POLL LOTTA LOVE - ILM Artist Poll #6 - Led Zeppelin

There's just no hating on these guys, is there? The worst you can really say is that they're overplayed, which isn't their fault. Hell, they barely even released any singles! And Page/Plant/Jones have aged into elder statesmen of rock better than many of their peers, and proven themselves to be team players again and again. I mean, are there any stories of these guys (post-LZ, at least) being jerks? (Jerks to one another doesn't count, though even then the surviving three have been more or less cordial, Page/Plant album/tour aside).

My breakdown:

I - 3 songs
II - 5 songs
III - 2 songs
IV - 4 songs
Houses - 1 song
Graffiti - 2 songs
Presence - 0 songs
In Through the Out Door - 0 songs
Coda/B-sides - 3 songs

I guess I prefer the early stuff to the later albums.

x-post I've noticed lately the classic rock station(s) have stopped playing "Heartbreaker"/"Living Loving Maid" as a pair.

lol I was just about to bring that up

I think there was a window after punk and their break-up, but before the Beastie Boys sampled them on Licensed to Ill, when they were much less revered than they are now. They weren't hated, but they hadn't yet been gone long enough for them not to be lumped in with other oversized bands from the '70s. Pretty sure, from memory, this is true. It was like the Beastie Boys (and Rick Rubin, and Schooly-D, Stairway to Hell, and, um, the Cult) helped to remind people how awesome they were.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu3FuEiopJ0

All their albums got to number one apart from the first and their last: "Coda"...

the idea of actually spending the good studio dollar to explore whether one approach is working (or whether one [on the clock, paid] producer is working, or whether one physical space is working, etc): that's a dream from the past. unless you're utterly massive, your single venture into the studio to make the album is going to produce the definitive & for-the-record version of the song for better or worse; nobody has the scratch to do multiple tries in multiple studios, but there are plenty of stories from the legendary acts of trying a song over & over to try to get to the heart of it.

^^^this is so OTM and it bums me out. the idea now is that you can do everything on your own! with proTools! I guess, because analog/studio spaces don't matter anymore right lol

I think there was a window after punk and their break-up, but before the Beastie Boys sampled them on Licensed to Ill, when they were much less revered than they are now.

uh, this was a really formative/crucial time for metal, involving many bands that (properly) revered Zepellin as gods

NWOBHM, Halen/hair metal, etc

All their albums got to number one apart from the first and their last: "Coda"...

If you had asked me which album spent less time at No. 1 in 1976 - Presence, Breezin' or Fleetwood Mac - I would have given you the wrong answer.

lol I still have the entirety of IV on my ballot

I'm a little vague sometimes when trying to explain a general perception. I meant more with the general music audience--or maybe I meant more with rock critics. I went back and checked the first Rolling Stone Record Guide, which came out in '79. Billy Altman gave mediocre ratings to both II and Physical Graffiti, and only IV got the highest rating. I realize that's just one guy, but I also think that was in line with the general attitude towards Led Zeppelin at the time (as I remember it). If the same book came out today, I think it'd be a very different story.

I think a lot of people took them for granted. When did Bonham and his sound become this sort of ur-rock icon?

Took them for granted--that's a good way to put it. They had dominated for a long time, Bonham died and they called it a day, and everyone's attention turned elsewhere. (I don't mean the metal audience...and not that I know anything about metal, but wasn't the early '80s when that started to go more in an underground direction?) There just wasn't a great deal of interest in much of anything having to do with the '70s during the early '80s--Led Zeppelin, Elton John, disco, whatever. Some people, like Bowie, managed to adapt, most disappeared from the conversation. Frankie Goes to Hollywood was a big topic of concern.

Led Zeppelin was one of the bands I noted having very different reviews in the first and second editions of the RS guide; the Doors was the other. IIRC one of them went from 2-star and 3-star ratings to fours and fives, and the other went in the opposite direction. I think it was LZ that got upgraded and the Doors downgraded, but I can't remember for sure. I wish I'd kept my copies of those books.

I've noticed lately the classic rock station(s) have stopped playing "Heartbreaker"/"Living Loving Maid" as a pair.

Until I bought the album, I always thought it was one song!

