Led Zeppelin: Classic Or Dud?

The whole chapter in the Phil book is worth a read, especially about the transformation of his good friend Robert Plant into a raging asshole the closer the event came to becoming a Led Zeppelin reunion.

The bridge before the solo is where it really goes to sh1t

Of Stairway? He goes into that, specifically, in the book! It's down the the weird-ass timing of that stretch, which requires rehearsal to nail right.

'and Phil's 10x the drummer Tony Thompson"

huh? how do you figure?

Of Stairway? He goes into that, specifically, in the book! It's down the the weird-ass timing of that stretch, which requires rehearsal to nail right.

huh? how do you figure?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16OvXJ2kUZk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EWa_yV1JDE

or just...Abacab

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeWaaAr1_lU

his playing on those Plant albums is awesome

seconded -- especially the debu

t

Tony Thompson was obviously great!

Tony Thompson was (I guess like the other Chic guys) kinda a rock guy, but he more than the other two apparently always bristled at being labeled a disco dude and wanted to rock out. Which (plus the cocaine) partly explains the Live Aid debacle.

The crazy thing about Phil was that even as a solo star and a Genesis star he still toured as Plant's *drummer.* You can find a complete show on youtube, but the quality is iffy. Lots of clips of Phil backing people at those Prince's trust shows, though, like this clip backing Plant with Pete Townshend on guitar and Mick Karn on bass:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2FHDW5Frwc

Or Collins, Brian May and friggin' Rick Astley:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcBKbu35nPo

And here's Clapton at his lowest backed by Collins (at his peak):

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

yeah well the intro to "Some Like it hot," although futzed with by Bernard Edwards, is all time…he was the guy JP, RP and JPJ fucked around with in the late 80s to see if they could make a go of it…doubt that the fact they didn't is down to him…

The crazy thing about Phil was that even as a solo star and a Genesis star he still toured as Plant's *drummer.*

After Keith Moon died, Phil called up Townshend to offer his services. Pete turned him down at least in part because he couldn't imagine how Phil had time to be the drummer for the Who in addition to Genesis and his solo career.

I love the story about how, when Collins and John Martyn being neighbors and drinking buddies in the late '70s, Martyn was complaining about having to find a drummer for an upcoming session, and Collins volunteered. Martyn was like, "You play drums?!"

I want to say the story with Plant or Clapton was much the same, too. One of them owned a neighboring house, but they didn't really know who Phil Collins was or that he played drums.

Anyway, the fact that Zep didn't reunite with Thompson playing drums was of course at least partly down to Thompson, who was totally coked out and not a good fit. But of course it was also down to Plant and Page not being on the same, er, page. Here's a good piece on the train wreck, whose highpoint is undoubtedly Plant describing the abortive rehearsals as "David Byrne meets Hüsker Dü." (tbf, Shaken 'n' Stirred is pretty Heads-y at times, and def. new wave (Belew-Wave?) weird all the time).

https://ultimateclassicrock.com/led-zeppelin-reunion-fails/

fwiw in there:

For Thompson, the gig was a dream job. By that point, Thompson has already conquered the disco, dance and R&B worlds with Chic. He’d also recorded with many of the biggest names in rock and pop, including David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Madonna, Diana Ross and the Power Station supergroup with Robert Palmer and members of Duran Duran.

But playing with Page, Plant and Jones was different. “I grew up listening to Zeppelin -- they were my bible when I was a kid,” he told Modern Drummer in 2002. “Now, I assumed a song like ‘Rock and Roll’ was played a certain way. But when we started the song, Plant said, ‘No, that’s not it’ and Jonesy said, ‘It doesn’t go like that.’ (Original drummer John) Bonham had a way of playing that everyone thought was straight. You’d think ‘Rock and Roll’ is just a big two and four, but it’s not like that. It’s more like a Texas shuffle. ... Bonham was just so good. You can’t copy him."

What they lacked in decisiveness, direction and session time, it seems they made up for in carousing.

The foursome arguably spent more time in a tiny club in a little English village than they did writing, rehearsing or recording. The good times quickly turned into a bit of mess -- including a car crash and hospital stay for Thompson.

“Jonesy and I often chose to walk back to the place we were staying, at two in the morning. Pagey wouldn't come out, which is hardly the way to get everything back together again,” Plant recalled. “Meanwhile, Tony became a celebrity and was metaphorically earned around on everybody's shoulders. He ended up in one of these small mini-cars with five other people. They took a corner too fast and ended up in somebody's basement, went off the road, through some iron railings and down a few steps … . Tony was lying in the hospital going, ‘Oh, man, oh, man.’ So that was the end of him.”

Where do the accounts of Tony being snowblind come from?

(Original drummer John) Bonham

got it thanks

xpost Nile book iirc

fwiw in there:

_For Thompson, the gig was a dream job. By that point, Thompson has already conquered the disco, dance and R&B worlds with Chic. He’d also recorded with many of the biggest names in rock and pop, including David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Madonna, Diana Ross and the Power Station supergroup with Robert Palmer and members of Duran Duran.

But playing with Page, Plant and Jones was different. “I grew up listening to Zeppelin -- they were my bible when I was a kid,” he told Modern Drummer in 2002. “Now, I assumed a song like ‘Rock and Roll’ was played a certain way. But when we started the song, Plant said, ‘No, that’s not it’ and Jonesy said, ‘It doesn’t go like that.’ (Original drummer John) Bonham had a way of playing that everyone thought was straight. You’d think ‘Rock and Roll’ is just a big two and four, but it’s not like that. It’s more like a Texas shuffle. ... Bonham was just so good. You can’t copy him."

