When Giants Walked the Earth: A Biography of Led Zeppelin

by Mick Wall

  He adds: ‘By the way, when the first run of printed album jackets came from the printers, Jimmy found that they had left off my credit. He actually ordered all of those be destroyed and reprinted, with my credit included. That was not only expensive, but a very big thing to do and something I will of course always be grateful to Jimmy for. So I don’t like to hear it when people sometimes say that Zeppelin in general, or Jimmy in particular, have failed to give credit where credit is due. In my experience, at least, the opposite was true. Jimmy went out of his way and spent extra money to be sure that credit was given.’

  Released on 23 October 1970, two weeks after its release in America, Led Zeppelin III was already at no. 1 in the US album chart by the time it went on sale at home in Britain, where it would also top the charts. Nevertheless, it was destined to become one of their most overlooked collections, misunderstood and largely reviled by the critics even to this day. Even the fans seemed confounded, and though the album would eventually shift in its millions, it remains one of the comparatively weakest sellers in the Zeppelin canon. Indeed, by the start of 1971 it had all but disappeared from the charts, while its more popular predecessor maintained a steady presence in both the US and UK Top 40s. (Today, the album has sold more than six million copies in the US alone, an outstanding achievement for most artists, but still comparatively few when one considers that the first Zeppelin album has sold more than 10 million in the same market and the second more than 12 million, while its successor is now the fourth-largest selling album of all time with more than 22 million. Indeed, of the first six Zeppelin albums, Led Zeppelin III is still the lowest seller.)

  As Terry Manning says now, the arrival of a mainly acoustic album from the recently crowned kings of heavy rock ‘shocked both Zeppelin fans and people that weren’t Zeppelin fans’. But if many were left nonplussed by the unexpected change in musical direction, the same critics who had previously attacked them for being shallow peddlers of roisterous clichés now accused them of daring to undermine such perceptions by singularly failing to repeat the trick. At best, they assumed the band had been unduly influenced by the recent success of Crosby, Stills & Nash, whose remarkable debut album had seen a seismic shift in critical opinion on where rock was – and should – be heading at the dawn of the new decade. This was a charge that Page, in particular, whose background in acoustic roots music was well-established long before it became the fashionable sound of Southern California, was furious over. ‘I’m obsessed – not just interested, obsessed – with folk music,’ he said, pointing out that he had spent many years studying ‘the parallels between a country’s street music and its so-called classical and intellectual music, the way certain scales have travelled right across the globe. All this ethnological and musical interaction fascinates me.’

  But no-one was listening. Instead, the critics screamed betrayal. Under the headline ‘Zepp weaken!’ Disc & Music Echo typically enquired: ‘Don’t Zeppelin care any more?’ There were occasional flashes of insight from the press. Lester Bangs – who had previously chastised Zeppelin for their ‘insensitive grossness’ – wrote in Rolling Stone: ‘“That’s The Way” is the first song they’ve ever done that’s truly moved me. Son of a gun, it’s beautiful.’ But the feeling persisted that Bangs, as was his wont, was simply swimming against the heavy tide of negative criticism the album was universally attracting, and Jimmy admitted he ‘got really brought down’ to the point where he refused to do any press interviews. According to Terry Manning, however, Page had anticipated such reactions. ‘He was quite apprehensive but quite determined. We spoke of these matters as we were in the studio completing it. He would say, “This is so different, this is going to shock people.” And it did.’

  ‘I felt a lot better once we started performing it,’ Page would tell Dave Schulps in 1977, ‘because it was proving to be working for the people who came around to see us. There was always a big smile there in front of us. That was always more important than any poxy review.’ Looking back now, Page still bridles at the rough ride the third album got from everybody. ‘Even the record company said, “But there’s no ‘Whole Lotta Love’ on it.” We said, “That’s right, there was never meant to be!” I think all of the albums were a reflection of what we were doing, how we were living, or where we were, at that point in time. I mean, geographically where we were as well as musically. So, basically, you’ve got the idea of what [the third album] was. We were living-in – first at the cottage, then at Headley Grange – and it was a question of getting up and kicking it off, getting the ball rolling, and getting the tape running.’

