Tony’s “Amazing Led Zeppelin Experiment”

Before I point out that we're starting to crap on the thread, I'd like to say how much I disagree with everything you said.

 

Er ... Have you read Mendelsohn's review of II? Yeah, it starts off the way you say. But here's the first paragraph:

Etc., etc., in the same acidly sarcastic vein. Actually, I think that's the most entertaining review Rolling Stone's ever run.

His review of the first album is still at the magazine's site, by the way, ironic racial epithets notwithstanding. It's not so easy to find, though, since the cowards who run the site have put up a fawning Greg Kot reappraisal in a more prominent place.

I actually tried an experiment very like Tony Caldwell's a couple of years back. I'd heard tons of Led Zeppelin back in junior high, of course, and loathed it, but I decided to give them another chance. I borrowed the first four albums from a friend and listened to them two or three times each. (It actually took me four tries to make it through Led Zeppelin III — I kept drifting off to sleep in the middle of "Since I've Been Loving You.") They were more or less as I remembered — Bonham's tedious fap fap fap drumming still drives me nuts, and Plant still sounds like a refugee from Alvin and the Chipmunks. Their lyrics are swill. Page is pretty consistently great, but he can't carry the band by himself.

Best of luck with your experiment, Tony — I hope it works out for you. Lots of very intelligent people enjoy this group, some of whom make music that I love. As for me, that one round of clinical trials was enough, and I'm not going back to Led Zeppelin again.

 

I got into Zep before I knew much about music. I was looking for a song I heard on the radio but didn't know the name of (of course the non-album track "Hey Hey What Can I do"). Bought II, song wasn't on there but I loved them all except the "Lemon Song". Kept buying albums and loved most of the tracks but couldn't find the song I was looking for. 8 of the best mistakes I ever made.

 

Well, on the first album, you have "I Just Want To Make Love To You" in a transformative version that even Muddy said he liked, and "Mona", which impressed Bo Diddley in that Brian Jones actually figured out Bo's sound.

On 12X5, you have "Around and Around", which I defy any toe to not tap to, and "Confessin' the Blues", which may not be Chuck Berry, but has an impressively sassy Mick vocal and the guitars.

On "Now", you have "Down Home Girl", which is creepy and eldritch and entirely past any other Brit blues, and "Down The Road Apiece", which, as Mr. Berry himself said, swings.

That's just the highlights. My point being, yeah, they were white boys playing the blues, but they also did inventive original arrangements which managed to attract the attention and approval of the very artists who you say they can't hold a candle to. Although it would be asinine to say that they improved on the originals, it is actually equally asinine (IMO) to suggest that their goal was to replicate the records of their idols. I think they were consciously trying to take their influences and make something unique in their context, which was UK pop music. And in that they succeeded famously.

 

I read both of the RS reviews and cannot find any racial epithets...

What are you guys referring to?

 

"Down Home Girl"

"And every time I kiss you girl,
it tastes like Pork 'n Beans..."

Brilliant!

(Though they prolly didn't write this one... )

 

They didn't. But no other British band would have had the goolies to cover that one!

 

Keep in mind that many teenagers today are going through the same process of discovering Led Zeppelin.

I was in my late teens when LZ I and II were released. I wish I could do it all over again.

 

Whenever I read that someone is discovering Zeppelin or whoever from the 60's or 70's, I always like to see their age. Anyone under 40 wasn't born yet to have heard them, so it's fun to listen to their initial descriptions.

Tony, I'm not sure how old you are, but anyone who was alive and old enough to buy the albums back then, I chalk it up to personal preferences and yes, people can still be saved!

It was one of the best things in the world (in between a Stones, or Tull, or Yes, or many other bands that were at their height) when the next Zep album came out. Placing it gently on the turntable and listening to the new songs was amazing! How's that for an old guy talking about the good old days?! Enjoy is all I can say!

 

I don't wish that. I wish something just as exciting would come out now.

 

Second-last word of the first sentence in the review of Zeppelin I. Since Mendelsohn is scathing elsewhere about Plant's attempts to sound black, it's hard to read it literally — I take it more as satirising the perceived attitude of the UK music establishment and/or Plant himself.

 

Hey, these guys LOVED (and DO love the blues) - they named their band
after a Muddy Waters song! - But they come nowhere close to the originals
- sorry.

 

Didn't say that they did. I explained that in a subsequent post.

 

I didnt say the albums were meritless or full of trash, some of the songs you mention I do like, like Down The Road Apiece. But just because the stuff impressed Bo Diddley or Muddy or Chuck doesn't mean much to me. In my opinion only, there's lots of filler and bad covers on there - Under The Boardwalk, Now I Have A Witness, Mercy Mercy, the unconvincing singing on Pain In My Heart... If I only heard those first three albums, I would not understand why there would ever be a Stones / Beatles debate. It's amazing to me that their singles are pretty great, and their first few albums were not.

 

Anyway....back to LED ZEPPELIN!

 

Oh well. Good enough for Muddy, not good enough for you.

 

Lucky for the Stones, not all the Bluesmen were so accepting of these
English boys doin' their stuff. I recall reading what Sonny Boy Williamson
had to say after jamming with the Yardbirds, something like - these boys
wanna play the blues so bad - and they do play them bad. Old Sonny Boy
sure did'nt mince any words.

 

"how many more times" and "good times bad times" have some of the best rock drumming i've heard.

 

You want to hear Bonhams drums, track down a "RL" Led Zeppelin II -
the guy was really some powerful player.

 

That guy wasn't even the original Sonny Boy Williamson. Some have uncharitably called him "an imposter." I'd take Muddy Waters' opinion over his any day.

Anyway, the original hi-jack was about the Stones, not the YB's. I think the Stones did a lot better job thatn the YB's, although I like both bands a great deal.

 

The Led Zeppelin catalog was so beaten to death on FM radio, I actually stopped playing my LP's for about a decade (roughly 1980-1990). I only bought a couple of them on CD.

Derek

 

Yeah, he was Sonny Boy "II" and outside of Little Walter and a few others,
probably the beat harp player there ever was. I like Muddy, and was lucky to
see him in '77 at a small club (John Lee Hooker opened for him!) - and I got his autograph too.

 

Hijack on the hijack: I don't see how Sonny Boy's opinion is less respectable because he took someone else's name...

 

So I suppose that if Neil Innes rebaptized himself "John Lennon" in 1981, that wouldn't cause a credibility problem for you?

In all candor, it probably doesn't affect the value of his asessment of the Yardbird's playing, but the original discussion was about the Stones, and the fact that no less than Muddy Waters expressed pleasure at the Stones' cover of "I Just Want To Make Love To You." I thought that was significant. The other poster apparently thought that was insignificant, and it was more significant that "Sonny Boy Williamson" thought that the Yardbirds sucked.

Frankly, I'd still rather have Muddy patting my head than SBWII.

 

Well its coming back around to Zep really - Sonny Boy was probably a bigger
influence on them than Muddy.