What they lacked in decisiveness, direction and session time, it seems they made up for in carousing.

The foursome arguably spent more time in a tiny club in a little English village than they did writing, rehearsing or recording. The good times quickly turned into a bit of mess -- including a car crash and hospital stay for Thompson.

“Jonesy and I often chose to walk back to the place we were staying, at two in the morning. Pagey wouldn't come out, which is hardly the way to get everything back together again,” Plant recalled. “Meanwhile, Tony became a celebrity and was metaphorically earned around on everybody's shoulders. He ended up in one of these small mini-cars with five other people. They took a corner too fast and ended up in somebody's basement, went off the road, through some iron railings and down a few steps … . Tony was lying in the hospital going, ‘Oh, man, oh, man.’ So that was the end of him.”_

In Zep? For sure. Plant and he were best friends, the two youngest players, from the same place and, iirc, tour roommates. JPJ traveled separately from the band, often with his family. And Page was a loon. Take Bonham out and what you're left with is not only a great band missing the greatest drummer, but three very different individuals.

Right. Seem to remember reading that in the beginning Page and Jones were the urban sophisticates and Bonham and Plant were the country bumpkins who literally huddled together in fear in certain novel stressful situations.

Collins makes out that Page was gaslighting him before they went on at Live Aid, Page asked him if he knew the songs, Collins sang the bridge part in Stairway and Page replied "No! No!", as if he was really wrong and PC has been indignant about it since.

And while there's no doubt Page was very much on the back foot, but as mentioned above, the timing of that part is strange and requires a bit of thinking instead of busking and feel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhlLtd19szw

Yeah, but timing in the bridge of Stairway is the least of that Live Aid performance's problems. Plant sounds bad and Page looks and sounds terrible.

https://i.imgur.com/ewPIBFn.jpg

The translation of the upper right apparently is “jeff Beck guitar sound”

I love how light hearted, happy and young they look : )

And bonham’s little mustache :)

The translation of the upper right apparently is “jeff Beck guitar sound”

― calstars, Sunday, February 16, 2020 5:46 PM (one hour ago)

That's uh... a pretty loose translation. It says "ジェフおん!".

"ジェフ" could be Jeff (or Jehu) but it is also a visual pun in katakana as it is very close to "ツェプ" or Zep. "おん" could mean "sound" but that is far more commonly used with the Chinese character 音.

It says "ZEP ON!" right next to the script in English which might serve as better context (or what the author/artist intended?), and though I'm not a manga reader, I do know that artists switch scripts for effect and that might be what's happening here...

I'd hypothesise some kind of Berenstein Bears alternate universe scenario if it wasn't so feasible that I simply and completely blocked that Live Aid performance from memory. 1985 was near peak Zep fandom for me (first time round), and I surely watched that damn broadcast. Yet I can scarcely believe, let alone recall that particular segment happening.

Curious, but this revelation may shed light on another incident that occured a couple of years later when a mate's sister who was a bit older said to me that Led Zeppelin "couldn't play their instruments." This was such a wild challop as far as I was concerned that I've since held it to have been a terrific troll on a dumb teen. Now I have to consider that in truth all she knew of the band was that performance and Marie was never as cool and aloof as I'd assumed.

hey Zep nerds, I have a very specific question about How the West Was Won (the album, not the film):

The version of "That's the Way" seems to differ significantly from the one in the film - for one thing, there's clearly someone playing an electric guitar (and not a mandolin, as Jonesy does on the filmed take). Jones is not credited with electric guitar, however, and I've never known him to play one onstage. Did Page overdub the electric guitar part? Or did Jones play it live?

I'll have to listen again, but Jones is always up to so much stuff in the shadows. I know he sometimes played a Fender bass VI...

Are you confusing How the West Was Won with The Song Remains The Same?

No! I am talking about the version of "That's The Way" that is on the CD issue of "How the West Was Won", which contains different takes/live versions of the tracks included on the DVD of "How the West Was Won"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_the_West_Was_Won_(Led_Zeppelin_album)

The DVD and I guess likely the CD had new overdubs and other clean ups added, iirc.

Page is clearly playing the central acoustic 12-string rhythm part, but there is another (very clear and quite pretty) picked electric guitar lead running through the whole song, essentially subbing in for the mandolin part (which *is* played by Jones) on other versions.

it might even be a pedal steel, I can't tell

this version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mn_CVa3go2k

It does sound like there's a mandolin in the background at certain spots. Maybe Page just mixed the mandolin super-low and was like, eh let's pretty this up with another guitar part and overdubbed it.

filmed/DVD version (from Earl's Court iirc) does not appear to be online.

shakey I don't think there's film called How The West Was One, the DVD with compiled shows/parts of shows is called Led Zeppelin

anyway yeah "That's The Way" on the DVD is from Earl's Court '75, a couple years after the L.A. Forum show

ah right. sorry, my bad. they were released simultaneously iirc

xp One Won

yeah they were

OK, just listened to that and yeah, to my ears there are three things going on: acoustic, electric and mandolin. Hmmm ...

JPJ had one of those 3 necked things that had like a 6-string, 12-string & mandolin iirc. heading to image search...

https://www.looperman.com/media/blog/images/00048-andy-manson-john-paul-jones-triple-neck-guitar-live.jpg

...so I'm guessing he's just hopping up & down different necks for different parts of the song.

haha omg never seen that

But ... but ... he's only got two hands!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qoWcIl53ac