Led zeppelin
Led Zeppelin was a British rock group founded in London in 1968 by guitarist Jimmy Page, who had belonged to The Yardbirds. The band consisted of Jimmy Page on guitar, John Paul Jones on bass and keyboard, vocalist Robert Plant, and John Bonham on drums (who had coincided with Plant in The Band of Joy). It is considered one of the most important and influential bands of the 70's and rock history.
Led Zeppelin featured elements from a wide spectrum of influences and genres, including blues, rock and roll, soul, i>hard rock, celtic music, rockabilly, indian music, progressive rock, folk, psychedelic rock, reggae, country, among others. It is one of the seminal groups for the rise of heavy metal.
More than forty years after the band's breakup in 1980, Led Zeppelin's music continues to sell, enjoy wide radio airplay, and have proven to be one of the most influential bands in rock music. /i>. To date, they have sold more than 300 million albums worldwide, including 111 million in the United States alone. (USA) with 5, after The Beatles who have 6. The albums with this certification are: Led Zeppelin IV (23 million), Physical Graffiti (15 million), Led Zeppelin II (12 million), Houses of the Holy (11 million) and Led Zeppelin I (10 million). In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked them at number 14 on its list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time".
History
Formation of the band and first works (1968-1969)
Led Zeppelin was formed at the end of 1968 when Jimmy Page, who already had a reputation in the UK for his work as a studio musician and for being the last guitarist of the band The Yardbirds, He was looking for new musicians for his new project, The New Yardbirds (a name that caused certain legal problems), formed after the dissolution of The Yardbirds. The name of the band arose from a joke by Keith Moon, drummer for The Who (in a recording session for a Jeff Beck song featuring Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, John Entwistle and Keith Moon himself), when he said the band would fail and go down "like a lead zeppelin". The name originally arose as Lead Zeppelin, but At the recommendation of Peter Grant, the band's manager, the a of lead was deleted, to avoid pronunciation problems on the part of North American speakers, since the vowels ea are pronounced like an i in North American English. However, The Who bassist John Entwistle has his own version. from the facts: "About four years ago I started to get sick of The Who, so I talked to a guy who is now head of production at Led Zeppelin. I was talking to him at a club in New York and I said, “Yeah, I'm thinking of leaving the band and starting my own. I'm going to call it Led Zeppelin. And for the record cover I'm going to set the Hindenburg on fire, you know, this whole thing…” And about two months later, he started working with Jimmy Page, and because they were looking for a name, he suggested Led Zeppelin., Page liked it and they came out with the same album cover that I had planned ". the band.
The Yardbirds broke up in 1968, and Page and the band's bassist, Chris Dreja, began searching for members for a new line-up, while innovating their music alongside current The Bulens guitarist J. Jencquel. The first candidate for the position of vocalist was Terry Reid, who refused to be part of the band, but recommended a friend of his named Robert Plant. In August 1968, Page, Dreja and Peter Grant traveled to Birmingham to see the Plant's gang, Hobbstweedle. Plant accepted Page's offer to join the band at a gathering at Page's home. Plant had a friend who played drums, John Bonham, who would also join the group. Shortly after Bonham's arrival, Dreja he gave up music to become a photographer, so the three members of the band are forced to find a new bassist. John Paul Jones, a friend of Page's and a well-known session musician, heard the news and proposed to his friend that he join the band, closing the band. The first thing they did was rehearse a normal 12-bar blues. At that moment the "chemistry" that was between the four members. Their first assignment was to finish a pending tour in Scandinavia under the name of The New Yardbirds, in which they played many of the songs that are part of their debut album.
After the tour, and already under the name Led Zeppelin, Peter Grant, the band's manager, gave the band $200,000 in exchange for producing their first album. This sum of money came from the Atlantic Records label, which was interested in signing as many groups as possible that emerged during that time under the blues and hard rock style, something that Led Zeppelin fulfilled perfectly, so Atlantic hired the band without even having seen them, only on the recommendation of Dusty Springfield.
Their first album was published on January 12, 1969, under the name Led Zeppelin. It was recorded in just one week (recorded, mixed and edited) at London's Olympic Studios in October 1968, using just 30 hours of studio time and almost no rehearsal hours. At first, the British public did not respond very enthusiastically to the release. of the album, produced by Page, which would become a constant throughout the group's history, a fact that caused the band not to publish singles in the United Kingdom. After embarking on their first North American tour and thanks to the band's explosive performances, the album was an immense critical and commercial success, especially in the United States. The press described the album as heavy metal, something the band disagreed with. Robert Plant stated that "it is unfair to classify the band as heavy metal, since a third of our music is acoustic". Shortly after the release of this debut album, the band decided not to release any albums. single in England, deteriorating the promotion of the album and subsequent works.
