Led Zeppelin - Rock'n'roll graffiti

Revolution at 33 rpm

Led Zeppelin will probably go down in history for a singular, almost unmatched achievement: contributing massively to the evolution of rock music without really inventing much of anything, but rather drawing heavily first from the blues and rock-blues repertoire of the Fifties and Sixties, and later from folk and Eastern music. And yet theirs is a completely fresh, almost "revolutionary" sound, one that would leave an indelible mark on the future of rock'n'roll. This is precisely the greatness of Zeppelin: they managed to get where other British bands before them had only attempted to go (such as the Yardbirds – in whose ranks Page himself had served – Cream, the Jeff Beck Group – with whom John Paul Jones collaborated – and the Kinks).

Led Zeppelin managed to create a unique, foundational sound simply by dressing up in new clothes a music that was already starting to show its age. It was a formal revolution, built largely on sound, yet so massive that it ended up overwhelming substance as well, to the point of kickstarting much of the hard rock that developed in the years to follow, right up to today, where the ghost of the airship is still clearly visible hovering over countless bands.

But there's more to the Led Zeppelin myth than just the immortality of their songs. Page and co. can also claim a series of small revolutions that changed the history of music. They were the first to achieve mass success without relying on radio airplay. Up to that point, radio and television had been dominated by the hit parade, and therefore by the 7-inch single. Led Zeppelin broke through without ever entering those charts. Not even their biggest hit, "Stairway To Heaven", was ever released as a single. And the terse way they titled their first albums (some of which didn't even feature the band's name on the cover) also marked a break with tradition, which dictated that album titles should serve the band's marketing.

Even more than the hits, what drew crowds of fans was their live performances. Riding the emotional wave of Woodstock, these shows brought rock back to its wildest, most genuine dimension. Led Zeppelin's concerts were charged with a ferocious energy, a hallucinated imagination, an almost mystical fury. They were deafening bacchanals and folk melodies, bluesy swoons and electric sword-slashes: a sonic orgy dominated by Jimmy Page's hyper-fast virtuosity and Robert Plant's shrill, powerful voice. The film "The Song Remains The Same" remains the most celebrated document of it all.

Early Days

It all started with an idea from guitarist Jimmy Page. After a long apprenticeship as a session man for artists of the caliber of the Who, Joe Cocker and Nico, Page joined the Yardbirds, the legendary English outfit that had previously featured names like Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. After releasing their final single in early 1968, the group broke up. Due to contractual obligations (a run of concerts), Page re-formed the band under the name New Yardbirds. The first to be recruited was his friend John Paul Jones (born James Baldwin), a bassist/keyboardist and himself a sought-after session man. After failed attempts to recruit singer/guitarist Terry Reid and Procol Harum drummer B.J. Wilson, Page, having caught a show by the unknown band Hobbstweedle, hired its blond singer, Robert Plant, whose voice packed a formidable rock-blues punch. Page would later say of him: "Just listening to him made me nervous. Even years later, it still does: his singing is a kind of primal howl." On Plant's suggestion, drummer John "Bonzo" Bonham was finally brought in, with his powerful, personal drumming style made even more thunderous by lining his snare and toms with tin foil. The band's true fifth member would be their ever-loyal manager, Peter Grant.

The first rehearsals were electrifying: "We found ourselves playing in a room, and it didn't take long before we realized what was happening. We started laughing, out of joy, or out of the realization of what the four of us could do together," Jimmy Page would recall years later.

The first material they played consisted of Yardbirds staples (including "Train Kept A-Rollin'", the first, historic track they worked out), unreleased songs written by Page, and blues and rhythm and blues classics.

Having fulfilled their contract, the group changed its name to Led Zeppelin (a deliberate misspelling of "Lead Zeppelin"). The name was suggested by Keith Moon and John Entwistle of the Who.

Their first successes came from America. It was there that the group debuted on December 26, 1968, in Denver, Colorado, opening for two bands riding high at the time, Vanilla Fudge and Iron Butterfly; but Zeppelin "overshadowed" their sets with a memorable performance: never before had a band played the blues with such ferocity. Their adrenaline-fueled concerts were a bacchanal of screams and deafening sound at a near-psychotic pace. It was these very performances that would largely seal their success.