I think it was LZ that got upgraded

That was my memory too when I scurried downstairs to get the book, thinking that that would support my point. The red and blue ran the same Billy Altman write-up with the same ratings, though (adding Out Door and Coda, neither of which he reviewed very well). Altman was great on Zeppelin, I should add; I love how he describes "Black Dog" as "indescribably chaotic."

Hmm. Was there a third edition?

okay so there is a very good reason why everyone loves "Stairway To Heaven", which is that it is fucking gorgeous

Don't think so. If they put one out today, my guess would be an almost unbroken string of five-star ratings from the debut through Physical Graffiti, and nothing less than a four for any of the studio albums. (x-post)

There was the red edition, the blue edition and then this one from the 90s:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51TK9CCM8EL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Amazon says there's a fourth edition out too.

thought it was well established that critics at the time hated Zeppelin

ok yeah, I had that 3rd ed too -- unloaded them all over the years.

Anybody able to check how they did in that one (and what year it came out)? I assume Altman's write-up had been replaced by then.

I think critics hated Led Zeppelin only for their first two or three albums. And not all critics, by any means--Christgau didn't, and I'm sure Bangs, Marsh, or any of the Creem guys wouldn't have either.

Ballot count stands at 24. Hearing my email alert sound is more exciting than it has any business being.

Christgau didn't, and I'm sure Bangs, Marsh, or any of the Creem guys wouldn't have either.

uh

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/led-zeppelin-iii-19701126

Unfortunately, precious little of Z III's remaining hysteria is as useful or as effectively melodramatic. "Friends" has a fine bitter acoustic lead, but gives itself over almost entirely to monotonously shrill Plant breast-beatings. Rob, give a listen to Iggy Stooge.

so wrong

tbf he doesn't pan them outright, but his enthusiasm is surprisingly guarded

Working on my ballot tonight or tomorrow.

The Zep, of all bands surviving, are today — their music is as ephemeral as Marvel comix, and as vivid as an old Technicolor cartoon.

OTM, but not in the way I think he meant to be.

Bangs hated Zep; there's a famous line he wrote (which I might be misquoting) where Page played a single note on his guitar with a viola bow for at least an hour and the kids chased him out of town...

I think it was in the Troggs piece? either that or James Taylor Must Die...

(just occurred to me those two might be the same)

Zep didn't get a positive Stone review until Lenny Kaye did IV. John Mendelssohn panned the first two.

I'm looking at the 3rd edition of the RS guide (published 1992). The Zep entry is written by an ILXor! I to III get 4 stars, IV gets 5, HOTH gets 4.5, PG 4, Presence 3.5, ITTOD 3, Coda 2.5.

that reads a bit like the "knuckle dragging" sabbath pans from that era.

why does 70s critics never want to rock?

Chuck, I assume?

nope, posts here as m coleman (googleproof if needed I guess?)

Bangs loved Sabbath, I think! My impression was that Zep was a little too close to prog for a lot of those guys' tastes...?

omg "Dancing Days", I'd forgotten this song existed

I'm not surprised RS would have contemporaneously dismissed Led Zeppelin. And maybe, possibly, Bangs shaped his review of III with that in mind (not saying he did, just that it's a possibility). But the review doesn't suggest hate.

Over across the tracks in the industrial side of Cream country lie unskilled laborers like Black Sabbath, which was hyped as a rockin' ritual celebration of the Satanic mass or some such claptrap, something like England's answer to Coven. Well, they're not that bad, but that's about all the credit you can give them. The whole album is a shuck—despite the murky songtitles and some inane lyrics that sound like Vanilla Fudge paying doggerel tribute to Aleister Crowley, the album has nothing to do with spiritualism, the occult, or anything much except stiff recitations of Cream cliches that sound like the musicians learned them out of a book, grinding on and on with dogged persistence. Vocals are sparse, most of the album being filled with plodding bass lines over which the lead guitar dribbles wooden Claptonisms from the master's tiredest Cream days. They even have discordant jams with bass and guitar reeling like velocitized speedfreaks all over each other's musical perimeters yet never quite finding synch—just like Cream! But worse.

LESTER BANGS

(Posted: Sep 17, 1970)

70s critics = morons

(Bangs did change his tune a bit, tbf)

70s critics = morons

Strong dissent.

it's really more "critics = morons"

(obv there is an unspoken "when I disagree with them" caveat there)

lol Dan

Geez...I'm trapped inside of a Lou Reed live album.