  However, with an irate Page refusing to explain or make excuses to the press in 1970, it was left to Robert Plant to defend the album. ‘Now we’ve done Zeppelin III the sky’s the limit,’ he told Record Mirror. ‘It shows we can change. It means there are endless possibilities and directions for us to go in.’ An entirely prophetic statement, as the next Zeppelin album would demonstrate in no uncertain terms. But that was still a year away and for now the band was forced to live through the first dip in what until then had been a steady upward surge in their commercial fortunes. By the start of 1971 ‘Zep to Split’ stories were even beginning to pepper the British music papers.

  But if the third Zeppelin album polarised opinion, in the long term it went a considerable way to cementing their reputation, confounding expectations and proving there was more to them than simply being the ‘new Cream’ they had started life as. Instead of more wall-shaking heavy rock classics, the third Zeppelin album should be looked at as the first convincing marriage of Page’s fiery occult blues and Plant’s swirling Welsh mists; the first serious proof of the band’s ability to move beyond the commercial straitjacket that would eventually leave contemporaries like Black Sabbath and Deep Purple marooned in a creative cul-de-sac, churning out copycat hits until they finally ran out of steam, key members coming and going, their reputations sealed forever as second-rung niche acts, truly loved only by heavy metal fanatics.

  Besides, with bands like Sabbath now doing the job for them – ‘We used to lie on the floor of the rehearsal room, stoned, listening to the first two Zep albums,’ Sabbath’s Geezer Butler told me, confessing that the band’s most famous song, ‘Paranoid’, ‘was just a rip-off of “Communication Breakdown”. I said, “We can’t do that!” Guess who was wrong?’ – the determinedly non-metallic direction of the new material was, in retrospect, not only a brave but exceptionally shrewd move.

  As Terry Manning says, ‘None of it was accidental. [Jimmy] knew they could not be more than the greatest heavy rock band if they didn’t expand into new avenues, into more than just beating you on the head with a riff. You take a band like the Beatles, or Pink Floyd, the kind of bands that kids of fifteen love today as much as the kids of thirty or forty years ago, and they sound totally different from their first album to the middle of their career to the end of their career. And Jimmy knew that. He wanted to be more. The first two Zeppelin albums are quite different from the Yardbirds. He wanted to keep going, keep expanding. He would talk about rhythms, and people like Bartok, Karl Heinz Stockhausen or John Cage. He was totally into Indian classical music, Irish folk music, all sorts of things.’

  This fact would become ever more clear on subsequent Zeppelin albums, where Page’s fondness for such seemingly disparate musical bedfellows as funk, reggae, doo-wop, jazz, synth-pop and rockabilly would make themselves felt amidst the symphonic slabs of rock. For now, the third album showcased what he describes as ‘my CIA’. That is to say, ‘my Celtic, Indian and Asian influences. I always had much broader influences than I think people realised, all the way right through, even when I was doing [session] work. When I was hanging around with Jeff before he was in the Yardbirds, I was still listening to all different things.’

  As if to add insult to injury, the gatefold sleeve of the third album was often more positively reviewed than the music therein. Designed by an old college pal of Jimmy’s who liked to go by the name of Za
cron, then a tutor at Wimbledon College of Art who had been asked to design something which reflected the less frenetic, more bucolic nature of the music, the end result consisted of a self-consciously ‘surreal’ collection of seemingly random images on a white background – butterflies, stars, zeppelins, colourful little smudges. The most striking element was a rotatable inner disc card, or volvelle, based on crop rotation charts which, when turned, revealed more indecipherable sigils and occasional photos of the band peeping through holes in the outer cover. The sort of thing that simply wouldn’t be conceived of on a CD cover, it veered drastically away from what Page had actually asked for and was more to do with Zacron’s own taste, rotating graphics being a signature of his work since 1965.

  Speaking in 2007, however, Zacron recalled Page phoning him from New York to congratulate him on the job, saying ‘I think it is fantastic.’ But Jimmy told Guitar World in 1998, ‘I wasn’t happy with the final result.’ Zacron had got far too ‘personal’ and ‘disappeared off with it…I thought it looked very teeny-bopperish. But we were on top of a deadline, so of course there was no way to make any radical changes to it. There were some silly bits – little chunks of corn and nonsense like that.’