Shortly before leaving for their American tour, the band found time to record their debut album, Led Zeppelin. The English band's debut is essentially a reckoning with the history of the blues: it includes songs by Willie Dixon, a writer they would continue to "plunder" in the years to come. To grasp the group's potential, one need only compare tracks like "You Shook Me" and "I Can't Quit You Baby" with versions recorded by other artists: Zeppelin's renditions crush the competition in every respect, thanks to their heavy stride, yet also full of riffs and room for improvisation. Original songs like "Good Times Bad Times" and "Communication Breakdown" boast epic riffs that would go down in history, propelled by Bonham's explosive drumming; towering above it all, however, is Plant's raspy, sensual voice.

Also worth remembering are the heart-wrenching “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You”, traditional (though successfully claimed in the 80s by singer-songwriter Anne Bredon), which alternates acoustic arpeggios with powerful guitar blasts, culminating in a memorable final crescendo, and the celebrated “Dazed And Confused”, one of the band's signature songs. Over the track's six minutes, the physicality of the blues merges with the dreamlike dimension of psychedelia. And on his Gibson Les Paul, Page experiments with the thousand sonic facets offered by reverb: the song would become famous above all for the violin-bow performance in its psychedelic central section. In truth, it's a reworking of a theme by an obscure folksinger named Jake Holmes, whom Page had stumbled upon by chance in a New York club.

Rounding out the album are the ballad “You're Time Has Gonna Come”, the instrumental for classical guitar and tabla “Black Mountain Side”, and the lengthy “How Many More Times”, driven by a faster pace that, in the early shows, would serve as a medley and would later be replaced by “Whole Lotta Love”.

The lyrics, finally, are the album's most negligible aspect: still written by Page, they're full of double entendres that at times slip into misogyny (how can we forget “Many people talk, but few of them know that woman is an inferior being”, from “Dazed And Confused”).

Despite the album not even having a single to represent it, Led Zeppelin climbs the American charts, and by the time the band returns home at the end of the tour, it has already become a household name. It's 1969, and hard rock (or hard-blues, if you prefer — though to be fair, a mention is owed to Blue Cheer, who debuted in 1968) is born, right as, not far away, “Black Sabbath” comes out, paving the way for heavy metal.

Led Zeppelin's 1969 is spent almost entirely on tour, with nearly 150 shows. In the briefest of breaks, the band finds time to record its second record, simply titled II.

The result is a less psychedelic, “harder” sound compared to the debut, with an approach that feels almost like a live take recorded in the studio.

The album opens with a very brief laugh and a simple three-note riff. It's precisely those three notes that would carve Led Zeppelin's place into legend. The track is “Whole Lotta Love”, destined to become one of rock's defining anthems. Built almost entirely around that riff, it evolves in its central section into a noise-drenched bacchanal, amid tempestuous percussion, explosive guitar distortion and Plant's visceral, instinctive screams. The biggest difference between this album and the previous one is its compositional freshness: you can tell it was written “on the road”, and the many instrumental sections left to improvisation prove it.

There's no shortage of blatant lifts: the opener is drawn from Willie Dixon's “You Need Love” (1962), and the third track, “The Lemon Song” — a slow, heavy blues with sudden hard rock surges — from Chester Burnett, aka Howlin' Wolf's “Killing Floor”. The lyrics still show misogynistic leanings, quoting a famous sexual metaphor from Robert Johnson: “Strizza il mio limone/ fino a quando non mi scende il succo lungo le mie gambe/ Se non strizzi il mio limone/ ti caccerò a calci dal letto”. Set against this is “Thank You”, a ballad with prominent organ, in which Plant, in the first lyric he ever wrote for the band, pays tribute to his wife. Side one is rounded out by the acoustic delicacy of “What Is And What Should Never Be”, which also reveals jazz-leaning tendencies.

Side B opens with another masterpiece, “Heartbreaker”, a crash course for every guitarist who came after, thanks to its unaccompanied central solo, which experiments with one of the earliest instances of tapping in rock history. Skipping over the pleasant, aggressive “Living Loving Maid (She's Just a Woman)”, the album's final three gems are the barreling “Ramble On” and “Bring It On Home” — the former semi-folk, poised between acoustic languor and hard rock bursts, the latter bluesy (complete with Plant on harmonica) — and, between the two, the instrumental “Moby Dick”, featuring one of the most celebrated drum solos in history, on a par with Deep Purple's “The Mule” and Black Sabbath's “Rat Salad”.

