by George Case
Nirvana
The polar opposite of Sunset Strip party rockers Van Halen, Nirvana too reconfigured the music scene over their short career. After Nirvana, the blinding guitar runs and godlike pretensions of Led Zeppelin and their many imitators seemed well and truly passé, but hindsight shows the Seattle trio were more enthralled by the Zeppelin legacy than they or their fans may have wanted to believe. With the pathetic Kurt Cobain on guitar and vocals the group tried a painful “Heartbreaker” and “Immigrant Song” at very early gigs, and had a song called “Aero Zeppelin” on the 1992 compilation Insecticide; in 2008 ex-Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl’s Foo Fighters invited Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones onstage at London’s Wembley Stadium to play “Ramble On” and “Rock and Roll” in front of 86,000 fans. By 2010 Grohl was playing in Them Crooked Vultures with John Paul Jones.
Pearl Jam
Another of the 1990s “grunge” bands whose introverted songwriting and performance styles came as a welcome contrast to the hair-gel histrionics of Guns N’ Roses or Mötley Crüe, Pearl Jam have now maintained respectable career for over two decades. In a surprise duet at Chicago’s House of Blues in 2005, the group performed with Robert Plant, doing “Fool in the Rain” with the singer and melding their band’s “Given to Fly” with the very similar “Going to California.” Bassist Jeff Ament has said that “Pearl Jam’s goal every night is, ‘Let’s try to be Zep in ’73, Madison Square Garden.’ They changed it up with every record. When we made Ten, we wanted to be as diverse as possible so we could go any direction we wanted after that, the way they did.”
The Black Crowes
In 2000 the southern rockers revived themselves with a joint album and US tour project that had them teaming up with Jimmy Page. Their combined document, Live at the Greek, was a popular Internet-only release when first retailed and offered fans a satisfying selection of such Zeppelin highlights as “Heartbreaker,” “The Lemon Song,” and “Custard Pie,” as well as the Yardbirds’ “Shapes of Things,” Fleetwood Mac’s “Oh Well,” and the Black Crowes’ own “Remedy.” For Page, being onstage with two other guitar players was a rare treat: “When we did ‘Ten Years Gone’ with Led Zeppelin, there’s all these guitars on the record, and I used to do my best to try to get through it with just one guitar…. [W]hen we did ‘Ten Years Gone’ with the Crowes it was quite fantastic—they had obviously done their homework.” “I think the Jimmy Page thing just helped us home in on who we really are,” guitarist Rich Robinson looked back. “And that was a great thing for me—a confidence builder.” His singer brother Chris took an even longer view of his association with Led Zeppelin’s leader. “They’re part of the vocabulary of rock ’n’ roll…. They’re another example of how much inspiration there is in the things that have come before us.”
Timeline
1979
January 30: Shah of Iran deposed in Islamic Revolution.
March 31: Nuclear accident at Three Mile Island.
May 3: Margaret Thatcher elected British prime minister.
August 4 / 11: Led Zeppelin play Knebworth Festival, England.
August 15: In Through the Out Door released.
August 30: Earl Mountbatten killed by IRA bomb.
November 26: Iranian students seize hostages at US Embassy, Tehran.
December 21: USSR invades Afghanistan.
Movie: Apocalypse Now.
Music: Pink Floyd, The Wall; Michael Jackson, Off the Wall; Supertramp, Breakfast in America; the Police, Outlandos d’Amour; the Clash, London Calling; AC/DC, Highway to Hell; Blondie, “Heart of Glass”; Donna Summer, “Hot Stuff”; the Sugarhill Gang, “Rapper’s Delight.”
25
Presence
Led Zeppelin Then and Now
Laughing in the Rain: Led Zeppelin Parodies
The band’s lofty status as inflated rock ’n’ roll nobility has, fairly or not, made them inevitable targets for satire. The most conspicuous instances of comedians or musicians poking fun at Led Zeppelin are as follows.
Little Roger and the Goosebumps
In 1978 San Franciscans Roger Clark and Dick Bright recorded and released a well-executed cover of “Stairway to Heaven,” only with the lyrics of the kitsch TV series Gilligan’s Island—the lines actually fit into the original music pretty well. The effect of “Gilligan’s Island (Stairway)” is to either elevate the banal sitcom into something profound, or to turn Led Zeppelin’s solemn masterpiece into something goofy. The group’s management soon threatened legal action and the single was withdrawn, but the music now circulates freely on the Internet.
