Nobody who has heard Led Zeppelin would ever need their memory jogged. As somebody once said of the band’s music: ‘Hoary blues motifs were pumped up to enormous proportions, clubbed senseless by Bonham’s colossal wallop, panicked to distraction by Page’s crazed air-raid riffs, pummelled by Jones’s slum-demolishing bass-lines, and strangled by Plant’s lascivious shrieks of lust.’ ...
The last of the triumvirate of guitar legends who played with The Yardbirds, Jimmy Page became an icon of rock guitarists in the 1970s with Led Zeppelin. Elements of his playing style have been copied to the point of cliché in the years since Led Zeppelin dominated the rock world, but as the originator, Page developed the heavy-metal ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1968–80) In 1968, after all the original members had left the Yardbirds, guitarist Jimmy Page had custody of the band’s name and contracts. John Paul Jones, who had produced some of Page’s side work, joined on bass, and Page hired singer Robert Plant away from Hobbstweedle. Drummer John Bonham, a friend of ...
The biggest heavy metal band of the 1970s, Led Zeppelin left an indelible mark that is still felt a quarter of a century later. The band was put together in London in 1968 by guitarist Jimmy Page (born James Patrick Page, 9 January 1944), singer Robert Plant (born 20 August 1948), bassist John Paul Jones (born John Baldwin, ...
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 ...
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 ...
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. ...
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 ...
Back in 1966, who would have thought that 43 years later Pink Floyd would be known around the world as one of the most musically, artistically and commercially successful bands in the world ? Roger ‘Syd’ Barrett (1946–2006), Roger Waters (b. 1943), Nick Mason (b. 1944) and Richard Wright (1943–2008) were an underground band whose experimental un-tethering of songs ...
Despite legal ammunition being expended by Roger Waters in an effort to cease Pink Floyd operating without him, Dave Gilmour was to lead the band to commercial heights equal to Floyd’s mid-1970s peak. Any worries about the strength of new Pink Floyd material undiluted by Waters was unfounded when A Momentary Lapse Of Reason (1987) topped the charts on both ...
The period 1969–76 was highly collaborative, with all four members of Floyd making a contribution to the process of writing musical material or coaxing ideas to fruition in extended studio sessions or during live performances. Roger Waters had, though, emerged as the prime lyricist in the band and his passionate nature and strongly held convictions guided both his ...
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 ...
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. ...
AUTHORITATIVE
An extensive music information resource, bringing together the talents and expertise of a wide range of editors and musicologists, including Stanley Sadie, Charles Wilson, Paul Du Noyer, Tony Byworth, Bob Allen, Howard Mandel, Cliff Douse, William Schafer, John Wilson...
CURATED
Classical, Rock, Blues, Jazz, Country and more. Flame Tree has been making encyclopaedias and guides about music for over 20 years. Now Flame Tree Pro brings together a huge canon of carefully curated information on genres, styles, artists and instruments. It's a perfect tool for study, and entertaining too, a great companion to our music books.
David Bowie
Fantastic new, unofficial biography covers
his life, music, art and movies, with a
sweep of incredible photographs.