by George Case
Ironically, the initial attraction of classic rock was that most of its tunes had rarely been heard on the conventional AM stations and might thus be thought of as heavier or cooler than the happy pop hits of the 1970s or 1980s. Likewise, the advent of music video in the 1980s came as a garish contrast to the substance of rock ’n’ roll’s greatest decades of creativity and artistic freedom, as noted by Brad Tolinski in Guitar World in 1993: “Thanks to constant exposure on MTV, today’s pop heroes somehow seem smaller, more disposable than their predecessors. But pre-MTV bands like Queen, the original Kiss, and Led Zep have retained a powerful mystique. Unlike today’s overexposed supergroups, those Classic bands were rarely captured on film, and when they were, they left distant, grainy images which have themselves taken on an almost mythic power.” But by 2010 even the best-loved tracks by Queen, the original Kiss, and Led Zep had been almost exhausted by continuous airplay on classic rock radio, especially under an enforced regimen that has shrunk their catalogues (and those of other classic rock stalwarts like Pink Floyd, Lynryd Skynyrd, and Steve Miller) to but a fraction of their depth.
Disc jockey Jon Shap of WKOT in Illinois, a Zeppelin lover who asserts that “Led Zeppelin will always have a place on classic rock radio,” nonetheless harbors reservations over they way the band are covered on his own and other stations. “Without a doubt, ‘Stairway’ and ‘Whole Lotta Love’ are on their own overplay level…. Air Talent (DJs) really have no freedom [as to] what goes on the air. Everything is picked ahead of time by the programming department and then scheduled by a computer. Some programmers base their playlists on research done with target listeners, or test songs on how quickly listeners recognize them. Other programmers are told what to play by consultants, and check with their consultants for everything! It’s nuts!” One on-air personality confesses anonymously that he breaks ranks by playing the Led Zeppelin drum solo “Moby Dick” every year on the anniversary of John Bonham’s death. Many classic rock outlets now cater to a middle-aged male audience, with DJs telling dirty jokes and cueing up advertisements for power tools and military recruiters between spinning forty-year-old anthems of personal and social liberation. If you want to hear a Led Zeppelin song on the radio, tune to classic rock—if you want to really hear Led Zeppelin, turn to your own collection.
Takin’ Home My Hard-Earned Pay: Led Zeppelin as Corporate Rock
Like pornography, corporate rock is something hard to define—but you know it when you hear it. The phrase cropped up orally and in print around the time of the punk rebellion of 1976–79, although by the late ’60s some acts, including Led Zeppelin, had their countercultural bona fides questioned by the most politically vociferous segments of the youth movement. The disco craze of the late 1970s, driven by anonymous dancers, DJs, and club hits like Sister Sledge’s “We Are Family” and the Commodores’ “Brick House,” likewise made four- or five-man collections of millionaire hippies look much less populist than they thought themselves to be.
Corporate rock refers to the music made by artists so commercial, so conspicuously rich, or with such confident label promotion, that its spontaneity, humanity, and air of social menace have been all but suppressed. Some critics have written off nearly every pre-punk pop record of the decade as corporate rock, as the New York Times’s Howard Hampton did in 2001:
Something happened to rock music in the 1970s that it has never quite recovered from: the sound congealed into a dense, ponderous and soporific mass…. Where playfulness, humor, chaotic weirdness and wayward passion had reigned supreme, now even excess and outrage came to seem stage-managed by an invisible bureaucracy of FM station consultants, management firms, technocrat producers, and record company apparatchiks…. FM rock’s infamous disco-bashing campaign was an understandably panicked, phobic reaction, given how insular rock culture had become by that point.
The first of corporate rock’s prime suspects might include the flamboyant Elton John, the gaudy Queen, the faceless Doobie Brothers, the imitative Blue öyster Cult, or the arena demagogue Ted Nugent. Others might cite the proliferation of extravagant artist-owned record companies (the Beatles’ Apple, the Rolling Stones’ Rolling Stones, and Zeppelin’s Swan Song) or the prominence of oversold live albums like Peter Frampton’s Frampton Comes Alive, Kiss’s Alive! and Cheap Trick’s At Budokan as crucial indicators of corporate rock’s arrival.