As a curiosity, it should be noted that, during the tour in support of the album Led Zeppelin in Denmark, the group performed under the name of The Nobs due to the prohibition of Baroness Eva von Zeppelin (relative of the inventor of the dirigible) to use their real name, who argued that they were "screaming monkeys", in addition to criticizing the album cover, photo courtesy of the band's former bassist, Chris Dreja. In addition, the Singapore authorities prevented the band to enter the country for a concert due to their hair being too long.
During 1969, the band managed to finish the European and American tours and record during them their second album, which was released on October 22 of that year under the name Led Zeppelin II. This album established them definitively, reaching number 1 on the British and US charts (dethroning The Beatles' Abbey Road, which had spent 11 weeks at number 1) and staying there for seven weeks., probably thanks to the success of songs like "Whole Lotta Love" and "Heartbreaker".
In support of the album, the band gave a couple more tours of the United States to increasingly larger audiences due to the increase in popularity brought about by the release of the group's second album, extending the concerts for more than three hours.
Led Zeppelin III and the Untitled Album (1970-1972)
For the composition of Led Zeppelin's third album, the members of the group retired to Bron-Yr-Aur, a remote rural house in Wales, in 1970, where they also recorded the material devised there.
On October 5, 1970, their third album, Led Zeppelin III, was released, after which some accused the group of being a commercial setup, due to the intimate and acoustic nature of the songs contained in Said album, which despite not being very well received by both critics and fans, contained compositions that over time became classics, such as "Immigrant Song", the first single of the singer's career. group despite their refusals to have it published, or "Since I've Been Loving You". The entire band and especially Jimmy Page took these criticisms personally, which caused their fourth album, in its original edition, to have no title or anything that would allow it to be identified, except for four strange symbols (), one for each member of the band. This album, commonly recognized as Untitled and mainly as Led Zeppelin IV by inertia, released on November 8, 1971, was the band's best-selling LP (currently at No. 4 of the best-selling albums in history according to the RIAA), which highlights their biggest hit, "Stairway to Heaven", as well as classics from the band such as "Black Dog", "Rock and Roll", "Going to California" and "When The Levee Breaks", of which the imposing thunderous and heavy sound of John Bonham's drums stands out. The guitar solo on Stairway To Heaven was voted by the readers of Guitar World Magazine as "the best solo of all time".
The album was accompanied by a slight change of image of the members of the group, who began to wear showy clothes and extravagant necklaces and jewelry in the style of the great stars of the time. It is also during this time that the excesses of Led Zeppelin became popular, as they began to travel in a private jet (called "The Starship") renting entire floors of hotels in their stays during tours.
As of July 2006, Led Zeppelin's fourth album has sold 23 million copies in the United States, making it the fourth best-selling album in history.
Houses of the Holy, Swan Song and Physical Graffiti (1973-1975)
Their next album, Houses of the Holy, published on March 28, 1973, was a new idea in the group, mixing different musical styles, blues, rock,folk, and even reggae nuances. As always, the album caused controversy among critics despite excellent sales. The song "Houses of the Holy" it was initially recorded to be included on his self-titled album, although it eventually appears on his next work.
The cover of the album also had its controversy, since it shows the children of Robert Plant naked climbing a kind of cobbled slope (which is the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland), for which it was banned in some countries, including Spain.
The tour to present the album was massive, reaching a concert in Florida with 56,800 spectators, surpassing the previous record held by The Beatles, earning $309,000 that day.
To feel more comfortable in recording their albums, Led Zeppelin created their own record label, Swan Song, in 1974, although still depending on their record company Atlantic Records. The name of the company comes from one of the few unpublished songs of the group. From that moment on, the band made all their recordings under this label. The company's logo, depicting the Greek god Apollo, became the symbol of Led Zeppelin, being included on many of the band's merchandising items from then on. Said company was profitable during the life of Led Zeppelin, although three years after the breakup of the band, the label had to close.