Frank Zappa
The master rock satirist orchestrated a brass-heavy version of “Stairway to Heaven” in 1988, with vamped instrumental accompaniment that punctured the folk pretensions of the Zeppelin version. Though the song is not explicitly a send-up, there was a rather smug subversion in recreating the famous guitar parts for tuba.
Dana Carvey
While he didn’t specifically reference Led Zeppelin, the American actor (Saturday Night Live and Wayne’s World) performed a funny routine called “Choppin’ Broccoli,” spoofing the pseudo-heavy, stream-of-consciousness lyrics of many rock anthems. “There’s a lady I know, if I didn’t know her, she’d be the lady I didn’t know…” he begins, and climaxes with the heroine slicing the titular vegetable.
Dread Zeppelin
Probably the most successful purveyors of Led Zeppelin–based comedy, this Californian group has recorded a number of albums that remake Zeppelin music in a reggae style (with guitarist Jah Paul Jo, alias Joe Ramsey) and sung in the manner of Elvis Presley (Tortelvis, alias Greg Tortell). The results aren’t so much parodies as just good cover versions that prove the appeal of the prototypes; the medleys of “Black Dog / Hound Dog” and “Heartbreaker (At the End of Lonely Street)” put Led Zeppelin in a new light. Dread Zeppelin’s albums Un-Led-Ed (1990) and 5,000,000 (1991) enjoyed wide appeal at first release, and even earned commendations from Robert Plant himself, who was pleased to hear the Zeppelin legacy for once treated with friendly irreverence. “We were doing reggae versions of ‘Stairway to Heaven’ when Tortelvis was thin,” he claimed to Rolling Stone in 1990. “Just doing sound checks and stuff like that…. It wasn’t sending the thing up—it was just like, ‘Here’s another way of doing it.’” For those who can still appreciate the humor, Dread Zeppelin have also put out No Quarter Pounder (1995) and The Song Remains Insane (1996).
SCTV
Originally broadcast on the pioneering 1980s comedy series (and for copyright reasons blocked from its DVD releases), a mock K-tel-style advertisement promotes a ridiculous collection of “Stairway to Heaven” covers by Slim Whitman, Luciano Pavarotti, Barry White, Buffy Sainte-Marie, and others. The impersonations are spot-on and very funny—and note the fictionalized credit to Dolly Parton, who really did do her own “Stairway” version some years later.
Spinal Tap
Not a real band but a fictional outfit portrayed in the pioneering 1984 “mockumentary” This Is Spinal Tap, the hilarious representation of rock music’s most embarrassing clichés has since entered the public mind as the obvious comparison to countless genuine acts—including Led Zeppelin. By showing heavy metal not as the majestic religion of its fans’ fantasies but the juvenile schlock most outsiders considered it to be, This Is Spinal Tap brought a much-needed dose of irony to the genre. “I definitely recognized the band politics,” even Jimmy Page said of the film. “People getting puffed up and self-important.” Robert Plant saw himself in Spinal Tap too: “Getting lost on the way to the stage—that was us, playing in Baltimore. It took twenty-five minutes to do the hundred yards from our Holiday Inn through the kitchen to the arena.”
Comprised of improvisational actors and accomplished musicians Christopher Guest (Nigel Tufnel, lead guitar), Michael McKean (David St. Hubbins, rhythm guitar and vocals), and Harry Shearer (Derek Smalls, bass), Spinal Tap hit all the right notes in depicting the decline of a British hard rock group whose prime
was sometime in the 1970s: the moody virtuoso who solos with a violin scraped across the strings of his Les Paul, the outgoing blond singer trapped in a love-hate partnership with his foil, and the quiet bassist who sees himself as the middle ground between the vocalist’s fire and the guitarist’s ice. “I’m sort of lukewarm water,” says Derek. There’s also the late drummer who choked on vomit (though not his own) and the Stonehenge stage set that the real Led Zeppelin foreshadowed in Oakland in 1977. The bewigged Guest, McKean, and Shearer have occasionally “reunited” for more Tap projects over the years, and though Zeppelin never sank to their blundering depths, it’s subsequently been hard to watch The Song Remains the Same with a straight face.
By the time of Zeppelin’s last British shows in 1979, both pop music and world affairs had changed dramatically.
Courtesy of Robert Rodriguez
N-N-N-Nobody’s Fault but Mine: Led Zeppelin Sampled
Since the appearance of analog and then digital audio sampling in the 1980s and ’90s, many people have plundered the Zeppelin vault. In fact, given the nature of the techniques—overdubbing, repeating, or otherwise incorporating portions of previous songs into new music—there is no way to identify every single sampler who’s ever taken a riff or drumbeat from a Zeppelin cut and made something else with it. Most of the Led Zeppelin sampling has likely been improvised in dance clubs where the piece was used by the house DJ only once, and never recorded or released as a new work, or known only by a small audience of clubbers. Because of the sonic clarity of Jimmy Page’s productions, particularly his recording of John Bonham’s drums, and because of the heavy impact of Bonham’s drumming itself, Zeppelin music has been popular with turntable and digital players who isolate and reconfigure the sounds for their own purposes. Some listeners name Bonham as the single most sampled performer ever, although others give James Brown that credit.
Sampling, of course, has its opponents who complain that it is an inherently lesser art form than the playing of a “traditional” instrument, and the legality of recycling a few seconds of someone else’s track into another’s has been widely debated. Page himself once denounced the sample-reliant hip-hop medium thusly: “They steal your riffs and then shout at you,” but many samples today are legitimately permitted and paid for. A roster of artists who’ve identifiably placed Led Zeppelin music into their own collages would include but is not limited to:
• Frankie Goes to Hollywood: “Relax” (“Moby Dick” sample)
• The Beastie Boys: “She’s Crafty” (“The Ocean”); “Rhymin’ and Stealin,’” “So What’cha Want” (“When the Levee Breaks”); “Beastie Groove” (“Black Dog”); “What Comes Around” (“Moby Dick”)
• No Remorze: “Dark Malice ’95” (“Whole Lotta Love”)
• De La Soul: “The Magic Number” (“The Crunge”)
• Sandra: “Hiroshima” (“Whole Lotta Love”)
• Fort Minor: “Dolla” (“The Ocean”)
• Ice-T: “Midnight” (“When the Levee Breaks”)
• T.I.: “Make You Sweat” (“Black Dog”)
• Son of Bazerk: “One Time for the Rebel” (“Whole Lotta Love”)
• The Prodigy: “Rhythm of Life” (“Whole Lotta Love”)
• Obie Trice: “You Burn” (“Black Dog”)
• Chinese Man: “You Suck Me” (“You Shook Me”)
• Sean Kingston: “Me Love” (“D’yer Mak’er”)
• The Backyard Rangers: “What’s It Gonna Be?” (“D’yer Mak’er”)
• Sandy Vee: “Bleep” (“Immigrant Song”)
• Fatboy Slim: “Going Out of My Head” (“The Crunge”)
• Scatterbrain: “Down with the Ship (Slight Return)” (“Dazed and Confused,” “Heartbreaker,” “Rock and Roll”)
• Double Dee & Steinski: “Lesson 3 (History of Hip Hop Mix)” (“The Crunge”)
• Chapterhouse: “Pearl” (“When the Levee Breaks”)
• Dr. Dre: “Lyrical Gangbang” (“When the Levee Breaks”)
• Jake One: “Gangsta Boy” (“When the Levee Breaks”)
• Enigma: “Gravity of Love,” “Return to Innocence” (“When the Levee Breaks”)
• Coldcut: “Beats and Pieces” (“When the Levee Breaks”)
• Eminem: “Kim” (“When the Levee Breaks”)
• Sophie Hawkins: “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover” (“When the Levee Breaks”)
• Robert Plant: “Tall Cool One” (“Black Dog,” “Whole Lotta Love,” “Dazed and Confused,” “Custard Pie”)
• Nikki Costa: “Hope It Felt Good” (“Whole Lotta Love”)
• Schooly D: “Signifying Rapper” (“Kashmir”)
• Puff Daddy / Jimmy Page: “Come with Me” (“Kashmir”)
• Mike Oldfield: “Crystal Clear” (“When the Levee Breaks”)
• Insane Clown Posse: “$50 Bucks” (“Ramble On”)
• The Chemical Brothers: “Delik” (“The Crunge”)
• MF Grimm: “Adam & Eve” (“Achilles Last Stand”)
26
Thinking How It Used to Be
Zeppelin After Zeppelin
I’ve Got to Get You Together: Led Zeppelin Reunions
Technically, there haven’t been any: Since the announcement of the band’s dissolution on December 4, 1980, the original Led Zeppelin of Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham has ceased to exist. Since then, a handful of live or recorded pairings of two remaining members has attracted attention from fans, but can’t really be counted as reunions. In a few public and private instances, the three Zeppelin survivors have gotten together to play Zeppelin music, notably:
Live Aid, Philadelphia, July 13, 1985
Page, Plant, and Jones, and drummers Phil Collins and Tony Thompson, played “Rock and Roll,” “Whole Lotta Love” and (with Paul Martinez from Plant’s band on bass) “Stairway to Heaven,” but not very well, despite the rapturous reception of the crowd. Plant was hoarse and exhausted, Page’s Les Paul was out of tune and he was plugged into a too-short cable for “Stairway,” and the two drummers couldn’t quite mesh together. The grand positive spirit of the Live Aid event overshadowed Led Zeppelin’s troubled set. “Live Aid was like having the umbilical cord there for me to see again,” Plant said in 1988. “But it also smacked of the shambles and shoddiness that Zeppelin could never get away with.”
Bath, England, January 1986
At the suggestion of John Paul Jones, private rehearsals between Page, Plant, Jones, and Tony Thompson took place in a Corsham studio near this English city after the Live Aid affair. Despite the best of intentions, it never quite came together. Thompson was soon injured in a car accident and was replaced by Plant’s roadie Mike “Kiddo” Kidson, and Page and Plant no longer had the same master-protégé dynamic of 1968: Plant was riding high on an acclaimed solo career, while Page was still seeking a post-Zeppelin direction and coming off years of heavy indulgence. “It was the most bristlingly embarrassing moment, to have all that will and not knowing what to play,” said Plant. The vocalist ended up contributing bass to some jams while Jones played piano and Page guitar. “It was pretty good. And there were two or three things that were very promising.” “I don’t know if Jimmy was quite into it, but it was good,” Jones described the sessions politely. “What I recall is Robert and I getting drunk in the hotel and Robert questioning what we were doing. He was saying nobody wants to hear that old stuff, and I said, ‘Everybody is waiting for it to happen.’ It just fell apart from then.” What might have come from these trials—or where the musicians wanted to take them—is anyone’s guess, but it seems to have been the last time any new Led Zeppelin music was created.
Atlantic Records Fortieth Anniversary, New York, May 14, 1988
Intended as a highlight of a show that also featured sets by such legendary Atlantic acts as the Coasters, Wilson Pickett, and the Bee Gees, the surviving members joined with Jason Bonham on drums to perform uneven renditio
ns of “Kashmir,” “Heartbreaker,” “Whole Lotta Love,” and—grudgingly agreed to by Plant at the last moment—“Stairway to Heaven.” The band waited backstage for too long: fraught with emotional tension, their spot was, in Peter Grant’s word, “diabolical.” “It’s unfortunate to be measured by a one-off shot like that, when you haven’t played in a while,” Page said in Musician magazine later.
Carmen Plant’s Twenty-First Birthday, Oldbury (near Birmingham), UK, November 21, 1989
The coming of age party for Plant’s daughter saw an impromptu gathering of her father, Page, Jones, and members of Plant’s band doing “Trampled Underfoot,” “Misty Mountain Hop,” and “Rock and Roll.” Out of the public spotlight, the musicians were more relaxed and actually enjoyed themselves. “Pagey was playing so good—I had a big lump in my throat,” recalled Plant.
Page-Plant tours were the closest many fans could come to witnessing a Zeppelin reunion.
Courtesy of Robert Rodriguez
Jason Bonham’s Wedding Reception, Bewdley, Worcestershire, UK, April 28, 1990
Another happy and private occasion for the Zeppelin family spurred a fun, spontaneous jam where the groom, now married to Jan Charteris, took the drum stool as his three “uncles” played “Bring It On Home,” “Sick Again,” “Custard Pie,” “Rock and Roll,” and Jerry Lee Lewis’s “It’ll Be Me.”
