert Von Karajan, conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, was exposed to “Stairway” and described its structure as “almost perfect,” enthusing, “Even if I were to rearrange it for the Berlin Philharmonic, I would do it like the record.”
