When Giants Walked the Earth: A Biography of Led Zeppelin

by Mick Wall

  It certainly was. But not for Jimmy Page or John Paul Jones, both of whom appeared to regard the arrival of the Raising Sand album as a form of intrusion into their own long-awaited party. As Jimmy once told me, ‘Whenever we do anything with Led Zeppelin these days, Robert always seems to have a solo album on the go at the same time.’ The suggestion: that wily old Plant knows the value of publicity. Yet when Robert gave Jimmy and John a white-label pre-release copy of the CD, he was bitterly disappointed that neither man passed any comment on it, either for or against, something he was still smarting over nearly a year later, when, chatting to Kevin Shirley in LA in June 2008, he told him how neither man had ‘even acknowledged that he had it’. Adding: ‘You know, it’s my work, I’m proud of it and they’re my people that I’m with, and that they don’t acknowledge what I’m doing is valid is, you know, it’s joyless.’

  There’s little doubt, though, that the timing of the release of Raising Sand so close to the original O2 date of 26 November had a huge bearing on its success. With the world’s media clambering for Led Zeppelin interviews, the proffering of the band’s singer for a chat about his new solo project was snapped up by literally everybody, leading to such previously unexpected sights as Plant and Krauss appearing together on the BBC’s flagship TV arts programme The Culture Show. Of course, everybody was extremely polite, asking about Raising Sand. But all interviews ended the same way: with a question about the Big One. Which naturally Plant would bat away with some mumbled inanity. It was a situation that also led to such clearly misleading magazine cover lines as the ROBERT PLANT ON LED ZEPPELIN heading that adorned the cover of Q magazine at one point, when in fact the feature was actually an interview with Plant and Krauss about Raising Sand, or Mojo co-opting a Plant/Krauss interview as part of a larger Led Zeppelin cover story. So heavily did the media spotlight fall on Plant and his new musical collaborator that when it was announced that the O2 date would have to be put back two weeks because Jimmy Page had broken a finger, cynics speculated that the delay had more to do with the fact that Plant was too busy promoting Raising Sand in America to rehearse thoroughly with Zeppelin and that a nervous Page – absolutely determined the show would wipe the slate clean of all the bad memories of Live Aid and the cursed Atlantic show – had made the story up in order to buy the band more time to rehearse when Robert returned. Something Page vehemently denies, of course.

  As it turned out, nobody should have been worried about the Plant/Krauss album taking anything away from the Led Zeppelin reunion. The days and weeks leading up to the show found the band splashed all over every newspaper and magazine, from high-minded editorials from Germaine Greer in the Telegraph to the usual mindless tabloid waffle in the Sun, with photo agencies offering millions of dollars for the right to take and sell exclusive pictures of the show.

  The show itself was a strangely cold affair, inside and out. Positioned at the centre of a concentric circle of shops, bars and restaurants, wandering around outside the O2 on an icy evening in December had an air of unreality about it, about what everyone was there for. Unlike most rock audiences, who are easy to spot from their typical jeans-and-T-shirt garb, this one was clearly made up of a much broader cross-section of society, though the majority appeared to be middle-class and middle-aged, dressed far too young. Inside, the O2 proved to be the perfect purpose-built venue for such a crowd, such an event. The security staff were all preternaturally friendly, seats large and comfortable with appendages for holding your drinks, the concessions a vast array of food and drink stalls where you could buy anything from chips to sushi; beer to champagne, coke or cappuccino.