  Thankfully out on the road, things were less complicated, the band still going from strength to strength, whatever acoustic subtleties employed on their new album sacrificed in concert for all-out rock Götterdämmerung. With ‘Immigrant Song’ becoming another Top 20 single, reaching no. 16 during a thirteen-week run on the Billboard chart, their 1970 summer tour of the US was their biggest and most prestigious yet, topped off on 19 and 20 September with two sold-out three-hour shows at Madison Square Garden – their first time at New York’s most famous venue, for which they were paid a guarantee of $100,000 a night.

  The same month, under the heading ‘Zeppelin Topple Beatles’, they were voted Best Group in the annual Readers Poll of Melody Maker, the same music paper which had slated Zeppelin III for ‘ripping off’ Crosby Stills & Nash. The first act for eight years to oust the Beatles from the top spot in what was then the UK’s most prestigious music magazine, the band returned to London for a special reception where they were also presented with yet more gold discs.

  The band’s profile at home was further boosted – if that’s the right word – with the first appearance in the singles’ chart of one of their songs. A year on from refusing to allow Atlantic to release ‘Whole Lotta Love’ as a single, Alexis Korner and Danish bluesman Peter Thorup took their own brass-heavy cover of it to no. 13, under the aegis CCS – for Collective Consciousness Society, another of Korner’s short-lived but briefly successful outfits. (They would also do a less successful version of ‘Black Dog’ in 1972.) Taking their cue from the Johnny Harris Orchestra, who’d been specialising in jazzed-up orchestral versions of rock classics like ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ and ‘Light My Fire’ since the late Sixties, it was the CCS version of ‘Whole Lotta Love’ that would also become the theme tune for the next fifteen years to Top Of The Pops, Britain’s enormously popular weekly TV show – a programme which, ironically, Zeppelin themselves would never actually appear on. (Dropped in the Eighties, the CCS version would be revamped into a techno-dance version and resurrected as the show’s theme tune in the Nineties.) ‘It was pretty infectious, I suppose,’ shrugged Jimmy, ‘although its being on Top of the Pops every week killed it [in Britain], which was a drag.’

  Another less successful attempt to cash in on the band’s rapidly mushrooming fame had come from Screaming Lord Sutch, whose 1970 album Lord Sutch And Heavy Friends boasted much trumpeted ‘guest appearances’ from Jeff Beck, John Bonham and Jimmy Page, the latter also credited as ‘producer’. When asked about it years later, Page sighed, ‘It was a favour.’ One he now appeared to regret. Or as Beck recalled years later, ‘I loved Lord Sutch’s act – it was fabulous. But when that record came out with [us] on it, I was surprised and annoyed…I vaguely remember recording it, in some sleazy studio up a side alley.’ In fact, it was the product of several chance meetings between Sutch and whoever he could rope into the studio for a night. In the case of Page and Bonham, the meeting had occurred in LA at the start of the year when they had attended a three-night residency Sutch had somehow secured for himself at Thee Experience. Encountering the two sozzled Zeppelin members backstage after the show the recalcitrant frontman had no problem enticing them into the studio to ‘guest’ for him on ‘a few tracks’. The subsequent album would remain an embarrassment for as long as it stayed on the radar of the music press, which fortunately for all concerned wasn’t long.

  Page was relieved. He had known David Sutch since he’d played on his 1964 single ‘She’s Fallen in Love with the Monster Man’, a typically echo-heavy stab at a schlock horror movie soundtrack that fooled no-one. When it came to scary music though, Jimmy had left behind pantomime villains like Sutch a long time ago. He was now into the real thing…

  Part Two

  The Curse of King Midas

  ‘Nay! For I am of the Serpent’s party;

  Knowledge is good, be the price what it may.’

  – Aleister Crowley, The Psychology of Hashish

  9

  So Mote It Be

  The thing that dominated the room [was] a vast double circle on the floor in what appeared to be whitewash. Between the concentric circles were written innumerable words. Farthest away from all this, about two feet outside the circle and three feet over to the north, was a circle enclosed by a triangle, also much lettered inside and out. [The magician] entered the circle and closed it with the point of his sword and proceeded to the centre where he laid the sword across the toes of his white shoes; then he drew a wand from his belt and unwrapped it, laying the red silk cloth across his shoulders. ‘From now on,’ he said, in a normal, even voice, ‘no-one is to move.’