Along with their manager Peter Grant, the men of Led Zeppelin earned a lot of money for themselves (so much that they could only keep it by going into tax exile); they were treated like royalty by industry personnel; and their records and promo paraphernalia turned a neat profit for their financial backers, so by that definition the band was certainly corporate rock. Of course, no performers would ever identify themselves as such, and the term corporate rock is purely a derogatory one that can be thrown at anybody deemed too popular or successful for the thrower’s liking. Such an epithet also disregards the very real struggle and hard work that a group like Led Zeppelin underwent before getting to their vast stadium shows and decadent private jets of later in their career. A more judicious application of the label would be to the ready-made superstars whose airplay and revenue piled up a little too fast and more easily than their music warranted: Toto, REO Speedwagon, Night Ranger, Foreigner, Meat Loaf. The whiff of corporate rock was also strong off of works heavily produced, cowritten, or otherwise doctored by employees or supervisors of the named artist: Bryan Adams, Bon Jovi, Carly Simon, latter-day Aerosmith, and the antiseptic Starship, whose ’80s hit “We Built This City” must surely be liable in some kind of corporate rock class-action suit. Next to these, Led Zeppelin were no more than a mom ’n’ pop operation dispensing handcrafted merchandise at honest prices.
Payin’ Your Bills: Led Zeppelin Music Licensed for Use in Advertisements or Films
Because the surviving members, together with the heirs of John Bonham and Peter Grant, continue to own the rights to Led Zeppelin’s back catalogue and its associated trademarks (as stamped on merchandise like clothing or posters), the band has not suffered the indignities of having their name, songs, or likenesses used to promote an incongruous or tacky line of other products without their consent. (In the early 1980s Robert Plant sold his financial stake in prospective sales of the original Zeppelin albums, but as co-songwriter he continues to have a share in publishing and other revenues.) The retention of Led Zeppelin’s mystical or occult aura over almost four decades has been due at least in part to Grant’s earliest decisions not to plaster the quartet’s images in every conceivable medium, as he told Billboard magazine in 1979: “One of the keys to Zeppelin’s longevity is that its appearances have been well-spaced, preventing overexposure.” As the policy was kept up following Bonham’s death and the group’s breakup in 1980, Led Zeppelin have enjoyed an untouchable remoteness shared by few artists from their time.
Some Zeppelin songs have been heard in movies, but only after determined (and costly) negotiation by the producers. “Kashmir” was used in 1979’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High, written for the screen by Zeppelin admirer Cameron Crowe, and Crowe’s Almost Famous of 2000 used “That’s the Way,” “Misty Mountain Hop,” “The Rain Song,” “Bron-yr-Aur,” and “Tangerine.” School of Rock from 2003 featured “Immigrant Song,” as did 2007’s Shrek the Third, and the 2003 documentary The Mayor of the Sunset Strip sounded “Sick Again.” School of Rock got to use Zeppelin music only after its star, Jack Black, filmed his own humble request to “the Gods of Rock” and had it shown to Page, Plant, and Jones. “Come with Me,” Jimmy Page and Puff Daddy’s rewrite of “Kashmir,” made it to the soundtrack of the 1998 blockbuster Godzilla, although in 1994 Page and Robert Plant had sued the producers of the film Bad Lieutenant to remove “Signifying Rapper,” an unauthorized track also based on “Kashmir,” from the movie. More Zeppelin songs have been used in films and TV shows from outside the English-speaking market (the same way American or British movie stars will act in advertisements shown only in Japan), and in 2001 Warne
r Brothers released a limited-edition three-CD set of songs aimed at soundtrack programmers and licensing consultants. Among the tracks were “Stairway to Heaven” and “Whole Lotta Love.” Although in the case of Led Zeppelin the artists themselves have the final say in whether or not the numbers can be sold, they are advised by managers and agents who take into consideration the intended use of the material (timed as a “needle drop” that usually does not capture the entire song), the potential audience, and the prospective fee.
