![]() But it was Bonham’s death in 1980 that finally grounded Led Zeppelin. There were also tragedies along the way, among them a car accident in Greece that put singer Robert Plant in a wheelchair (and nearly killed his wife) and an altercation in Oakland, California, with promoter Bill Graham that landed drummer John “Bonzo” Bonham in jail. The band was alleged to have indulged in everything from secret devil messages (ostensibly on “Stairway to Heaven”) to seafood orgies (in which willing groupies took in the catch of the day). Some were sinister, some salacious, some downright silly. Before long, Led Zeppelin’s very preeminence assumed the status of myth, and all sorts of stories sprang up. Such success, of course, was not without its cost. Yet the band’s music rarely conveyed the brutality of proto-metal acts like Black Sabbath or Deep Purple its impact was more a matter of intensity than jackhammer insistence.Įvery Awful Thing Trump Has Promised to Do in a Second Term ![]() From the galloping rumble of “Whole Lotta Love ” and the blues-spiked growl of “Black Dog” to the exoticisms of “Kashmir,” Led Zeppelin’s sound was invariably larger than life. ![]() Other bands had done their best to make rock seem bigger, louder, tougher and more ambitious, but it was Led Zeppelin that made the music heavy. Unlike the rock titans of the Sixties, Led Zeppelin had little use for singles albums were the band’s currency, generating a whole new canon, including tracks like “No Quarter,” “Immigrant Song,” “Communication Breakdown” and the eternally popular “Stairway to Heaven.”Ĭlassics, every one of them, but classics of a new sort. Yet it was an entirely new kind of success. Led Zeppelin was a smash virtually from the moment its first album, Led Zeppelin, was released in 1969, and the band would dominate rock & roll for the next decade. ![]() The band, the Who’s drummer predicted, would go over not like a lead balloon but like a lead zeppelin. Keith Moon, after hearing the Yardbirds’ Jimmy Page explain his idea for a new blues-based band, simply laughed. At the time, nobody thought it would work. ![]()
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