  From somewhere inside his vestments he produced a small crucible which he set at his feet before the sword. Small blue flames promptly began to rise from the bowl and he cast incense into it. ‘We are to call upon Marchosias, a great marquis of the Descending Hierarchy,’ he said. ‘Before he fell, he belonged to the Order of Dominations among the angels. His virtue is that he gives true answers. Stand fast all…’

  With a sudden motion [the magician] thrust the end of his rod into the surging flames…at once the air of the hall rang with a long, frightful chain of woeful howls. Above the bestial clamour [the magician] shouted: ‘I adjure thee, great Marchosias, the agent of the Emperor Lucifer and of his beloved son Lucifuge Rofocale by the power of the pact…’ The noise rose higher and a green steam began to come off the brazier. But there was no other answer. His face white and cruel, [the magician] rasped over the tumult: ‘I adjure thee, Marchosias, by the pact and by the names, appear instanter.’ He plunged the rod a second time into the flames. The room screamed…but still there was no apparition.

  The rod went back into the fire. Instantly the place rocked as though the earth moved under it. ‘Stand fast,’ [the magician] said hoarsely. Something else said, ‘Hush, I am here. What dost thou seek of me? Why dost thou disturb my repose?’ The building shuddered again…then from the middle of the triangle to the northwest, a slow cloud of yellow fumes went up towards the ceiling, making them all cough, even [the magician]. As it spread and thinned [they] could see a shape forming under it…it was something like a she-wolf, grey and immense, with green glistening eyes. A wave of coldness was coming from it…the cloud continued to dissipate. The she-wolf glared at them, slowly spreading her griffin’s wings. Her serpent’s tail lashed gently, scalily…

  The above passage comes from Black Easter, written by James Blish. Everyone who has read it since the book was first published in the late Sixties has been immediately divided into two camps: those who believed Blish had actually witnessed a genuine High Magick ritual, and those who dismissed it as science-fiction. It’s a debate that continues to this day. For in the end, it comes down to belief, something you either do or do not possess – o
r are busy, perhaps, trying to suppress. What can’t be denied is that such rituals do exist and are performed on a regular basis – the essence of the Abra-melin ritual (one of the most significant and difficult to achieve) is to ‘Invoke Often’ – and not just in a few pockmarked villages in remote parts of the world. In fact, there are hardly any major towns or cities in the UK that aren’t home to at least one secret society whose purpose is the study, practise and performance of precisely such rituals. The people involved are not simple peasants or social outcasts but some of the brightest, most questioning minds most often drawn from the upper echelons of society.

  We are not talking about simple witchcraft of the type depicted in a make-you-jump Stephen King novel or the broomstick abracadabra of a Harry Potter movie (though many books, films and other famous works of art do incorporate elements of genuine ritual magick). According to the nineteenth-century writer and magician Eliphas Levi, occult knowledge – that is, the hidden knowledge of the ages, going back to pre-Christian times, all the way to the Serpent and the Garden of Eden – is a product of philosophical and religious equations as exact as any science. Furthermore, that anyone able to acquire such knowledge and use it in the correct manner instantly becomes master of those who are not. As an earlier proponent of the magician’s art, Paracelsus, wrote in the sixteenth century: ‘The magical is a great hidden wisdom…no armour can shield against it because it strikes at the inward spirit of life. Of this we may rest assured.’ Or as Aleister Crowley – after Merlin, now perhaps the most notorious occultist of all – put it in 192 in Magick in Theory and Practice, the book that first alerted Jimmy Page to the possibilities of the occult: ‘Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will.’ (The ‘k’ was added to the word ‘magic’ by Crowley not only, as popularly understood, to distinguish what he was talking about from the simple tricks employed by conjurers, but for occult purposes too: the six-letter spelling of the word ‘magick’ balanced against the orthodox five-letter spelling being equal to the balance of the hexagram and the pentagram – 6+5=11, ‘The general number of magick, or energy tending to change,’ as he put it in his 1909 book, 777.)