Led Zeppelin (Official Thread)

Musikwala

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I like the acoustic side of III a lot - Gallows Pole has tension, energy and an excellent arrangement (I also love it when Plant screams 'hangman, hangman'), That's The Way and especially Tangerine are compositions of beauty, with the former also possessing some moving lyrics and Bron Y Aur Stomp is a good fun song. I wasn't too keen on Hats Off To (Roy) Harper when I first heard it but it has grown on me.

Agree with everything here except that I absolutely love Hats Off To Roy Harper! Love that blues sound!

And totally agreed on "I also love it when Plant screams 'hangman, hangman'" :heheh:

Tangerine and That's The Way are some of the most gorgeous songs they have ever written along with maybe Rain Song. Tangerine is simply exquisite!
 

Hurdy Gurdy Man

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I know that Led Zeppelin never really considered themselves a true heavy metal or hard rock band because they did indeed experiment many times with other different musical textures.As a matter of fact,they kind of discount themselves a bit for being one of the bands responsible for heavy metal.I tend to agree here.Definitely they did the "hard rock" thing,but I can't think too much that was downright true heavy metal.I think what happened was they were an influence on metal by inspiring people to turn to amps up just a bit louder and add more solos and heavy drum bits.Zep was certainly one of heavy metal's main ingredients,but to the best of my knowledge,they never actually played a hell of a lot of what can be considered pieces of the genre.As a matter of fact,by the time of "In Through The Out Door",the band's sound had softened a bit,which is why it is many peoples' choice for worst in the catalog as everyone had come to expect more forceful and inspired efforts.In earlier days,even when doing something light like say "Rain Song",they delivered with a great degree of emotional depth.On the other hand,"All Of My Love" from "Out Door" sounded like something that could have been a lot of people,while I found the nearly Bilboard top ten single
"Fool In The Rain" to be a bit on the pedestrian side of things,a far cry from the first US 45 smash "Whole Lotta Love" with its riveting opening riff and very much engaging sexually suggestive lyrics and ******** sounding moans..........
 

gcczep

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Plant Here and There...

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Robert Plant on His New Album and Favorite Supermarket
By Lane Brown

It’s been 45 years since Robert Plant made his recording debut with Led Zeppelin, though you’d never guess that from his new solo album, Lullabye ... and the Ceaseless Roar, on which his vocal cords still seem to be in mint condition. “I think the more I sing, the better my voice gets,” says Plant, who recorded Lullabye with his new band, the Sensational Space Shifters, after road-testing the material — Zeppelin-esque rock, occasionally drawing on Celtic and African influences — for the past couple years.

Most of the other artists who have been at this for 40-plus years seem to have run out of gas. What is it that you’re doing right, and why have the other guys lost it?
Well that’s a really provocative question, young man, and you must go stand on the naughty step. I don’t think anybody’s lost it. It’s the company you keep. The company I keep is very empowered, humorous, creative, and energetic, and there’s an enjoyment in stretching the parameters of what we do. We’ve been on the road for a year, just playing around the planet, which gave us the opportunity to be quite selective about the ideas that we pursued [on this album].

Do you still enjoy touring?
Oh, yeah, I wouldn’t do six weeks of festivals in Europe if I didn’t like it. I’m coming to the greater New York area soon, actually. The Capitol Theater [in Port Chester, on September 25], and then the Brooklyn Academy of Music [on September 27 and 28]. I love touring — especially now that we have Juldeh Camara, our West African guy in the band. He’s very humorous, very comical. It’s all confusing when he keeps calling me “uncle.” A term of endearment, apparently.

You’ve said the song “Turn It Up” was inspired by taking long drives through the American South.
I’ve been taking drives like that for years. As a kid in England, I was really drawn to the music of Mississippi. I went on various pilgrimages as the years went by, just to see where my heroes came from. But Mississippi today has got nothing at all to do with the vibe of the musical Mississippi of the ‘30s and the ‘40s. Culturally and socially, I’m sure it’s just a very pale reflection of what it might have been. So I was looking for ghosts, to be honest. I was listening to AM radio, which is riveting. If you ever want to lose faith in life, be very careful which station you tune into down there. There are so many Americas, and I didn’t really know which America I was in.

The album opens and closes with your versions of “Little Maggie,” a Stanley Brothers song from the '40s. You recorded a version with Alison Krauss for 2007’s Raising Sand. Why didn’t it make that album?
It was dreadful. It helped cement the friendship that Alison and I share, but it was very funny and very bad and very wrong. I tried to sing it in a traditional, Smokey Mountain Tennessee way, a yee-haw way. So Alison had to pick herself up off the floor because she was laughing hysterically. Then we moved on. But I didn’t forget the song, and we tried it again for this album. The British having a crack at it — there’s something quite ironic about that, but it did work.