Between 1973 and 1974 the band took a break from their frenetic mix of recording and spectacular touring, focusing on collaborations, songwriting, and a host of other non-musical pursuits. On February 24, 1975, Physical Graffiti was published, the first work conceived since Swan Song. It was a double album that, in addition to containing new pieces such as "Kashmir", which Robert Plant said was the definitive Led Zeppelin song, included material discarded from previous albums. This album is considered one of the best of the band, probably due to the quantity and diversity of themes. critics as well as for the live performances that year, which were tremendous and massive. However, Led Zeppelin's fast pace of work was interrupted when in the summer of that same year Robert Plant suffered a serious car accident on the Greek island of Rhodes, leaving his wife Maureen on the verge of death. it was followed by a long and difficult recovery that stretched for about a year to the end of 1976.
Presence and In Through the Out Door (1976-1979)
It was in this year that the next work of the band was prepared at full speed, Presence, published on March 31, 1976 and recorded between the German city of Munich and Malibu, in California, characterized by not having any acoustic songs and not using any keyboard. It is an album marked by the convalescent state of Robert Plant, who recorded the vocal shots of him sitting in a wheelchair or on crutches. The album was received with a diversity of opinions by critics and the public due to its softer and slower character. Jimmy Page always said that this is his favorite album, and the song that opens the album, & # 34; Achilles Last Stand & # 34;, his favorite song with its more than 10 minutes.
Subsequently, they released their first live album, The Song Remains The Same, soundtrack to the film of the same name, which shows performances from 1973 in New York that ended an American tour, mixed with some fantasy scenes devised by the band itself. However, the album took a hit in the UK due to the strong rise of new British punk bands, with the band being considered "obsolete".
After returning to the stage in 1977, Robert Plant was again affected by misfortune, this time by the death of his six-year-old son Karac Pendra, due to a stomach infection. This event deeply marked Robert Plant. Plant, coming to consider his continuity within the band. However, the vocalist reconsidered and in 1978 the band returned to the studio, specifically that of the ABBA group in Stockholm, to record what would unexpectedly be their last studio album, In Through the Out Door released on 15 of August 1979. Unfortunately, again they will find problems to finish the album since at that time, Jimmy Page and John Bonham were in a state of addiction to heroin and alcohol respectively, a fact that makes In Through the Out Door the only Led Zeppelin album to contain the band's first and only tracks on which Page is not listed as author.
The 1979 tour saw for the first time Led Zeppelin not so focused on improvisation (it was quite a characteristic feature of their rapport as a live band), and more focused on the songs themselves. Despite this, an audience of around 120,000 people supported the band at a concert in Copenhagen. The band had reached a state of maturity, both compositionally and personally, having already put away most of their excesses and replaced them with professionalism. At that time they were one of the only bands capable of filling a stadium in the face of the commercial failure of the punk rock bands that emerged at that time. During this time, Robert Plant had been thinking of leaving the band due to exhaustion caused by the 1979 tour, although Peter Grant managed to convince him to continue. Said tour lasted until 1980, when Bonham had to be admitted to a hospital in Nuremberg, Germany, due to indigestion, although the press speculated that drugs and alcohol were possible causes. The band ended the tour in Berlin on the 7th. July of the same year.
Death of John Bonham and dissolution of the band (1980-1982)
With the arrival of 1980 Led Zeppelin returned to the great European tours, announcing a new great tour of North America that year, which could never be carried out since on September 25 John Bonham died in The Old Mill House, the mansion de Page in Windsor, suffocated by accidental aspiration of his own vomit caused by excessive alcohol consumption. No drugs were found in the drummer's body, as had been speculated.
The idea of continuing never crossed the minds of the remaining band members despite rumors of the addition of new drummers. They produced an official statement in which they explained that nothing was the same without Bonham, and that it was useless to continue without him.
After Bonham's death, the other three members announced their decision to cease performing under the Led Zeppelin name with the following press release, issued on December 4, 1980:
We wish to know that the loss of our dear friend, and the profound sense of undivided harmony that we and our manager feel, have led us to decide that we could not continue.Led Zeppelin
Having signed a contract that forced them to release a new album, and given the refusal to record new songs without Bonham, they opted to look for previously unpublished material that made up the LP Coda (1982), an album that presents songs that were discarded in the making of previous albums and some live takes of already recorded songs.
In the following years the members of Zeppelin stood by their decision not to reunite. Only sporadically were they seen together on stage. Lately Page and Plant decided to meet to do something together, recording a joint album a few years after the band's split, but never using the name or references to Led Zeppelin.