  The show started exactly on time, at 9.00 pm. Preceded by the same short clip as can be seen on the revitalised new edition of the The Song Remains The Same DVD – a TV news report from the record-breaking Miami show of 1973, and then suddenly – bam! – the band was pounding into ‘Good Times Bad Times’. By far the most exciting moment of the night, once they were actually on stage together, it suddenly felt all too real: Jimmy in sunglasses and long black coat over crisp white shirt and dark trousers, his hair ghostly white; Robert more studiedly casual in open-necked shirt over dark jeans and boots, his most distinguishing feature no longer his hairless chest or huge todger but a new Colonel Sanders beard. Despite the fact that the house lights were kept unnaturally bright to accommodate the film crew who were recording the event – reputedly for a future DVD release – they looked amazing. However, the sound was appalling. It wasn’t until about five numbers in that they finally started to sound as they should, by which time the mystique had well and truly worn off and one was left to gaze at the vast wraparound screen behind them onto which a variety of live stage shots and impressively arranged abstract gobble-degook – courtesy of the Thinkfarm design company – was displayed. Dragging one’s eyes back to the clearly nervous figures on stage, Robert seemed in complete control, the perfect professional. Jimmy, who didn’t seem able to shift his gaze from Robert for the first half of the set, also seemed relatively at ease, though huddled far too close to the drums. A month away from his sixty-fourth birthday, it would have been wrong to expect him to put on the kind of shape-throwing show of old. Nevertheless, to me he looked like what he was: an older man playing at a younger man’s game. John Paul Jones looked as he always did: anonymous, a workman happy left to fiddle with his toolbox, nothing to see here. Jason Bonham was a revelation: bald, bearded, super fit-looking (a fact confirmed by his karate instructor, who I sat next to). That he was filling his father’s shoes so convincingly was a tribute both to his talent and his courage, knowing that every single drummer in the audience – and there were many, from Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters to Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, to name just two – would gladly have taken his place.

  Mostly, though, the attention rested with Robert and Jimmy – in that order. Robert’s voice helped by the general tuning down of the entire set, it was his gargantuan presence that really came across. I had half expected a somewhat smug, doing-us-a-favour figure, cracking in-jokes at Page’s expense. Instead he gave every appearance of taking the event as seriously as the most devout Zeppelin fan, becoming very much the star of the show. Jimmy, though less obviously self-confident, was playing better than anyone had heard perhaps in over thirty years. Better, certainly, than the horrible US tour of ’77; better than most of Knebworth; and certainly better than at any point in the nearly three decades that have somehow passed since Zeppelin crashed face-first into the ground.

  They played mostly must-haves – ‘Black Dog’, ‘Trampled Underfoot’, ‘Nobody’s Fault But Mine’, ‘No Quarter’, ‘Since I’ve Been Loving You’, ‘Dazed and Confused’, ‘Stairway to Heaven’, ‘Kashmir’ plus a handful of less expected treats: ‘Ramble On’, ‘In My Time Of Dying’, ‘The Song Remains The Same’, ‘Misty Mountain Hop’ – and one they’d never played before in ‘For Your Life’. The encores, of course, were ‘Whole Lotta Love’ and ‘Rock And Roll’. Nobody got all their favourites but that was always going to be the case. It was still disappointing though not to have had the mini-acoustic set. So much for Jimmy’s much-cherished ‘light and shade’. And of course there was very little improvisation, the songs, as Robert had insisted, all sticking as far as possible to the original template recordings. If that meant a much shorter than of old guitar solo on ‘Dazed and Confused’, then so be it.

  When it was over the crowd stood and clapped and cheered and stamped their feet for a minute or two, then filed out politely, the ever-helpful venue staff wishing us all a ‘good night, safe journey home’. There was no real sense of elation or sweat or danger or fascination; only a pleased it was all over feeling; the reality, as always, falling as flat as a burst balloon compared to the dreadful hype. I wondered what I actually made of it and had to conclude, ultimately, that whatever I’d just seen, it wasn’t anything like the Led Zeppelin of the Seventies, or even Live Aid in 1985. Certainly not as vividly exciting as the DVD of 2003. I felt like I had just
been taken on a very detailed tour of the pyramids. Fascinating stuff, even if I did find myself yawning and stealing glances at my watch as the second hour wore on. How different it must have been, though, in the actual days of the Pharaohs, back when giants walked the earth…

  The only moment when it truly felt like something momentous was actually happening, when some of that old telepathy had been rekindled, at least between the Magus and his adepts, was during the violin bow showcase, when Jimmy, bathed in that other-worldly pyramid of green light, proved he could still suspend time with his Penderecki-esque posturing and spirit-dragged-screaming-from-the-host anti-chords. The least convincing moment, oddly, was ‘Stairway to Heaven’, begun with no introduction, a grand old lady robbed of her dignity, Robert’s voice so obviously detuned, emotionally as well as musically, it seemed…unseemly somehow. Not least as Page’s solo sounded better, every note perfect, than at any time since he actually recorded it. ‘We did it Ahmet,’ Plant said at the end but it verged, for the first and only time, on condescension and struck the evening’s only real bum note.

  After the show there was a VIP party for 700 people in a room that held 200, among the guests Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, Priscilla and Lisa-Marie Presley, Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, Chris Evans, Jeff Beck, Liam and Noel Gallagher, Marilyn Manson, Def Leppard vocalist Joe Elliot, Pink, actresses Rosanna Arquette and Juliette Lewis, supermodels Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss, and many, many others. In the papers the next day – all of which, from earnest chin-scratching pieces in the broadsheets to vacuous tittle-tattle in the tabs, ran acres of coverage of the show and the endless lists of all the famous people that were there. How many of them would know their Houses Of The Holy from their In Through The Outdoor was debatable. But that, of course, was no longer the point. Because of the scarcity of public appearances, being seen at the Led Zeppelin show carried more cachet than being seen at even the Stones shows in the same venue earlier in the year, more even than any of the twenty-one nights Prince had done there just a couple of months before. More even, at this point, than anyone.

  From overheard conversations it seemed no-one at the O2 believed this would be the only Zeppelin show. ‘Would you go again?’ someone I didn’t know but who clearly assumed we were all now brothers asked me. I pondered for a moment then answered honestly. ‘Probably not, no.’ He looked at me, aghast. Everyone was asking the same question though the next day in the press and on the radio, in internet reports – pictures of the show posted live on the net as the show was actually taking place – and on TV. And I remembered something Robert Plant had said the last time we spoke, before either of us knew what was about to happen. I looked it up to see if I remembered correctly. We were talking about a reformation and, in a disgusted voice, he said: ‘There’s always been this deal about, “Oh well, you know, I don’t know why they don’t do it, get back together, everybody else does it.” I mean, Jesus Christ, how you ever gonna weave that magic that was there?’

  At the O2 we’d got our answer: you can’t. Speaking in the Guardian six months later, Plant put it better when he described the show as ‘a very humbling experience’ and said he was ‘in tears’ afterwards. ‘Because it really did work, whatever “it” was, for what it was. A great feat of engineering – social engineering, mostly. The trouble is now…it gets so big that it loses what once upon a time was a magnificent thing, where it was special and quite elusive and occasionally a little sinister and it had its own world nobody could get in.’ Pressed on whether he had subsequently turned down the chance to get Zeppelin back together permanently, he said coyly: ‘I don’t hold the keys to any decision by anybody to do anything.’ Zeppelin, he said, ‘were always pushing it and manipulating music history – it had to be absolutely right’. Similarly, he did things now because ‘I want to be excited and I want to be risky’. Something, he seemed to suggest, a reformed Led Zeppelin without John Bonham would clearly not be.

  Instead of touring the world with Led Zeppelin, as had secretly been the plan, Robert Plant has spent much of 2008 touring Britain and America with Alison Krauss, promoting the still selling Raising Sand album. Having won the Grammy in February for ‘Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals’ for the single ‘Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On)’, the couple are expected to rake up even more awards at the ceremony in early 2009 when the album will still be eligible for the 2008 awards. There are now plans for the couple to make a follow-up album at some point, ready for release in 2009, maybe even writing a few of the tracks together this time, once again with T. Bone Burnett overseeing production. There is also a return UK tour planned for October 2008, which record company executives admit privately they expect to take the album’s UK sales alone to more than 800,000, a staggering figure for a member of Zeppelin to achieve without the band. Referring to Krauss pointedly on stage as ‘the most gifted musician I know’, Plant has made it clear he is exactly where he wants to be, in his life and career. Even if that still means performing a handful of Zeppelin songs – including ‘Black Dog’, ‘The Battle Of Evermore’, ‘Black Country Woman’ and ‘When The Levee Breaks’ – in his new guise with Krauss.