Earlier this year, Led Zeppelin’s catalog went up on Spotify. Does it bother you that those albums, with all their warmth and dynamic range, are being listened to in cold, compressed streaming audio?
Yeah, it does. I don’t champion too many things, but I do champion the sound of music. It’s a hell of a compromise. For example, with Lullabye ... and the Ceaseless Roar — never mind Zeppelin — I spent a lot of making sure the vinyl sounds really good, so people have that option. But it is slightly heartbreaking to think that anything can be dismissed sonically and put to the sword by the confines digitalized, computerized sound reproduction. It’s hell.

I see that you have a Twitter account. Is that really you Tweeting?
Sometimes. If it’s a little bit oblique, or about something you wouldn’t expect, then I guess it must be me. I’ll call [my team] saying, “Put this up! Put that up!” At other times, it’s just them keeping people up to speed on what’s going on.

You recently moved back to England after a couple years in Austin, Texas. What was it like living there?
I was very fortunate to enjoy great friendships in Austin, which I sadly miss. I found their hospitality and charm in Austin second to none. But I was yearning for a musical project. My work with American musicians has faltered and come to a natural, suitable finale. My family was saying, “Where has he gone?” And I was thinking, Where have I gone? I’d gone to sea. So I had to come back.

I have a friend in Austin who said he saw you shopping at Whole Foods. Did that actually happen?
No, no, no, I was working at Whole Foods [laughs]. You know, Whole Foods is more of a dating agency than a shop. If you’re gonna go shopping for food in Austin, go to Fiesta, the supermarket with a difference. You can get a pork enchilada there whilst picking up some British tomato ketchup and some teabags, and you can do the whole transaction in Spanish.
 

Nololob

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...and just announced (few hours ago).



You can't beat the production of this, so I'll stick to my German press from the 70s.
 

Phil B.

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Thanks for posting this interview!

I have a friend in Austin who said he saw you shopping at Whole Foods. Did that actually happen?
No, no, no, I was working at Whole Foods [laughs]. You know, Whole Foods is more of a dating agency than a shop. If you’re gonna go shopping for food in Austin, go to Fiesta, the supermarket with a difference. You can get a pork enchilada there whilst picking up some British tomato ketchup and some teabags, and you can do the whole transaction in Spanish.

Fiesta is a great multi-national supermarket! Been there many times.
 

gcczep

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Yardies to Zep

Jimmy Page explores his transition from the Yardbirds to Led Zeppelin: ‘I was really keen to put a band together’



by: Something Else 10/18/14

Jimmy Page says Led Zeppelin initially took more than just the Yardbirds’ name. They used the same template for success, following a path into American radio and rock clubs on their way to hall of fame-worthy success.
“It was out of the ashes of the Yardbirds,” Page tells BBC Radio’s Chris Evans. “The Yardbirds decided to fold. There were four Yardbirds at the time. There had been five before with Jeff [Beck], but Jeff had left the band. They kept having these guitarists who were leaving. Eric Clapton had been there, as well, prior to that. The thing is, we were doing the underground circuit over there — and then they had FM radio, which was playing more sort of extensive tracks than the AM, which was a single format. So, I’d really gotten used to all of this, and I was really keen to put a band together.”

Page, who’d been with the Yardbirds since 1966, collected a trio of like-minded new collaborators in John Bonham, John Paul Jones and Robert Plant, with an eye on breaking into the U.S. marketplace. The New Yardbirds, as Led Zeppelin was briefly known, all but ignored their native UK at first.

“I knew what we were doing in the Yardbirds was really, really good — and nobody over here knew what we were doing,” Page says. “It was clear that the ideas I had been coming up with in the Yardbirds — they were good musicians but we were taking it on even further. We had the opportunity to come up with something which was going to be groundbreaking — which is what happened, really.”



And it happened in the blink of an eye, something Page still marvels over.

“What you have to understand is, the phenomenon of it is, there’s the Yardbirds in July of ’68,” Page adds, “and then there isn’t. They all break up. And then by the end of that year, Led Zeppelin have got an album, and they’re already on the verge of breaking America. By the end of January of the following year, it’s already done.”
 

Hurdy Gurdy Man

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Mr. Page,much like Paul McCartney and Elton John among others,always knew EXACTLY what he wanted to do next musically as well as EXACTLY they way he wanted it done.He certainly performed masterfully in putting together an obviously top notch band.To add credence to my claim that he wanted things done a certain way,he even took the role of producer for Led Zep.Most of today's bigger bands seem to just kind of meander around musically and don't seem to have very much to say.This theory may exclude some of the alternative outfits,where I think is where you have to go to find modern music with some reasonably measurable sense of direction and purpose.I just recently heard Page was forming a new band at the rather "ripe" age of 70.Maybe not another Led Zeppelin,but I'm quite sure the project will yield some worthwhile results.................
 

Radagast

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THE 70's BAND

One of my top 5 bands of all time. :bow:

I smoked, joked, drank, partied, and (yes) cried listening to Led Zeppelin .

Their song "Kashmir" is my all time favorite and will be played for me one day at my own funeral. John Bonham plays drums in Heavens All Star Rock Band !

:bow::bow::bow::bow::bow::bow:
 

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