Led Zeppelin: Classic Or Dud?

Every single one of these interviews boils down to 'your music sucks – change my view'.

Is this a BBC approach more generally? It seemed to be what threw Ben Shapiro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VixqvOcK8E

That 1970 video is amazing. Surprising that they still seemed to be framing the Beatles as image-based teen idols at that point vs Zep as difficult musos who fail the whistle-a-tune test.

Yeah it seems to have been a conscious media strategy: "No, we're not as cute. And no, our music isn't catchy. And no, we didn't write a lot of it. And no, our audiences aren't as enthusiastic. But this is all by choice. We're REALER, maaaan."

I like both bands, and they both need to exist, but it's a rather silly position to take. Hard to know whether it's the box the interviewers were pushing them into, or something their manager / label wanted them to say, or how they really thought.

It is silly, of course, but Led Zeppelin >>> The Beatles.

That Ben Shapiro takedown never gets old, but I have no idea whether *bands* interviewed by the BBC are still subject to the same quizzical treatment half a century later.

The LZ interview is just old school Reithian disdain for popular culture, it's actually a regional news programme (albeit London) and yet the interviewer (Bob Langley) sounds posher than most minor royals. The Shapiro one is by Andrew Neil, who is one of those heavy-punching star interviewers that the British media likes to compliment themselves on producing - Robin Day, Jeremy Paxman etc - whose whole shtick is being tough and uncompromising and asking awkward questions. An idiot like Ben Shapiro is easy meat for someone like Neil but media-savvy British politicians have long since worked out their tactics when dealing with this type of interrogation. Generally more of a disdain for the human race going on from the likes of Paxman.

*subjected

xp yeah the performative elitism is just off the charts.

Well, it's hard to respond to "I don't think I could whistle one of your tunes" with "yes you could". I just think the framing (which seemed to be coming from BBC/Melody Maker first) was surprising given all the press in 1970 that was revering the Beatles as 'serious musicians' and deriding Zeppelin's "pat visceral impact".xp to YMP

Celebrities and pop stars are generally slobbered over and treated better than royalty by the BBC these days. Perish the thought that Jimmy Page would be treated like Prince Andrew!

I suspect the Stones had to play some of the same lame cards just because of how much cultural oxygen had been sucked up by the Beatles.

"Uh, we both play blues-based rock music, but they are the clean-cut good guys and we're the dangerous bad boys." Neither assertion was, strictly speaking, true, but once a media narrative develops you have to either work within it or work reactively against it.

Perhaps it was inevitable. The music press needed to understand everything through the lens of the Beatles so every question was "in what ways are you similar to / different from the band that dominates our mindset about pop/rock music?"

As several have noted there are gobs of class shit that I (as a USian) cannot really unravel. I will leave it to the Britishes from here on out

all the press in 1970 that was revering the Beatles as 'serious musicians' and deriding Zeppelin's "pat visceral impact".xp to YMP

although tbf a lot of this was coming from the rock press; this clip almost makes me wonder if Zep got comparatively more respect from high-culture outlets. You'd think they were some cerebral fusion group from this, which they sort of were in a way, but you wouldn't know it from Rolling Stone.

What were the class issues involved? Page and Plant came from middle- to upper middle-class families in the London area and West Midlands, while the Beatles were more working- to lower-middle class from the North aiui? Did this impact their reception?

Did I say Bob Langley? It was Bob Wellings - who is still alive! In fact he only 36 at the time of the interview! There's a little comment about Plant coming from Kidderminster, which might be entirely innocent but I can't help but think was a bit of regional jibe at these hairy West Midlands oiks. Plant's fairly well spoken anyway but I'm pretty sure Bonham was having to rein in his Midlands accent when faced with an interviewer who sounds like Prince Philip.

Ah

There was an article in The Guardian a week ago or so about a French bill aimed at combating accent-based discrimination and the tone was so baffled and amused that I couldn't help but wonder whether the author ever considered that it's no less pressing an issue in the UK (or so it seems to me, speaking as a foreign spy).

I would have thought more pressing but like several centuries too late.

But then that's the Guardian for you!

Ha, I only just got that "what's it like finally having money?" was a dig.

although tbf a lot of this was coming from the rock press; this clip almost makes me wonder if Zep got comparatively more respect from high-culture outlets.

why are these creeps not cancelled

The Power of Crowley

It was Ellen Sander from Life.

Wait, though, I thought cancelling wasn't a real thing.

well, you can't "callout" a credit card

If you’ve already seen a parrot singing Led Zeppelin today just keep on scrolling...pic.twitter.com/UjewCOflIx

— Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) January 18, 2021

sounds kind of like that David Lee Roth isolation tape

Percy the parrot cuts loose

"Free bird!"

ZOINKS!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCJEhfVyCvw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDbRlHLpPw4

Bob Plant dusts off his Song Remains the Same dream sequence cosplay outfit

https://i.imgur.com/I98t3O2.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/rJ5sGTV.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/ZcAnKoC.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/XQrAian.jpg

Meeting with Lord Johnson, visiting dignitary from the land of the dwarves. There was much exposition and remembrance of past migrations among the shadows of yonder misty mountains

What the fuck? Why the fuck?

That might be the best thing in the world! There are clips of Johnson hanging out with Billy Joel, Dolly Parton, Sting, Mark Knopfler, Nick Mason ... I'm in!!!

Yes, he has a TV show on some channel over here where he just hangs out with famous people. For no apparent reason.

haha wow I need to see that

WE GONNA GO
WALKING THROUGH THE PARK EVERY DAY

Cool it Bob

so chilling. i always picture a foggy park.

🖼
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🖼

It's very paisley to me, a little A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.

Kashmired and Confused

I only recently listened to Anne Bredon's original 1959 recording of "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" which she wrote, and was covered a year later by a folksinger named Janet Smith who altered the arrangement some. Then Joan Baez recorded it live in 1962 based on Smith's version, making it famous (and who erroneously thought it was a traditional folk song of unknown origin, which is how it was often miscredited for the next decade). Then the Association recorded it for their first single in 1965. Several other bands recorded it after that, including Quicksilver Messenger Service. You can definitely hear the evolution in each recording from the one before, but I'd barely recognize Bredon's take as even being the same song as Zep's if I only heard those two.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9VpWAEk6aI

Is this the song In which little Robert Anthony desires to take the subject waking in the park everyday? I lose track

Yep.

That clip BTW is of the first two known versions of the song by Anne Bredon and Janet Smith. A band called The Plebs did a nice version of it too which perhaps sounds most like the Zeppelin version of the ones that predate it.

Quicksilver Messenger Service was also playing it live pretty early on, predating Led Zep.

This is the folk method, folks (which doesn't excuse not crediting authors).

I was framing of the chromatic drama last night and by chance today Dazed was played at the bar

“Oh yeah…oh god”

As it happens I spent quite a few foggy teenage mornings walking on Hampstead heath with the first two Zeps (on tape) but no babe ;-(

Coming here preemptively to say that while I respect that he struggled to come up with even 10 tracks he'd consider the worst of Led Zeppelin, Alfred including "No Quarter," "Your Time is Gonna Come," "Gallows Pole" and "Thank You" on his list is nuts.

haha

I love Zep III but a song about a hanging always struck me as eh.

"No Quarter"? More like "No Tempo."

J'Ran J'Ran ruined "Thank You" for me, or, rather, they deserved each other.

No Quarter riff is sick

They always had sick riffs.

“No Quarter” is easily top ten LZ for me. The others I can take or leave.