After the separation
In 1982 Plant released a solo album called Pictures at Eleven, in a style similar to that of Led Zeppelin. Then, in 1983, the album The Principle of Moments appeared, where influences from Genesis are noticeable, especially considering that the drummer of said band, Phil Collins, was the one who recorded the drum parts in the disk.
Page's first appearance after Zeppelin happened in 1982 when he composed some themes for the film Death Wish 2 (starring Charles Bronson) and its corresponding soundtrack was released. At the same time, she was in charge of editing the album Coda , with unpublished songs and discards from Led Zeppelin. In 1983 he joined Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton, former bandmates of his in The Yardbirds, for a series of concerts that have produced numerous albums.
John Paul Jones, for his part, composed the soundtrack for the film Scream For Help (1984), by the same director as Death Wish 2, he worked with Diamanda Galás and made sporadic artistic productions before releasing his current instrumental solo albums. He is currently a well-known rock music producer and arranger, who in 2009 formed the supergroup Them Crooked Vultures with guitarist Josh Homme and drummer Dave Grohl.
In 1984, Page and Plant teamed up again to form The Honeydrippers along with the likes of Jeff Beck and Paul Shaffer. Their album was called The Honeydrippers Vol. 1 and their song "Sea of Love" climbed to third place on the North American charts, better even than his famous song "Whole Lotta Love". They toured, where they played on Saturday Night Live, and after that Page decided to go in other directions, so the band broke up.
On the occasion of the Live Aid benefit concert, Page, Plant and Jones would reunite in 1985 to play live the songs "Rock and Roll", "Whole Lotta Love" and "Stairway to Heaven" at the John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia. Drums included Phil Collins and Tony Thompson, as well as bassist Paul Martinez (Collins and Martinez were featured on Plant's first two solo albums). The performance was marked by a lack of rehearsals with the two drummers, Page's problems with an out-of-tune guitar, malfunctioning monitors, and Plant's raspy voice. Page described the disastrous performance as "pretty chaotic," while Plant characterized it as an "atrocity."
On May 14, 1988, and on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Atlantic Records, the group came together again to close the commemoration concert, occupying the position of John Bonham his son Jason.
Page formed The Firm with Paul Rodgers and Chris Slade, and later released some solo albums such as Outrider (1988), in which Plant and Jason collaborated. In 1993 he recorded an album with Whitesnake and Deep Purple singer David Coverdale. It was called Coverdale/Page, although it was originally going to be called Legends. For his part, Plant has released a solo album with collaborations from Page. In 1994, Page and Plant recorded the 90-minute special Unledded, for MTV (although without Jones), which was followed by the albums No Quarter, also from 1994. and which included some songs from Led Zeppelin and Walking into Clarksdale (1998). This is said to be the start of a rift between the band members, as Jones was never informed of the meeting.
In 1995, Led Zeppelin was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Aerosmith's Steven Tyler and Joe Perry. Jason and Zoë Bonham were also in attendance, representing their late father. At the induction ceremony, there was a difficult moment, when Jones, speaking in front of the microphone, and with his particular sense of humor, joked saying "thank you, my friends, for finally remembering my phone number";, revealing the internal rift that existed at least at that time, between the members of Zeppelin, causing uncomfortable looks from Page and, above all, from Plant. Afterwards, they played a short set with Tyler and Perry, with Jason Bonham on drums, and then a second with Neil Young, and this time with Michael Lee playing drums.
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In 2003, a live triple disc was released under the name How the West Was Won, which included live versions of the band during their American tour, as well as a six-hour collection on video titled Led Zeppelin DVD, which sold 520,000 copies by the end of 2003. How the West Was Won was a commercial success, as well as one of the live albums most critically acclaimed.
In November 2007, a compilation called Mothership was released, consisting of two CDs with their best songs and greatest hits and a DVD with live images taken from the Led Zeppelin DVD. Additionally, the band made their entire catalog of records legally available for digital download, becoming one of the last major rock bands to do so.