Success, naturally, would be enormous. II would knock the Beatles' “Abbey Road” off the top of the charts: it would stay on the Billboard charts for 138 weeks and at No. 1 for a month and a half, selling three million copies in just six months. The only unpleasant aftermath was the plagiarism disputes with Dixon's and Burnett's publishers, which would be resolved through laborious mediation by the band's lawyers. But even this brazen approach to “unauthorized borrowing” — fairly common practice at the time, incidentally — would do nothing to turn the public and critics away from the Page & Plant enterprise.

The endless tours, however, wear the band down, and they decide to take a break: Page and Plant retreat to a Welsh cottage near Bron-Yr-Aur to write new songs. While Page expresses his love of folk, Plant becomes increasingly drawn to soft Californian rock. Out of the fusion of these influences, in 1970, comes one of the band's most controversial records, once again titled simply with a number, III. The album splits between an electric first side and a fully acoustic second. The opener gives no hint of any softer turn — quite the opposite: “Immigrant Song” is one of the Zeps' most violent tracks; towering over everything is Plant's voice, a wild battle cry that seems to come straight from the barbarian Vikings referenced in the lyrics. For many, it remains the “definitive” hybrid between the hard core of the Zeppelin sound and the band's pull toward magical, mythological imagery.

Right after comes “Friends”, the album's first acoustic taste, carried by a string section, whose lyrics, centered on love and brotherhood, fit well with the hippie culture of the era. “Celebration Day” returns to harder territory more typical of the band, and gives way to another masterpiece, “Since I've Been Loving You”, one of the greatest blues songs ever recorded, in which the Zeppelin ensemble reaches peaks of pathos unattainable for almost any other musician; the true star here, even more than Plant — who delivers one of his finest performances — is Jimmy Page, accompanied by his faithful six-string, as rough and imprecise as you like, but also so “human” and “suffering” because of it. It's on tracks like this that you notice the difference between Page and other “suit-and-tie” bluesmen like Clapton. Perhaps also because of the masterpiece that precedes it, “Out Of The Tiles” comes across as a pleasant, rhythmic but ultimately forgettable track.

The second half of the album transports us into entirely different atmospheres: the tone grows calmer, the drums almost vanish entirely, giving way to traditional instruments like the banjo and mandolin. The main influences now are Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. We're introduced by “Gallows Pole”, a traditional song that starts off slow and transforms into a wildly rhythmic track that practically demands dancing. In “Tangerine”, an extremely delicate acoustic ballad, you can almost glimpse, as in a mirage, far-off California (a preview of another gorgeous ballad on the following album). “That's The Way”, with its environmentalist lyrics, would be performed frequently in concert during the band's inevitable acoustic sets, thanks to its bucolic, relaxed atmosphere.

The final two tracks are “Bron-Y-Aur Stomp”, another village-fête-style ballad, dedicated by Plant to his dog, with carefree lyrics teaching us to live life simply, and the less-than-exceptional “Hats Off To (Roy) Harper”, just guitar and (filtered) voice. The album was poorly received by both critics and the public, and would only be reassessed later on.

It's precisely during the tour supporting III that Led Zeppelin would come to Italy for a concert — the only one of their career in our country. On July 3, 1971, at the PalaVigorelli in Milan, the band appeared as guests at the Cantagiro, and were scheduled to perform after the Italian artists. According to David Zard, a rock promoter in the early 70s, the blame for the unrest lay squarely with Led Zeppelin: “We had agreed that they would close out the Cantagiro's program around midnight, after the other artists had performed. Instead, around 8pm, with a long line of people still waiting to get in, they informed me they wanted to play right away. I tried to reason with them, to no avail. The concert began, sparking the fury of those still queuing for tickets. Police charges were inevitable as a result.” Regardless of who was to blame, the ensuing chaos was extraordinary. First came the violent protest — jeers and flying cans — aimed at the Cantagiro's pop acts who opened the evening. Then, during Led Zeppelin's performance, all hell broke loose: Robert Plant didn't even manage to finish the first song before the music stopped, police fired tear gas canisters, and smoke rose into the air. By the third song, more tear gas and another police charge, with panicking fans storming the stage.

A disgusted Plant would later say: "That night we thought we were going to die. We were forced to break down a door to take refuge in the dressing rooms. When we tried to get our gear back, we found it had all been destroyed. We will never play in Italy again." The promise would be kept. Curious, by contrast, is the episode in Copenhagen on 21 February 1970: Led Zeppelin were forced to perform as The Nobs due to the threat of legal action from the heirs of Count Von Zeppelin, inventor of the airship that was the band's symbol.

