From: tiverson@lynx.dac.northeastern.edu (Thor Iverson)
Subject: Re: Led Zep
Organization: Northeastern University, Boston, MA. 02115, USA
Distribution: na
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 02:49:08 GMT

In article <1992Nov22.025902.15618@leland.Stanford.EDU> tullfan@leland.Stanford.EDU (Richard Thompson) writes:

>(i imagine i will recieve a few flames for this post, butcha won't change
>my mind...i just think they are an overrated band... )

I'll try to resist the urge to flame you, and just correct a few things.
But a refusal to change your mind no matter what happens is kinda sad,
don't you think?

> they got big on stuff they stole from all the people they jammed with

Well, first of all, you don't quite have the story right.  The songs that
they "stole" were not from people they jammed with.  Here's a partial
list, in case there's any confusion:

"Whole Lotta Love"--from "You Need Love"
"You Shook Me" and "I Can't Quit You Baby"--blues standards
"The Lemon Song"--from "Killing Floor," another blues standard
"Dazed & Confused"--from Jake Holmes
"Black Mountain Side"--Celtic folk standard, but associated with Pentangle

That's pretty much it.  Not a whole lotta theft there, huh?  And before
you bring up "Boogie With Stu," or "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You," remember
that they gave credit for those covers.  Also, "Traveling Riverside Blues,"
even though they gave credit to Robert Johnson for it, bears absolutely
no resemblance to the original in a musical sense, and only partial
resemblance in a lyrical sense.  No member of Zeppelin ever jammed with
Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, Jake Holmes, or Bert Jansch.

Theft of blues standards ("Whole Lotta Love," for instance) is a false
concept anyway, becuase the songs that, say, Muddy Waters claimed writing
credit for were only his compositions in the most tenuous sense.  He,
like all real blues artists, stole (it used to be called built on) riffs
and lyrics from innumerable artists to create his own songs, and no one
ever sued him claiming copyright infringement.

So, the only _uncredited_ theft was of Jake Holmes' "Dazed & Confused,"
and even that wasn't stolen from Holmes by Zeppelin, but by the Page-led
Yardbirds, who's version Zeppelin appropriated.

>Now Yes, Tull, King Crimson, SuperTramp, and Procol Harum on the other hand...

Hmmm.  If you listen to classical music, you'll know how original Procol
Harum was.  As for Yes--they freely appropriated other bands' material
in their first few albums as well, right up to borrowing "Wurm" from
Bodast's "Nether Street."  It always takes a band a while to find its
own voice, but only Zeppelin seems to get tagged with this as a _bad_
thing.

> and they constantly screwed up in their attempts at playing live.

What have you seen/heard?  Live Aid, the Atlantic 40th, and _The Song
Remains The Same_, right?  No one, especially not the band, considers
any of those representative of Zeppelin at even mediocre form.  Get
someone to lend you a copy of one of their 1975 Earl's Court performances,
for instance, or anything from that tour, and I believe you'll get
a slightly different idea of what Zeppelin was like on stage.  Don't
take my word for it, listen to those bootlegs and find out for yourself.

Any real Zeppelin fan will admit the 1980 Tour Over Europe was a bit
shaky, and the 1977 tour was only incredible half the time.  But any
band that took as many chances on stage as Zeppelin did is allowed some
slack in this area.  The effects of drug abuse were, of course, mostly
to blame for Page's inconsistency, but listen to concerts from when he
wasn't whacked out on heroin and you'll notice a distinct difference.
That is, anything 1975 or before, or, to prove he can still play, any
concerts from the _Outrider_ tour.  Again, don't take my word for it,
listen for yourself.

> I think the primary thing behind zep was image and producing.

Well, Page (and later Jones) were responsible for the production, so
the band gets credit for that.  As for image--they were often accused
of hype in their early days, so much so that they released an album
without any identifying marks whatsoever (the fourth one, in case you
didn't know) and it _still_ sold over 10 million copies.  Image is a
self-fulfilling thing--by the time Zeppelin was the biggest band in the
world (and they _were_, out-drawing the Stones, out-selling the Beatles,
etc.), anything they did would become part of their image.  Not putting
their name on albums just furthered the image.  Long layoffs between
tours and albums furthered the image.  Denying rumours in the press
made the rumours seem truer.  It's hard to escape this kind of thing,
and the band after about 1972 had almost no say in their image.  But
think about it for a minute--the press loathed them, trashing their
music and their albums at every turn, and then ignoring them (and their
fans, who they also routinely insulted) while they were on tour.  Every
debauchery which could be dreamed up was reported (to be sure, some of
the stories were true).  Hardly sounds like a well-oiled image machine
at work, does it?  Meanwhile, Mick Jagger could consort with jailbait
and he was considered the prince of society.  Go figure.

> they are the elvis of hard rock.

...which would probably make them proud to hear.  Everyone remembers
the fat Vegas Elvis, but they seem to ignore the musician Elvis was
that made him "ELVIS" in the 50's.  Of course, Elvis didn't invent
rock and roll, and Zeppelin didn't invent heavy metal, either.  But
did they do it better than their predecessors?  That's for the individual
to decide, but the people seem to have spoken in both cases.

>they certainly aren't the musical gods that many of
>my friends make them out to be.

I stopped defining musical godhood by my own opinion a while ago.  I
really can't objectively judge someone I really enjoy, so I look to
the responses of other musicians for guidance.  When musician after
musician mention certain people as a major influence or a favorite
artist, I feel they're worth checking out.  The members of Zeppelin
certainly fit into that category.

Look I'm not out to change your mind (really!), only to correct some
false assumptions.  You can hate Zeppelin and their music as much
as you want, and it doesn't really matter any more than what is probably
our mutual dislike for the New Kids.  But I only hope you would judge
them on factual information, not merely the snippets of what Zeppelin
really was that the mass media allows to trickle through.

>rich.

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* "You can't have something for nothing. * Thor Iverson                       *
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