On December 10, 2007, a one-off concert by the band took place at the O2 Arena in London with the replacement of Jason Bonham, son of the late John Bonham, on drums. This concert was performed as part of the Tribute Concert for Ahmet Ertegün, co-founder of Atlantic Records, who passed away on December 14, 2006. More than 20,000 people attended the band's first full concert in 27 years, tickets were raffled online through the concert's website and reached 20 million requests worldwide, so according to The Guinness Book of Records 2009, Led Zeppelin established the world record for "highest demand for tickets for a music concert". In October 2012 the concert film was released in limited theaters around the world under the title Celebration Day and on November 19 on DVD accompanied by a double CD audio. That same year a possible world tour of the band was rumored for the year 2008 but it never took place. This concert was planned to be held on November 26, but an untimely fracture of a finger by guitarist Jimmy Page postponed the performance until December 10.
Following the film's release, Page revealed that he had been producing the remaster of the band's complete discography. This was released in four stages; the first was from the albums Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin II and Led Zeppelin III and was released on June 2, 2014. The second part was released on October 27, 2014, and corresponded to the albums Led Zeppelin IV and Houses of the Holy. Physical Graffiti was released on February 23, 2015, almost exactly forty years after the original album was released. Finally, the fourth stage, which includes Presence, In Through the Out Door and Coda (album), was released on February 31. July 2015. Through this remastering project, each studio album was reissued on CD and vinyl and additionally included a deluxe edition, which contained a bonus disc of previously unreleased material (the Coda Deluxe Edition would include two discs). additional). Each album was also available in a Super Deluxe Edition Box Set, which included the remastered album and bonus disc on CD and 180-gram vinyl, a high-definition audio download card of all content via 96kHz/24-bit, a bound book of previously unseen photos and memorabilia, and a high-quality print of the original album cover.
On November 6, 2015, the newly remastered tracks were used to re-release the Mothership compilation, and the 1997 BBC Sessions reissue was released on September 16, 2016, under the name The Complete BBC Sessions, which contains the remastered double disc and a third disc with nine unreleased recordings recovered, including the song "Sunshine Woman", which never saw the light of day on any of the nine studio albums that Led Zeppelin made, thus putting an end to the campaign of reissues of Led Zeppelin's record material.
In May 2018, a reissue of the triple CD of the album How the West Was Won was released, which includes material from two of the shows that the band performed in Los Angeles during the tour of “IV”, at the end of June 1972.
Features
Led Zeppelin songs with references to Tolkien's work
One of Led Zeppelin's lyrical obsessions, especially Robert Plant's, is the work of J. R. R. Tolkien. Thus we can find several references to the British writer's novels in songs like "Bron-Y-Aur Stomp", "Ramble On" or "The Battle of Evermore"; and in the song title "Misty Mountain Hop".
There are also references to Scandinavian mythology, for example in songs like "No Quarter", along the lines of "The winds of Thor are blowing cold" and "Immigrant Song" where he mentions "We come from the land of the ice and snow" being able to refer to Asgard, or also where he names "Hammer of the Gods" being able to refer to Thor's hammer, Mjolnir, and where he cries "Valhalla I am coming" where Valhalla is the paradise to which the heroes go, when they die in combat. It seems that the inspiration for this song can be found on a group trip to Iceland in 1970.
The covers of their albums
The art on the covers of his albums was beyond disconcerting and original. The back cover photo for the band's debut album was taken by Chris Dreja, a former member of The Yardbirds who began his career as a photographer after retiring from music. The controversy would come from the hand of Baroness Von Zeppelin, who opposed the band performing under the name of Led Zeppelin in Denmark because of the cover of their first album, which shows a burning zeppelin.
On the sleeve of Led Zeppelin II, designed by Davod Juniper, there is a photo of the band together with other unknown characters, which do not present any reference to them in the entire album booklet. Said photo is based on a snapshot taken of the Jasta division of the Luftwaffe (Bundeswehr), German Air Force, with the faces of the occupants of said photo changed in favor of the faces of the members of the band, manager Peter Grant, Richard Cole, Blind Willie Johnson (blues musician) and Glynis Johns, who acts as a mother in the movie Mary Poppins. The latter appears to have been included as a joke by the group to the producer of their old album, Glyns Johns. The white shadow of the zeppelin against a brown background, which also appears on the album cover, gave the album its nickname The Brown Bomber. As a last curiosity, it should be noted that the first editions of the album had a phrase at the bottom of said cover, "The only way to fly" (the only way to fly), which explains why these editions are paid for at the price of gold.
The fourth album had no title, not even the name of the group; So much so that today it is called in many ways (Led Zeppelin IV, ZOSO, Four Simbols, "the one with the runes", etc.) but there is no official one. Obviously, the trick did not represent an obstacle to sales, which currently exceed 40 million copies worldwide. The band explained that the decision not to write their name or that of the album was that the music sold itself, without the need to know who the author was, thus responding to the negative criticism of its predecessor, Led Zeppelin III.