Perhaps because of their tense relationship with the press, the band, after a mini-tour of small clubs under a false name, decided to strip their music of any extraneous element. That's why the new album, released in 1971, bears neither the band's name nor a title, but only four mysterious symbols, one representing each member of the band. Whether intentional or not, the result is to wrap the record in an aura of mystery. Among the various titles used to refer to it ("Untitled", "Runes Album", "Four Symbols", "Zo-So", the only legible symbol), it will simply be called IV. Even the cover forgoes the airship and the band's usual iconography, depicting a stooped farmer with a bundle of sticks on his back, and, on the back, a bleak glimpse of urban sprawl, as if to underline once again the group's "bucolic" leanings. Focusing purely on the music, IV represents the summa of every style the Zeppelin had touched on up to that point. The honor of opening this masterpiece goes to Plant with his wild, sensual howl. "Black Dog" is the kind of hard blues the band had accustomed us to, but thanks to the four layered guitar overdubs and its lurching rhythm, the song never feels like déjà vu. The air is thick with heavy rock, a feeling confirmed by another band classic, "Rock And Roll", which opens with a drumming masterclass from Bonham and is nothing more - as the title suggests - than an unbridled, runaway rock'n'roll in which every instrument melts into an unstoppable flow of energy.

The mood shifts radically with "The Battle Of Evermore", a mysterious, medieval-tinged ballad that, amid a flourish of acoustic guitars, mandolins and dulcimer, stages a duet between Plant and Sandy Denny, singer of Fairport Convention. The three heavyweight tracks that precede it, though, are merely the red carpet laid out for what is still celebrated today as one of the greatest songs in the history of music, the immortal "Stairway To Heaven". Opening with a gentle acoustic guitar arpeggio (a genuine lift from Spirit's "Taurus"), followed by woodland flutes, the song fuses a love of Celtic folk with high-volume rock in an epically unfolding sequence, in which, minute by minute, the other instruments gradually join in, building to a climax in the final section, where Plant howls at the top of his lungs, backed by a band that has never sounded more relentless. The lyrics are full of cryptic metaphors (mysterious ladies, enchanted pipers, alchemical transformations), carrying a pseudo-religious message with powerful emotional weight. It would become a generational anthem. The legendary aura surrounding "Stairway To Heaven" would be amplified by the belief that, played backwards, it reveals a satanic message. This is probably just a legend, although Page has always been drawn to the occult, and is a follower of the magician Aleister Crowley.

The four tracks that follow, excellent as they are, are destined to remain in the shadow of the giant that precedes them. "Misty Mountain Hop" revives the quartet's rock side: John Paul Jones uses the Rhodes piano as accompaniment, though the final result comes across as a bit repetitive; "Four Sticks", which takes its name from the four drumsticks Bonham used to play it, could have made better use of its structure, but still remains a very solid track. Excellence returns, however, with the splendid ballad "Going To California" and the mighty blues of "When The Levee Breaks", a cover of Memphis Minnie, in which the band once again draws on its first love, the blues. The atmosphere is recreated so effectively that you really feel transported to the Mississippi Delta "when the levee breaks": Bonham's raging drumming clears the way for Page's virtuosic bottleneck guitar lines and Plant's harmonica phrases.

Despite the enigma of the title and the decision - striking for the time - to forgo even the band's own name, IV will send the charts into a frenzy, selling over ten million copies in the United States alone.

Latter Days

At the end of yet another world tour, and of an exceptional first stretch of their career, the time had come for the band to take stock. The alchemy of blues, psychedelia, rock and folk had found its fullest expression in the first four albums. Recycling the same formula would have been too easy. They needed to broaden their horizons and seek out alternative paths not yet explored. To challenge themselves. In 1972, taking advantage of this break, Page embarked on a mystical journey to India, following in the footsteps of the Beatles and Mick Jagger. He recorded the tracks "Four Sticks" and "Friends" with some Indian musicians, an experiment that would find a follow-up only twenty-two years later.

The four of them would stay out of the studio for a full two years, and when they returned, the result would not fully live up to expectations. Houses Of The Holy, released in 1973, is an album that partly disappoints the fans. Having largely abandoned the dirty blues-rock of their early years, the band decided to focus on more elaborate, musically refined tracks, making greater use of electronic sounds. Although the overall quality remains high, the album lacks a standout song, that flash of genius that would raise its average. The record is highly eclectic: sunny, cheerful songs like "The Song Remains The Same", where hard rock meets the band's beloved Californian sound, "Over The Hills And Far Away" and "Dancing Days", carefree tracks in which Page experiments with ever-new solutions, alternate with "The Crunge", a riot of syncopated rhythms masterfully led by Bonham; the melancholic ballad "The Rain Song", with its highly elaborate arrangements; and the typical hard rock of "The Ocean" (dedicated to the "ocean" of heads the band sees from the stage at every show).

