The supergroup to end all supergroups, Led Zeppelin were often unfairly viewed by the press as a corporate entity that had not paid its dues. You only have to look at the history, however, to see how wrong that is. It must have been fate. At the same time as Robert Plant (b. 1948) and John Bonham (1948–80) ...
While all four future members of Led Zeppelin were busy laying the groundwork for their greatest success, Page got a major break playing for the ill-fated Yardbirds, a group that had already seen Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck move through its doors. When The Yardbirds finally dissolved, however, Page already had the bass-playing John Paul Jones’ assurance ...
If the 1960s had The Beatles versus The Stones, the 1970s had Led Zeppelin versus the world, and Led Zeppelin won. Frequently playing three-hour sets, their live shows became endurance tests for the band, and visitations from the gods for their audiences. The first half of the decade would see the group outsell their label-mates The Rolling ...
Led Zeppelin had spent the first half of the decade turning themselves into the greatest rock’n’roll band in the world. Not even the onslaught of punk could see them fail to sell out Knebworth on two weekends running in 1979. But they had a long way to fall, and a series of bad-luck events saw the Led Zeppelin empire crumble. ...
With John Bonham gone the three remaining members of Led Zeppelin retreated into their own worlds. Ever the quiet one, John Paul Jones went back to working behind the scenes, mostly recording soundtracks or producing for other artists, before releasing his first solo album in 1999. Jimmy Page turned up intermittently, mostly as part of a collaborative ...
1960 Jimmy Page: First-Ever Serious ‘Gig’ Aged just 16, Jimmy Page – whose first guitar was a steel-stringed Spanish guitar on which he learnt to play skiffle, before quickly moving on to rock’n’roll and the electric guitar – played his first ever serious ‘gig’. Though he had been in local bands before, playing for British poet Royston Ellis ...
January The Yardbirds’ US Tour With Jeff Beck gone and Peter Grant now in the picture, Page had another ‘more professional’ ally with an active interest in The Yardbirds. It wouldn’t be long before the group disbanded. Before that, however, Grant organized another tour of the US, this time hiring a young tour manager, Richard Cole. ...
March Ireland And UK Tour For their Ireland and UK shows, Led Zeppelin played tiny venues in a ‘back to the clubs’-style tour. Venues such as London’s The Marquee and the Bath Pavilion had probably never seen such a group in its prime, but Led Zeppelin must have felt that they could use their more acoustic-based material to reconnect ...
March Presence It had to happen sometime. Perhaps it was a combination of the stress and tension following Plant’s car crash and his wife’s near-death; the fact that the band knew they should have been on the road; the depression of remaining in a tax exile that prevented them from going home; or that it was recorded and mixed in just ...
April The Honeydrippers Never one to be kept away from his passion for long, in the months following John Bonham’s death Robert Plant found himself playing 1950s rock’n’roll and R&B on the Northern club circuit with covers band The Honeydrippers. This stint as an anonymous (to the audience, that is) singer gave Plant the chance to return to his ...
January Rolling Stone Slates Led Zeppelin Despite great radio airplay, the US print media were lukewarm towards Led Zeppelin’s self-titled debut. In an advance review, Rolling Stone magazine regarded Led Zeppelin as little more than ‘an excellent guitarist … a competent rhythm section and a pretty soul belter who can do a good spade imitation’. Perhaps most galling for ...
January Lucifer Rising It’s fitting that, when one of cinema’s most-noted avant-garde directors decided to make a movie reflecting his own interest in Satanism, he should ask the world’s most-famous occultist to provide the soundtrack. Thus film maker Kenneth Anger asked Jimmy Page to provide the soundtrack to his new film, Lucifer Rising. Seemingly a match made in ...
April–July US Tour If, by 1977, punk had seemingly launched itself into the music scene and wiped away all that went before (or so it was believed at the time), Led Zeppelin wouldn’t have noticed. Their eleventh US tour was also their first in two years and their first since Plant’s horrendous car crash. They could have played hour-long ...
February Death Wish 2 The first sign of life from Jimmy Page since Led Zeppelin announced their split was his soundtrack for Michael Winner’s Death Wish sequel, Death Wish 2. The most interesting thing about this silver-screen tale of one man’s revenge was Page’s atmospheric soundtrack that heightened the tension of the more violent, suspense-filled parts of the film. ...
January UK Tour Lasting only a month, the most defining factor of Led Zeppelin’s January 1970 UK tour would be the lack of support act. Only the biggest bands in the world could go on stage without a warm-up act preceding them, but Led Zeppelin had to drop something in order to stop the curfew problems their two-hour-plus shows ...
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David Bowie
Fantastic new, unofficial biography covers
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sweep of incredible photographs.