The building on the cover of Physical Graffiti is 97 St. Mark Street, New York. Coincidentally, in the basement of said building there was a clothing store called Physical Graffiti, although it is not known if it was founded before or after the release of the album. The man sitting on the stairs of the building holds two black dog puppies, perhaps in reference to the song Black Dog, from Led Zeppelin IV.
Presence has in all the photos of its vinyl edition a black object that the photographer and creator of the idea, Storm Thorgerson, summarized: "I like photos that do not have a obvious explanation [...] I remember the idea of Presence was to mix nostalgic photos from the 30s and 40s with an object from the future, which was basically a black hole with a curious shape. To me, it represented the energy of Led Zeppelin, which people at home, or at school, would need a dose of every few hours, like the latest drug. So the design was related to the band and yet in an extremely slight way, in the same way that the most rewarding thing about music is that it makes you form your own images'. This idea was echoed by Jimmy Page on his album in collaboration with David Coverdale by placing a traffic sign that has nothing to do with the rest of the set of photos.
Press Relations
Another characteristic was that they did not get along with the press, they used to consider it tabloid and conservative and it is for this reason that the interviews conducted with Led Zeppelin in its golden age were scarce. In addition, the band rarely released a single from any of their albums, the first song credited as such being "Immigrant Song", from Led Zeppelin III, nor did they give many shows. on television, arguing that the best thing was for the public to see them live, in concerts that used to last about three hours.
Led Zeppelin and the occult
Many of the myths about the band that remain to this day are the rumors that the band practiced black magic and that on the songs "Dazed & Confused", "Whole Lotta Love", "The Battle of Evermore", "Stairway to Heaven", "Four Sticks", & #34;No Quarter" and "Kashmir" satanic messages appeared, which caused controversy over the band's productions.
The most famous controversy is related to "Stairway to Heaven", since there have been quite a few people who claim to have perceived satanic messages («Here's to my sweet satan" / "Here is my sweet Satan") playing the song backwards, which has always been denied by the band. Another of the songs that allegedly contain satanic messages is "Dazed and Confused."
Page was always interested in the life and work of Aleister Crowley, even acquiring his summer mansion. It should also be noted that at the end of the album Led Zeppelin III a famous quote can be heard of Crowley, who says: "Do what you want, it will be all Law".
Accusations of plagiarism
Numerous accusations of plagiarism have surfaced throughout the band's career.
John Mendelsohn, a journalist for Rolling Stone magazine, accused the band of having copied the riff from the song "Your Time Is Gonna Come" from the song "Dear Mr. Fantasy" from the Traffic group. This same journalist also pointed out the similarity between the song "Black Mountain Side" and "Black Water Side" by Bert Jansch. The two allegedly plagiarized songs were included on the band's debut album. These accusations were the ones that gave rise to Led Zeppelin's bad relationship with the press, especially with Rolling Stone.
"Dazed and Confused" is a version quite removed from the original song by Jake Holmes. Initially, The Yardbirds, led by Page, covered the song calling it "I'm Confused" but when Led Zeppelin formed, Page tweaked the song for release on the group's initial album. However, Holmes never received any kind of monetary contribution from the band despite sending a request letter from his legal side. Despite this, Holmes never filed any lawsuit against the band for it.
In 1970, Arc Music magazine sued the band for having copied the song "Bring It on Home", Sonny Boy Williamson's original version of the theme "Bring it on Back" by Willie Dixon. The lawsuit was accepted, and the publication received a sum of money that, ultimately, was not reported to Dixon. Dixon sued the band again on his own due to comparisons of the song "Whole Lotta Love" to his song "You Need Love/Woman You Need Love", thanks to which the band credits Dixon as songwriter on recent editions of Led Zeppelin II.
"The Lemon Song", a song featured on the album Led Zeppelin II, sparked a lawsuit by Howlin' Wolf, who claimed that Led Zeppelin had copied the song from his theme "Killing Floor" (Also, in early pressings of Led Zeppelin II, the song was named after that.)
"Stairway to Heaven", the Led Zeppelin IV hit has an opening rhythmic progression very similar to the instrumental "Taurus" of the American group Spirit, a band for which Led Zeppelin had been the opening act in 1968. On May 21, 2014, it was made public that Spirit would file a lawsuit for Led Zeppelin to recognize the co-authorship of the instrumental in their song. In 2016 the claim was rejected by the intervening Californian judge, after which Robert Plant called the trial "ridiculous and grotesque."
'Nobody's Fault But Mine', which appears on the album Presence, is an original song by Blind Willie Johnson, but the band licensed it to time to claim ownership. Robert Plant said about it: "First of all, he is in the public domain because he has been dead a long time. And secondly, it's not his song; no one knows where it comes from".
Style and influence on later bands
Style
Led Zeppelin has been one of the most influential formations in the development of hard rock , laying the foundations of what would later be known as heavy metal along with groups like Black Sabbath or Deep Purple during the 1970s. The latter came with the release of the band's debut album, Led Zeppelin I, in 1969, which included a very harder and forceful than that of many bands of the time without abandoning the sound oriented towards the blues present in Jimmy Page's previous group, The Yardbirds, in which this tendency was more exploited. Throughout their discography, traces of psychedelic music inherited from musicians like Jimi Hendrix can also be observed. The sound present in the group's next work, Led Zeppelin II, continues with the sound of its predecessor mixing blues, hard rock and psychedelia in equal measure. The first change of course within the band's discography occurs in Led Zeppelin III, in which the more acoustic and folk style predominates throughout a large part of the songs included in the album, although without abandoning the hard rock present in the group's two previous albums. However, the most important work in the group's career is for many the fourth album, which has no name, but is known as Led Zeppelin IV. This observation is supported by the number of sales of the album, to date the most successful of Led Zeppelin in this field, thanks in large part to the inclusion of Stairway to Heaven, the most famous song of the band. The album is considered a key piece in the subsequent evolution of rock. After the publication of the group's fourth album, they released Houses of the Holy, blends hard rock and blues with elements borrowed from reggae or funk. Back again to their roots, the band publishes Physical Graffiti under the stylistic constant of their debut works, as well as Presence and In Through the Out Door.
Influence
The importance of Led Zeppelin is clearly seen in the large number of bands that consider themselves influenced by them. These include some as diverse as Wolfmother, Aerosmith, Guns N' Roses, Tool, Stone Temple Pilots, Rage Against the Machine, Judas Priest, Metallica, Megadeth, Diamond Head, Blind Melon, The White Stripes, Kingdom Come or Living Colour. Led Zeppelin is considered to be the band that paved the way for later seventies heavy metal bands, such as Deep Purple or Black Sabbath, as well as one of those that established part of the style on which music is based. hard rock inherited from grunge in the 1990s. Such has been the influence of the band in the history of rock that there have been various the formations created in tribute to Led Zeppelin, among which we must highlight Dread Zeppelin, Get the Led Out or Lez Zeppelin, made up entirely of women. In 2013 a survey conducted by the British radio station Planet Rock ranked Led Zeppelin 1st among the "most influential bands in history".
In 1995, it was decided to record a tribute album to Led Zeppelin, entitled Encomium, which includes versions made by other artists of original songs by the British quartet. Among these artists, it is worth mentioning Stone Temple Pilots, Blind Melon, Sheryl Crow or Duran Duran.
Discography
Studio Albums
- Led Zeppelin (1969)
- Led Zeppelin II (1969)
- Led Zeppelin III (1970)
- Led Zeppelin IV (1971)
- Houses of the Holy (1973)
- Physical Graffiti (1975)
- Presence (1976)
- In Through the Out Door (1979)
- Coda (1982)
Live Albums
- The Song Remains the Same (1976)
- Led Zeppelin BBC Sessions (1997)
- How the West Was Won (2003)
- Celebration Day (2012)
Members
- Robert Plant: Voice, harmonic and minor percussion (1968 - 1980, 1985, 1988, 1995 and 2007).
- Jimmy Page: Guitar, twelve-string guitar (1968 - 1980, 1985, 1988, 1995 and 2007).
- John Paul Jones: Under electric, keyboard, mandolin and choirs (1968 - 1980, 1985, 1988, 1995 and 2007).
- John Bonham: Battery, percussion and choirs (1968 - 1980, his death).
Participation in meetings
- Tony Thompson: Battery (1985).
- Phil Collins: Battery (1985).
- Paul Martinez: Bajo (1985).
- Jason Bonham: Battery (1988, 1995 and 2007).
- Michael Lee: Battery (1995).
Timeline