The two most unusual tracks are the divertissement of "D'yer Mak'er", which blends hard rock and reggae, and the murky "No Quarter", on which John Paul Jones steals the show with his Hammond organ, Plant's filtered vocals lend the track a strongly psychedelic feel, and the central interlude turns semi-jazzy.

Despite the lukewarm reception from critics and audiences alike, Led Zeppelin threw themselves into another mammoth tour, which would culminate in the Madison Square Garden show in New York, later immortalized in the concert film "The Song Remains The Same". 1974 was devoted to promoting the band's newly founded record label, Swan Song. The four members thus chose to work individually on the recording projects of the artists signed to the label (among them Bad Company, Maggie Bell and the Pretty Things).

Nevertheless, by the end of the year the band returned to the studio, and in March 1975 the sprawling double LP Physical Graffiti was released. Alongside new recordings, it includes seven tracks never used on their previous albums. The record stands as a kind of summa of the band's artistic phases: there's hard rock, in tracks like "Night Fly" (left over from the IV sessions) and "Custard Pie", and gentle acoustic excursions, as in "Bron-Yr-Aur", lifted directly from III. Other fortunate rescues include "Houses Of The Holy", which was meant to be the title track of the previous album, and "Down By The Seaside", also from III.

It's the new tracks, though, that deserve the most attention: the Zeps kept stretching and elaborating their songs further and further. Alongside uneven tracks like "Ten Years Gone", "In The Light" or the very long (eleven minutes, the longest track the band ever recorded in the studio) "In My Time Of Dying", which attempts a return to traditional blues but in a clumsy, mannered way (just listen to how Page "mauls" a heavily distorted slide guitar), sits the gem "Kashmir", a majestic anthem built on a mysterious guitar riff, underpinned by a string orchestra and an Eastern-tinged mellotron, over which Plant intones lyrics full of fantastical lands and ancient civilizations. Set against these demanding, draining pieces are other tracks where the band simply wanted to play something more immediate: hence songs like the funk-tinged "Trampled Underfoot" (with its hilarious lyrics comparing a woman to a car), "The Wanton Song", with its odd guitar echo effect, and "Sick Again".

Rounding out the album are two wild, loose jams, "Boogie With Stu" (recorded during the IV sessions, and unsuitable for that album) and "Black Country Woman" (recorded in 1973), plus the gem "The Rover", featuring some of the finest guitar parts Page ever played.

Physical Graffiti would be another huge success for the band, praised by both critics and fans alike. It would be the last time the Zeppelin soared so high: from then on, fortune would turn its back on the group. During the pharaonic tour in support of the album, Robert Plant suffered a serious car accident on the island of Rhodes, which left him confined to a wheelchair for a long period.

The will not to give up won out: Page joined Plant in Malibu, where he was recuperating, to write new songs, while John Paul Jones and John Bonham returned to their families. Perhaps partly for this reason, the following album, Presence, released in 1976, can be considered the most guitar-driven record in Led Zeppelin's discography: it was Page who wrote all the songs, while Plant handled the lyrics. Throughout the record, you can sense the anger and the determination to prove they were still the same band. While this led to a much "harder" sound on one hand, on the other the fear of not making it and the rush to finish led the band to wring every last drop out of the scant material they had on hand before entering the studio.

The album opens with the band's last true masterpiece, "Achille's Last Stand". The track is "Immigrant Song" raised to the nth power: every one of its ten minutes oozes epic grandeur, sharpened by Plant's lyrics, packed with references to Greek mythology. The whole band turns in an excellent performance: Bonham makes his drumming explosive, John Paul Jones lends a galloping, epic rhythm (you can already hear the first hints of what would later make a certain Steve Harris unique), Page overdubs countless guitar parts before launching into gorgeous solos; finally, Plant, still convalescing, screams for all he's worth. The next track, "For Your Life", is another hulking slab of toughness, showing just how tight the three musicians had become, while Plant, setting aside his mystical journeys, dives back into stories about horny young girls.

