Every few years I rewatch this video and it's pretty much always the same. Or, well, the video's always exactly the same, but my reaction is pretty much always the same. Which is that with Steve Winwood on keyboards, Bill Wyman on bass and Simon Phillips on drums, this instrumental version of "Stairway" should be phenomenal.
But, sadly, Jimmy Page was deep in the throes of his heroin addiction and his playing—which even at his most incendiary and risk-taking best was rarely precise live, to put it mildly—is shockingly sloppy. Just listen and you'll hear fumbled notes, slurred chords, terrible timing, and some embarrassing intonation.
What's more, the recording itself isn't always as clear as would be ideal. Or, perhaps, given that Jimmy wasn't at his finest here, maybe that's not the end of the world. Still, a bit of clarity would have been nice, and having the audio properly synched with the video would definitely be a plus.
And yet. And yet when Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck come in at the end of the solo, it can't help but become nearly glorious, as Beck plays and plays with the last phrases of Jimmy's famous solo over and over on his Tele, and Clapton plays Robert Plant's original vocal line on his Strat. In some ways, it makes it all the sadder how much greater this could have and should have been. On the other hand, we get to see Clapton, Beck and Page, all three of the Yardbirds famous lead guitarists, playing the most famous song any of them ever wrote, and even at sub-optimal conditions, that's pretty damn cool.
Restraint. Knowing when to lay out. Knowing what not to play. As Miles Davis famously advised John Coltrane, sometimes it’s best to just “take the horn out of your mouth.”
Which brings us to, incongruously, John Bonham.
Bonzo. Led Zeppelin’s monster drummer. The man who, more than any other, raised the bar on what it meant to be a rock and roll drummer. Of his peers and predecessors, only Keith Moon was as influential (although his stock has dropped precipitously since his death, while Bonham’s has, if anything, continued to rise) and only Ginger Baker as technically advanced. Bonham’s technique, his style, his sheer overwhelming volume and speed and most of all power, were mindblowing at the time and, perhaps because of his remarkable influence continuing to this day, don’t sound dated.
From the first very, he amazed. Literally: the first track off their first album has Bonham doing things with the bass drum never before heard in rock and roll. Check out the bass drum triplets he starts playing about five seconds in here—since you’re probably listening on little computer speakers it might be a bit hard to pick up, but for drummers at the time, what he was doing with the bass drum was astonishing.
"Good Times, Bad Times" outro
Later he, more than any other drummer, would go on to popularize that bane of 70s concert going experiences, the interminable drum solo. Sure, he was a star and a stud…but really? 30 minutes for a drum solo? That’s how long the entire Beatles concert at Shea Stadium was. Even the great Bonzo couldn’t make a solo of that length transcendent.
But when you have a drummer as powerful and inventive and plain musical as Bonham, you overlook such trivialities. (Also, you head for the beer stands.) I mean, you could go through any Led Zeppelin album and find who knows how many amazing Bonham moments. The way he takes songs like “Misty Mountain Hop” or “The Song Remains the Same” or “Trampled Under Foot” or “Kashmir” or “Achilles Last Stand” which are already moving forward like a crazed elephant and somehow manages to shove things up a few notches is just unsurpassed. But just check out these intros:
"Rock and Roll" intro
"The Crunge" intro
"D'yer Mak'er" intro
"When the Levee Breaks" intro
There's little there that's terribly difficult—but that's one of the points. Simplicity is often best and usually more difficult. And play any or all of those for any serious rock fan who grew up in the 70s or 80s and probably even later and they’ll be able to tell you the name of the song those come from, sing the riff that’s just about to kick in and likely even pinpoint where each song belongs on each album. How many other good drummers have that many signature moments in their careers? ‘cuz those four examples? Are just from two albums. Crazy.
Which brings us, in my meandering way, to “Ramble On.” Off their second album, the song’s notable for several things: it’s perhaps the earliest rock and roll song with Tolkien allusions—especially ironical, given that making Lord of the Ring references is shorthand for mocking geeky prog rock groups, while Led Zeppelin is generally the coolest of the cool when it comes to rock bands, and yet they’re by far the most prominent offenders. It’s good to be the king.
Then there’s lovely bass playing by Led Zeppelin’s secret weapon, John Paul Jones, contributing the most melodic, catchiest element of the music, as well as the odd percussive sound during the verses, Bonham tapping on something which has never been conclusively identified.
And finally we have the point of all this, which is Bonham’s playing. Check it:
"Ramble On"
Notice how tasteful and tasty his playing is? That five note drum riff he plays each time his drums enter? The way he plays half a measure, then pulls his snare out for the next half measure, filling the space with a quartet of syncopated bass drum kicks, and then comes back in on the snare double time for a measure. And then he does the whole pattern again. Chorus over, he again lays out for the verses.
When it comes to the brief instrumental solo section he plays it straight, with a nice smattering of syncopated semi-ghosted notes on the snare before a tiny fill leads into him dropping out for the final verse. Another few runs through the chorus and we’re out.
See what he did there? Or rather what he didn’t do? Four and a half minutes and the world’s greatest rock and roll drummer, the spiritual (if not literal) inspiration for the muppet drummer Animal, the most notorious wildman in the most notorious rock and roll band of wildmen, doesn’t even really play a single drum fill. Instead he simply sticks (no pun intended) to his pre-composed drum part. That is, to quote Luke Skywalker, improbable. And yet there 'tis.
It’s this side of Bonham which often gets overlooked in the justly deserved praise for his power. It’s the fact that Bonham wasn’t just an insanely powerful drummer—although he most certainly was that. But he was also a monster musician sharing an unlikely philosophy with the likes of Steve Cropper, Paul McCartney and Miles Davis: just because you can play something, it doesn’t mean you should.
Congrats to The Mighty Zep for their big win in court today. (A case they probably should have lost, but I'm glad they didn't.)
That's maybe the single best live performance I've ever heard from Zeppelin, post-1970, incidentally. Which, it occurs to me, is because Jimmy Page is so spot on, and for the most part Page's playing was what generally made the difference between great LZ and incredibly sloppy LZ.
I think the mighty Zep, despite—or perhaps because of—their sometimes cartoonishly macho image, benefits more from being covered by the opposite gender than maybe any other artist. As is standard for most Led Zeppelin, it's less about the lyrical content than the musical, and the way the change in timbre gives a surprisingly potent additional boost to an otherwise straightforward cover.
Is it the truly staggering lineup of musicians, with the likes of Dave Edmunds, Billy Bremner and Pete Townshend on guitars, Paul McCartney, Bruce Thomas, Ronnie Lane and John Paul Jones on bass and Kenney Jones and John Bonham on drums? Is it McCartney's outstanding vocal turn? Is it perhaps one of the very few sightings ever of Robert Plant on guitar? (That's right, you heard me: Robert Plant. Playing. Guitar. Led Zeppelin is here as a power trio and the guitarist isn't Jimmy Page.)
It is none of those. No, it is the utterly transcendent performance of a presumably completely hammered Townshend as he leeringly approaches McCartney at 1:27, like a drunken Hannibal Lector ogling a fresh meal, while Macca appears significantly more amused than Clarice Starling ever was. Townshend then drifts off to rip into a typically awesome solo...at first, before seeming to lose the key and getting blessedly mixed out. Now that's what I call charity.
You're a kid, a big music fan, and you've heard there's a band putting on a show for a television program and you can go watch. Maybe you've heard of the band, maybe you haven't—their debut album was only released about two months earlier, and this is the first time they'll ever be on TV—but what the hell, right? Might as well go. Nothing else do to, and the price is right.
So you all just file in, as the cameras are already rolling, and sit down in front of the band, that are themselves just sorta milling around, watching you watching them.
And then. This happens.
The guitarist hits a chord and then starts semi-casually strumming, soon joined by a bassist who's casually bringing it, and a drummer who keeps time on his hi-hat before coming in full. The singer's very first syllable, "hey," is in a low register, nothing impressive, before swooping upwards a few octaves for the following word—"girl," of course.
The band's good. They're really good. They're loud and they're tight. But they're just warming up.
Come the solo and suddenly you're watching a guy that just may be, on this night, the second greatest rock and roll guitarist in the world.
The band goes to an expected, and unexpectedly funky, half-time, before bringing the tempo back up to bring it all home.
Seconds later, the bassist starts a slinky bassline, to which the guitarist adds some strange, spooky harmonics and bends, and the singer begins moaning his lyrics. Then the drummer decides he's going to prove that, great as the guitarist is—and he is—he's not even the greatest master of his instrument in the band, and starts unleashing fills the likes of which you've heard before, for the fairly simple reason that no drummer in rock and roll has every played quite like this before, combining the right foot with both hands unlike anyone else ever, as speeds it's impossible to believe.
Just imagine if you knew the bassist might be better than both of them.
...what in the hell? A violin bow? Who are these guys?
They come out of it all and the drummer seems to be trying to beat his drums through the studio floor and the singer's lost any trepidation he might have had, howling like a banshee and the entire band's locked into each other and you're just staggered.
And the show's only a little over a third of a way through.
You watch this and with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, it's absolutely no surprise they went on to become the biggest band in the world for 10 years.
When DT and I did our Top 50 Beatles Songs, our most concise write-up was for "Helter Skelter." We wrote, in its entirety: "In which the Beatles invent grunge." It's a funny line, and a catchy one. And the fact that it's true doesn't hurt.
One of the interesting things about getting old is being able to actually witness trends. And one of the things I've noticed is fewer and fewer music fans seem to realize just what a rock and roller Paul McCartney is. He's well past the Wings period—and that, too, seems almost forgotten by rock fans these days, actually—and beloved, not just for his work with the Beatles, but as an elder statesman still bringing the goods live.
But—pace John Fogerty—Paul was the world's greatest Little Richard student and, with "Long Tally Sally," perhaps the only artist ever to cover one of Little Richard's greatest hits and actually top it. And when Paul decided he wasn't going to let any Who song claim the mantle of "heaviest rock song ever," he was a man on a mission. And damn if he and the lads didn't succeed.
But, as I say, even as music fans know the song "Helter Skelter" inside and out, it feels like the importance of it, and the sheer audacity, sometimes gets missed. Which is why pairing McCartney the vocalist (as well as, in places, Lennon the bassist and Harrison the guitarist) with the unquestioned all-time hard rock kings is a welcome corrective. Any vocalist replacing the ingrained-in-the-DNA vocals of Robert Plant has to be able to bring the goods.
The mind is an odd thing. How many times have I heard each of these songs without hearing the connection between them?
The other night, I was hit with the urge to put this on one (along with the out-of-the-blue suspicion that my daughters would love it instantly—I was right).
The moment the drums kicked in, I started wondering what it was reminding me of. The vocals added to the mystery. But once the chorus kicked in, I got it.
Because I think of Beck as being part of the whole alternative rock scene with his emphasis on irony and collage, the incredibly obvious comparison to Led Zeppelin never struck me before, but both are musical omnivores whose deepest, most lasting bedrock loves are the blues. Layer some hip-hop beats, or Joni Mitchell-inspired acoustic guitar over that foundation, and the results can be gloriously transformative, bringing something new to the table while retaining the utmost reverence for those that came before.
You can't write if you can't relate and my time is a piece of wax.
You're a loser, baby? Not to worry—your time is gonna come.
I've been wondering: how does watching bands like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and self-proclaimed golden gods Led Zeppelin turn into what are undeniably old men affect our view on aging? I mean, look at these guys:
Let the sun beat down upon my face
They're old. (Well, three of them are.) They look great, each in their own way. Jimmy Page looks incredibly cool (if incredibly sweaty), John Paul Jones appears to be a decade younger than the others—closer in age to whippersnapper Jason Bonham—and Robert Plant looks like one badass beach bum who's barely been out of the sun since the 70s. He looks cool. He looks great. But he's old.
Does seeing the cute Beatle get increasingly jowly and obviously dye his hair make us feel our mortality all the more, or is the fact that he's still playing (wonderfully) to stadiums full make us feel like there's no need to get put out to pasture at the ripe old age of 64?
I don't know. And I'm not really going anywhere with this. I just wonder what effect, if any, it's had on those of us who grew up listening to rock and roll as time marches on, both for us and for the bands we listened to back when we was young.