As a session man in the mid-1960s Page almost certainly played on some commercial jingles and industrial film soundtracks, and his recollections of accompanying saxophonist Tubby Hayes link him to Hayes’s confirmed work for Cadbury and Hush Puppies in this vein. In the Yardbirds he contributed to the band’s version of “Over Under Sideways Down” adapted to a jingle for the Great Shakes soft drink (“Any place can be a soda fountain now, with Great Shakes, new Great Shakes….”). A generic version of “Whole Lotta Love,” performed by the Collective Consciousness Society, was for many years the theme song of the popular British music show Top of the Pops. During the Zeppelin years and after, members of the group were seen in print advertisements endorsing musical instruments and accessories, and Page has allowed the Gibson guitar company to issue “signature” models designed to resemble his personal Les Pauls and double-neck. The guitars signed and inspected by Page himself have retailed for as much as $30,000. Jimmy Page has also been immortalized in three mass-produced plastic figurines that
Over the years, the Zeppelin trademarks have been licensed for use on a variety of products.
Courtesy of Len Ward / The Rad Zone
depict him in his dragon, poppy, and SS suits of 1975 and ’77 (keep him away from Barbie and Strawberry Shortcake). In the 1980s Robert Plant’s solo hit “Tall Cool One” was used in a Coke TV ad that concluded with the singer guzzling a bottle of the Real Thing, probably not the coke he was used to, and in 2002 excerpts from “Rock and Roll” were heard in a North American TV spot for Cadillac cars, a move that drew much publicity and some criticism. A short-lived Hard Rock theme park in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, took thrill-seekers on “Led Zeppelin—the Ride,” a roller-coaster attraction set to the screams and stutters of “Whole Lotta Love.” Since 2007 Led Zeppelin music has been sold and available for download over the Internet, although Page, Plant, and John Paul Jones have resisted the offers to incorporate the catalogue into such popular video games as Guitar Hero and Rock Band.
Judged against the legacy of some of their contemporaries, like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, and the Who, Led Zeppelin’s artistic integrity has been less sullied by commercialism or embarrassing appropriation into cheesy mediums. Absolut vodka has used classic portraits of John Lennon, Miles Davis, and David Bowie in its ads; the Stones’ “Start Me Up” was used to announce the debut of the Windows 95 computer program; Deep Purple had their biggest hit bastardized into Burger King’s “Smoke on the Whopper”; and Kiss have become more brand than band, putting their logo on everything from condoms to credit cards to caskets. As the years go on, however, some of the opposition to overexposure that has always set Zeppelin apart may be mooted by forty years of public demand and acceptance of their worldwide familiarity, and we may see more officially licensed clothes, art, and collectibles put out to satisfy the consumer appetites of the group’s millions of fans.
Coda: How Led Zeppelin Stayed So Popular So Long After They Broke Up
The frank answer may be that they are still popular because they broke up. During the last half of the 1970s Zeppelin had become among the most famous and successful rock ’n’ roll acts in the world, racking up number one albums and sold-out concerts around the globe, but they were nonetheless overshadowed by older bands like the Rolling Stones, the Who, and the Grateful Dead; individual superstars like Elton John and David Bowie; and fresh megasellers like Peter Frampton, the Bee Gees, and Queen. In April 1981, only a few months after John Bonham’s death and the band’s official split, Robert Plant played a series of Honeydrippers shows in small British venues, and was asked by a local interviewer if Led Zeppelin would forever be an “albatross” for him and the remaining members of the group. “It wasn’t like the Beatles,” he answered. “They encompassed everything, really… whereas [Led Zeppelin] had a sort of niche. So whatever happens… I don’t think it can happen really because there are loads of bands coming along and taking the majority of our audience away already.” Little did he know.
Over the next decade it gradually emerged that Led Zeppelin, despite one-off reunions in 1985 and 1988, was indeed gone for good. Meanwhile, the proliferation of heavy metal and hard rock bands claiming Zeppelin as a prime influence, Zeppelin’s ongoing deification by classic rock radio, the transformation of the music industry by the compact disc, and the release of Stephen Davis’s best-selling tell-all Hammer of the Gods breathed surprising new life into what a few years before had been reviled as a dinosaur act. Contrary to Robert Plant’s expectations, Led Zeppelin actually rose in stature to become like the Beatles—both to the record-buying public as an undisputed giant of rock’s glorious past, and to Plant, Jimmy Page, and John Paul Jones, as a peak achievement they would always have to account for. Between 1990 and 1999 some five million copies of Houses of the Holy were sold in the United States, along with six million copies of Led Zeppelin II, numbers to delight any contemporary group, let alone one whose records were twenty years old. Though the foursome’s own visual and musical history was of course a major factor in this, the relative diminution of their erstwhile competitors had also played a part.