"Royal Orleans" is a bland piece of funk, while "Nobody's Fault But Mine" is another gutsy performance (inspired by Willie Johnson's "It's Nobody's Fault But Mine"), in which Page and Plant obsessively repeat the song's central theme together, before each launching into a solo — first Plant on harmonica, then Page on the Les Paul — only to come back together for the finale. Two other stylistic missteps are "Candy Store Rock", a dreadful slice of 50s rock'n'roll, and "Hots On For Nowhere", cheerful and fun but entirely forgettable. Closing things out is "Tea For One", a slow blues that tries to recapture the glories of "Since I've Been Loving You", but only underscores the nostalgia for a past now long gone.

The album's sales will be poor at home, while in America Presence will become the first album in history to go platinum on pre-orders alone. Sales of Presence will also be hurt by the release of the double live album The Song Remains The Same, soundtrack to the film of the same name. The album, recorded at New York's Madison Square Garden in 1973, catches the band not quite at their peak, but still full of energy. There are exhilarating moments (the opener "Rock And Roll"), long solos that make for heavy going (the quarter-hour drum solo on "Moby Dick", or the twenty minutes of "Dazed And Confused" — though that's true of pretty much every Led Zeppelin live album), and dips during key songs, as on "Stairway To Heaven", where Plant sings at half volume.

Essentially, the album is a way of staving off the forced inactivity caused by Plant's convalescence. The film, meanwhile, intercuts concert footage with segments in which each band member plays a character: so we get John Paul Jones as a masked avenger, complete with cape and manor-house hideout, John Bonham and Peter Grant as two gangsters, Robert Plant as a medieval knight, while Jimmy Page climbs a mountain to meet the hermit from IV. Other scenes sneak into Bonham's and Plant's private lives, revealing the former's love of racing cars and the latter's domestic home life.

In 1977 a new American tour kicks off. For the first four months everything runs smoothly, then, in a escalation of tragic events, Page collapses on stage, and Bonham, Grant and two roadies are arrested for beating up two promoters on the staff of impresario Bill Graham. Finally, the band receives news of the death of Plant's five-year-old son, Karac. The tour is cut short amid controversy and legal fallout. As if that weren't enough, shortly afterwards Bonham breaks his wrist in a car accident.

Rumours start circulating that the cause of the band's decline is Page's interest in the occult… The band doesn't get back into the studio until May 1978. By then, though, the music scene is no longer the same: progressive and hard rock, which had until then been the most fashionable genres, are thrown into crisis by the explosion of punk. Punks hate "dinosaurs" like Led Zeppelin, above all because of their lifestyle — tax dodging, groupie parties, five-star hotels, and success built on long, self-indulgent songs devoid of any political or social message. Years later, Robert Plant would say: "Those accusations levelled at Led Zeppelin during the punk era — accusations that we had no idea what we were doing or saying, accusations of shallowness and a lack of sensitivity… well, they were true. I have to admit it: back then they stung, they burned, but today I have to plead guilty!"

On top of that, the band seems to be falling apart: the friction between Page and Plant grows more and more unbearable, while Jones and Bonham split their time between the band and Paul McCartney's Rockestra. Partly for all these reasons, the new album, In Through The Out Door, is an outright disaster: the band changes genre almost entirely, losing its way. The desire to seem "fashionable" at all costs leads them to completely distort their trademark sound, stuffing it with synthesizers. But let's take it step by step: the opening, contrary to what one might expect, isn't among the worst. "In The Evening", introduced by atmospheric synths, is a solid, driving song in which electronics and traditional instruments strike a fair balance, topped off with a fine Page solo. The second track, "South Bound Suarez", isn't bad either, a breezy rock'n'roll number livened up by John Paul Jones's piano.

From here on, the four of them get nothing right. Third up is "Hot Dog", a silly piece of country, followed by "Fool In The Rain", thick with Caribbean and reggae flavors, whistles and percussion included. "Carouselambra" is a ten-minute ordeal, in which the band tries to blend their long-beloved Eastern-tinged atmospheres with Yes-style progressive rock, ending up merely cold and pompous. "All My Love" raises the average slightly, a turn toward pop but at least exquisitely melancholic, its lyrics dedicated by Plant to his little son Karac. The album closes with "I'm Gonna Crawl", a dip into soul in which Plant tries to imitate James Brown, coming off only as grating. Worth noting too is the album's prophetic title, "In Through the Out Door": it will indeed turn out to be Led Zeppelin's last work. Shortly after its release, Page, in an interview, would state: "When I listen to 'All My Love' I think: that's not us, that's not us. