Seventeen Thoughts On Led Zeppelin

ONE

Led Zeppelin is a 15-year-old’s unwanted erection: you can neither engage with it nor ignore it, but he thinks it’s special. 15-year-old boys and their erections are Zepp’s audience, both when the group existed and today.

TWO

Blondie on the left is Robert Plant; he was a twit.

Behind him is John Paul Jones, who was the best musician of the four of them, and also the least interesting.

The foppish man taking a guitar solo is Jimmy Page. I do not know for sure that he is soloing in the photo; if he wasn’t, then he soon would be.

On drums is the Philadelphia Flyers’ new mascot, Gritty.

“Oi! I’ve pissed meself again!”

Shut the fuck up, Gritty.

THREE

Zepp is the fount from which all great Rock Clichés sprung. Preening, egotistical lead singer with great hair?  Bringing the occult into it for no reason? Staying at the Hyatt House in LA? Semi-human drummer? Violent management? Deflowered schoolgirls? De-furnitured hotel rooms? That was all Zeppelin. They were to Rock n’ Roll what Orwell is to people complaining about Trump.

FOUR

Robert Plant was the mirror universe Robert Hunter: Hunter never wrote an embarrassing lyric, and Plant never wrote anything but. Percy (everyone called him Percy because, well, just fucking look at the poncey bastard) had two themes he returned to again and again:

1. Women, and their wickedness.
2. Hobbits and vikings and bullshit.

It would be an insult to serial rapists and lady-murderers to call this shit misogynistic: it’s galaxies beyond misogynist, spectacularly so, almost impressive in the venom reserved for women. Devils! Succubi! (Or incubi; whichever is the lady version; I always forget.) Mean mistreaters and lowdown cheaters! And those are just the ones that won’t fuck him. The ones that will want too much from Percy: even his powerful juices are not enough to quench her thirst, which leads to her running around, all over town, getting him down and making him frown.

Woman, right?

FIVE

This is 1975. Sound quality’s good, but the band’s already slipping. Robert Plant stopped sounding like Robert Plant in about 1973, and Jimmy Page was getting sloppier by the day. (Plus, he had broken the ring finger on his fretting hand the day before the tour started.)

And there’s this bullshit:

30 minute drum solo? Go fuck yourself and all your ancestors, Bozo. Just one asshole and one drum kit? Not two guys (plus guests) wandering around playing all sorts of different percussion instruments? At least there’s some variation there PLUS Billy and Mickey didn’t take a fucking half-hour. The longest Drums I can recall Without Research are from Spring ’78, and they were 20 minutes, but that tour featured the ultra-rare Full Band Drums. Garcia hopped on the steel drums, for fuck’s sake! That’s worth five minutes right there.

(They didn’t play Dazed and Confused for 42 minutes. They started it, then went into other jams and songs, and then ended with the ominous, stolen riff.)

SIX

Jimmy Page loved Satan. Or he was a junkie with shit taste in writers. Either one.

That’s Boleskine, which was previously owned by…wait for it…everyone’s favorite mountain-climbing, dope-sucking, received-wisdomifying nutty uncle Aleister Crowley. He did a lot of ritual sex magick at the house; I am assuming Jimmy had the couches deep cleaned. Also: the house was built on the site of an Medeival church that burned down with all the village’s children inside. And it was literally on Loch fucking Ness.

One can only imagine what Jimmy Page’s conversations with his real estate agent were like.

“Jimmy, I have a beautiful Georgian mansion in the West End that’s just come on the market.”

“Mm-hmm. Is it haunted?”

The other three Led Zeppelins bought farms in the North of England, like proper British Rock Stars.

SEVEN

The hero needs a magick sword, that’s all there is to it. Garcia had Wolf and Tiger, and Eddie Van Halen had the Frankenstrat, and B.B. King had Lucille, and Jimmy Page had the double-neck. Bill Graham recognized its power: when the band was late getting to the stage at one of his Days on the Green, he took the microphone and asked the crowd for patience. It was a rowdy crowd, not like the kids the Dead drew, and they were getting bored and angry.

“Ladies and gentlemen, if you’ll just bear with us. The band will be out here in a moment, but Jimmy’s having some problems with the double-neck. He really wants to get it right for you, but he’s having troubles with the double-neck.”

And the kids calmed right down.

It wasn’t a custom job. That is the Gibson EDS-1275, and every self-respecting guitar shop has one hanging on the highest peg on its wall. They still make it; you can have one overnighted to you if you’ve got seven grand. Pagey wasn’t even the only Guitar Hero to wield the double-neck, but he owned it, mostly because he was the only one who managed to make it look cool.

EIGHT

The songs don’t need to be this long, guys. This is someone who listens almost exclusively to the Grateful Dead saying this.

NINE

Speaking of the Dead, Zepp toured just as incessantly, and in parts of the world that our notoriously border-averse Boys never even considered playing. (For the first few years, at least.)

Who the fuck played Iceland in 1970? Did Iceland even have electricity in 1970? I think they were still lighting whale-oil lamps to ward off the nightly fairy attacks in 1970.

And they played the hell out of their shows, too; Zepp blew everyone off the stage when they were openers; some bands just gave up their headlining slots in order not to have to follow them. There’s the famous Boston Tea Party show in ’69 where the crowd called them back for 12, 13, 14, 15 encores–there is no recording of the show, so the number of encores rises every year–and the three and four-hour marathons of their later years: they weren’t KISS. No tight 90-minute gigs for the Mighty Zeppelin.

(And, it must be noted, no set breaks. Sure, Percy, Pagey, and Jonesy would get a breather and a blowjob during Bozo’s drum solo, but no organized intermission. Unlike some groups I could mention.)

TEN

The show also featured an Acoustic Mini-Set. The AMS is a high-level Rock Move, and there are specific requirements.

STOOLS It’s not an AMS unless the entire band comes downstage and shows how sensitive and versatile they are via cunning use of stoolery.

WEIRDO INSTRUMENT Someone’s gotta break out a mandocello or a treble ukulele or a tin whistle or something.

HARMONIZIN’ Boys, that sure do sound fiiiiiine.

DRUMMER’S GOTTA BE THERE He doesn’t have to actually do anything, but he has to come and sit on the stools with the rest of the band. No drummer, no AMS.

There are rules to this sort of shit, Enthusiasts.

ELEVEN

They were monsters, and they hurt people like other bands didn’t. The Stones left corpses in their wake, but not out of cruelty; the Stones just didn’t give a flaming shit about anyone but themselves and would gladly sacrifice you the moment you became boring. Zeppelin went out of their way to hurt people.

This is Peter Grant.

They called him G. He’s the guy who doesn’t look like a Rock Star, or Tony Clifton there on the right. (Bozo was as unpleasant looking as he was unpleasant.) Percy is 6’1″ and most likely wearing those platform shoes he dug, so you can’t tell that Peter Grant is 6’5″.  He started out as a professional wrestler–I swear–and got into the music management business via Don Arden, who was another psychotic criminal. He was the British Colonel Parker. He was the English Suge Knight. FUN FACT: Each of the men in that photo received an equal share of the profits and owned an equal share of the band.

Grant was there first, along with Pagey. The Yardbirds broke up in ’68–the singer was a drunk, Jeff Beck wanted to fuck off and play jazz or whatever it is he does–but they were still contracted to play some shows. There was money on the table, and neither men was hot on the idea of leaving it there. (Jimmy Page is so cheap that his nickname among the crew was Led Wallet.) So, Grant got the soon-to-be-ex-Yardbirds to sign over the rights to the name so Pagey could scrape together a pickup band to play the gigs.

So Pagey makes some calls and Percy comes along with Bozo in tow, and then Jonesy shows up. You know the story. It’s not a particularly interesting one. Enthusiasts have the serendipitous meeting between Garcia and Bobby on New Year’s Eve, and Phil and Mrs. Donna Jean presenting themselves in times of need, and a magick dictionary that named the band, but Zepp’s Origin Story has very little mysticism inherent. The name was a Keith Moon joke, and it was misspelled deliberately to prevent the deejays from calling them Leed Zeppelin.

And Grant was there. Most managers stay in their offices, employing a road manager to take care of the band on tour, but not Grant. He was there making sure the money got to the band and not the local promoter, and buying off the local cops, and paying for blitzed hotel rooms, and thrashing any taper he caught in the audience. Sometimes on tour, he would stop at local record shops; if he found bootleg Zepp albums, he would fuck the whole store up.

Look at him again:

That guy could fuck a whole store up. You didn’t want his full attention.

There was nothing Bill Graham could do. Grant had locked the trailer door, and one of his thuggish road crew was holding it closed, too, so Bill Graham couldn’t do anything. He yelled for help. He beat on the windows and walls of the trailer with his fists. Nothing was accomplished. The band was onstage, and Graham has brought his man to one of Led Zeppelin’s trailers. There has been a misunderstanding between the man and Grant’s son. There are differing accounts. Grant wishes to speak with the man. He wants to find out, he tells Graham, what really happened.

Before the knock, the door flings open and Grant yanks the man in. The two are not by themselves; there are three others in the trailer, John Bonham and Richard Cole and John Bindon*, and they all set upon the man. His name is Jim Matzorkis. The four men who beat him to nearly to death most likely do not know that, but do not let that fact get in the way. Bill Graham can do nothing.

The band leaves the stage and the entire entourage immediately leave the venue. There is another show scheduled for the following evening. Not too many hours later, a messenger arrives at Graham’s office. The message is from Grant. The band, Grant relays, has told me they would feel uncomfortable playing the show if you didn’t indemnify them and their employees against any action from what may or may not have occurred this afternoon.

The band used the word “indemnify?” Graham responds.

Grant refuses to return phone calls all night, and the next day, and  then sends over some papers releasing Zepp from any legal responsibility in the beating right before the show is scheduled to begin. The teens are already in the venue. Fearful of a riot if the band doesn’t play, Graham signs the document. He does so with his left hand, believing that this makes the contract null and void. Graham believes this because he watches too many movies. (The agreement wasn’t legal anyway, because you’re not allowed to make people sign shit by threatening them.)

Grant and the three others are allowed to leave San Francisco on their private jet, but they are arrested at the next stop on their route, New Orleans, which was to be the last show of the 1977 tour. The band never returns to America. Graham dies in a helicopter accident in 1991. Grant dies of a heart attack in 1995.

TWELVE

*John Bindon was a gangster. Sometimes he got paid to be an actor, or a bodyguard, and he made it into the gossip columns for the socialites and movie stars he impaled with the–according to legend–cock large enough to balance three pint glasses on, but he was a gangster. Buddies with the Kray Brothers and everything. He was the British version of Johnny Stompanato.

And Led Zeppelin hired him.

THIRTEEN

Quick quiz, hotshots: Led Zeppelin quote about the fourth album, or outtake from Spinal Tap?

“I think the lack of a name says more about the record than any name ever could.”

FOURTEEN

The Dead were in Minnesota recording Dick’s Pick 26 that night, so Zeppelin took care of San Francisco.  (They had also played Winterland that weekend.) The tape is astounding, even via YouTube’s compression, all chunky and airy and whatnotty. The first record had just come out and they barely knew any songs so they jammed everything out for ten and fifteen minutes; this was before the mellotron and the grand piano, just guitar, bass, and drums, and Percy still in dewy, screeching voice.

Feel free to skip the last 30 minutes, which–as you are probably guessing–is a drum solo followed by Dazed and Confused.

FIFTEEN

Put the bow away, schmuck.

SIXTEEN

Re: The Albums.

Coda and Presence suck. I’ve heard II and IV too many times to ever listen to them again. Houses of the Holy gets points off for The Rain Song, which is nine hours of dippity-doodle nonsense, and Physical Graffiti gets bonus points for the song Houses of the Holy. In Through The Out Door is underrated. III is for some people, I suppose.

SEVENTEEN

I have more to say but no night left with which to say it.