Led Zeppelin are one of the very few big-name music acts whose retirement has been a real one. The Rolling Stones, whose first records came out in 1964, have kept going beyond the death of their founder Brian Jones in 1969, the departure of Jones’s replacement Mick Taylor in 1974, and the resignation of original bassist Bill Wyman in 1993, and the legendary quintet now exists as a four-piece band, with bass player Daryl Jones demoted to auxiliary status. Pink Floyd kept going despite bassist and lyricist Roger Waters’s acrimonious break in the early 1980s, the group centered around guitarist David Gilmour and drummer Nick Mason, with an extensive cast of supporting players. Like Led Zeppelin, the Who also lost their drummer (in 1978), but replaced Keith Moon with Kenney Jones, later Jones with Zak Starkey, and singer and guitarist Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend continue to perform under the name even after the death of bassist John Entwistle in 2002. The Doors should have been absolutely defunct after the death of singer Jim Morrison in 1971—and were for a long time—but in the early 2000s keyboardist Ray Manzarek and guitarist Robbie Krieger began an ill-advised revival with Ian Astbury of the Cult taking Morrison’s place and original drummer John Densmore denouncing the affair from the sidelines.
The pioneering glam-shock rockers Kiss reunited with costumes and makeup to spectacular effect in 1997, but the novelty wore off as guitarist Ace Frehley and drummer Peter Criss were once again given walking papers, and their parts and trademark images have been taken up by younger musicians; they are currently back on the casino circuit. The Eagles, who had gone through several personnel changes while they were a productive band in the 1970s, put on a lucrative reunion in 1994 (the Hell Freezes Over album and tour), but, like the Rolling Stones, are now down to four members following guitarist Don Felder’s rejection of a deal that put him in a subordinate position to lead vocalists Don Henley and Glenn Frey. AC/DC, like Led Zeppelin, lost a key member to overindulgence in 1980 (singer and lyricist Bon Scott), but they soon found Brian Johnson to take his place at the microphone, and core members Malcolm and Angus Young have also toured and recorded with a variety of drummers and bassists. Lynyrd Skynyrd suffered a devastating plane crash that claimed the life of vocalist-wordsmith Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, and backing vocalist Cassie Gaines in 1977, but the band reformed in 1990 (with Van Zant’s younger brother Johnny filling his spot) and have been a viable touring draw ever
since, particularly in the US heartland. Heavy metalers Judas Priest, Metallica, and Mötley Crüe have all carried on with voluntary and involuntary lineup changes.
Without any premature deaths on their records, Zeppelin’s closest English rivals, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, have each gone through a bewildering roster of new, old, and new-old players, staging occasional reunions before dissolving once again, making them rich subjects for rock genealogists and satirists. Van Halen booted the flamboyant vocalist David Lee Roth in the 1980s, carried on successfully with Sammy Hagar for several years, tried Extreme front man Gary Cherone for one album, and have lately regrouped with Roth but inexplicably substituted guitar hero Eddie Van Halen’s young son Wolfgang for original bassist Mike Anthony. The Beach Boys, Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Band, the Animals, and Sly and the Family Stone have disintegrated into various competing sects of one or two founding members and whatever backup players can approximate the remainder, often with dire and legally contentious results. Famously iconoclastic punk rockers the Sex Pistols, whose brief career of 1975–78 was one of rock ’n’ roll’s most influential, launched their own “Filthy Lucre” comeback in 1996 and have put on subsequent gigs under the Sex Pistols name, Glen Matlock taking over from the deceased Sid Vicious who had himself been dropped into Matlock’s bass role. Modern recording technology enabled even the Beatles to make a long-awaited reunion in 1995, augmenting two rough demo tapes by the late John Lennon, “Real Love” and “Free as a Bird,” with the voices and instrumentation of Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr.