  There is still talk behind the scenes of a semi-permanent Led Zeppelin reunion, probably in 2009. But when it comes to Robert Plant, not even Jimmy Page – one might say especially not even Jimmy Page – can ever say for sure what will happen. Kevin Shirley, who caught the Plant and Krauss show when it reached LA in June, tells me, ‘The show he’s doing with Alison is magnificent. It’s like there’s no ego on the guy at all. And they’ve obviously worked really hard, singing harmonies, getting everything right. When we spoke afterwards he said, “There is so much joy on stage.” I said, “Well, it shows, it sounds fantastic. But you know the O2 show was great too.” He said, “It was exactly the opposite getting there, though. It was joyless [but] everything is so joyful now.” And he also said another thing which I thought was very telling. He said, “I’ll be sixty soon and I’m so pleased to have found this in my life because I was really worried that I would not have anywhere to go. Those guys [Page and Jones] want me to run around the world with them but it’s inane.” He never said, “I’m not gonna do it” and he never said it won’t happen. But I don’t think he’ll do it. He recognises the magnitude of it and I think it’s difficult to stop the machine because it’s so huge and he knows there’s a billion dollars in it and that there’s a year’s worth of stadiums out there. And when he plays the Alison songs, every time they do a Zeppelin song the crowd just erupts that little bit more. So the legacy has obviously got its significance for him. But I think he would be just as happy if it actually stopped and died down now. He has made ten solo albums, he moved on with his career in 1980. So I think he’s had enough of that.’

  And apart from the money – of which he already owns a sizeable fortune, the Zeppelin catalogue alone still guaranteeing him an income of several million every year – what else can Zeppelin now offer Robert Plant that he doesn’t already have? He now has a solo career that comparable artists in his position like Mick Jagger, Roger Daltrey and even Paul McCartney could only dream of, including Jimmy Page, having accomplished something none of them has yet managed: a second life with an album that has not only sold in its millions but been uniformly recognised as one of the key moments in our present musical epoch.

  For a sixty-year-old former lemon-squeezer who has spent nearly half his life trying to live down his past, the dream really has finally come true. Why go back now when it can surely only spoil things? Will there be another Led Zeppelin show in the future? As long as Jimmy Page draws breath that likelihood will always remain. How tragic though that he is the one no longer in control of Zeppelin’s destiny. The one who envisaged and created the whole thing, the one without whom none of it would have been possible or be so well remembered now, in many ways Led Zeppelin was a dream Jimmy Page once had that everyone else shared in. Has it now become a form of nightmare? The last time Jimmy Page released an album of new music was over a
decade ago, with Walking Into Clarksdale, an album so thin it makes In Through The Outdoor look like the musical breakthrough John Paul Jones still kids himself it was. The truth is, Page should take a leaf out of Plant’s book and move on. Instead he appears to be sitting at home, alone, still waiting for Robert to make up his mind whether he’s going to agree to a few more reunion shows, still waiting for the call, a reluctant hermit, as rich in money and fame and as impotent in musical deed as the golden statue of Kenneth Anger’s curse. Whether Plant goes back now is almost immaterial. Either way, as Peter Grant told Dave Lewis all the way back in 1993, ‘You’ve got to realise Robert always wanted to be the boss of the band anyway. He finally got his own way.’

  Timothy d’Arch Smith says that Jimmy sent him a pair of tickets for the O2 concert, ‘But I gave them to my godson. I thought, when I get to heaven, St Peter’s going to say, “Well, there was one thing that you did…”’ When I mention that I noticed Jimmy still had the ZoSo symbol on his amps at the O2, Tim smiles and says, ‘Yes, it is interesting. I did hear that he’d given the whole thing up once, the whole Crowley thing. I think maybe that’s why I didn’t quote him things for a long while. It must have been quite a serious thing, somebody told me. Maybe he did and then took it up again. Some dark night of the soul or something like that…’

  He says that one of the last times he saw Jimmy he was talking about Boleskine House again, which he sold in 1991. ‘He said he was thinking of buying the whole thing back and doing a great sort of…making it a museum or something. He said it is so over-restored now, though, that nothing remains at all. Jimmy said it’s just been torn to pieces. The end of the conservatory where the Abra-Melin demons were, that’s all been torn down. But I bet whoever’s got it is still being plagued. Well, not plagued…but demons would still be there.’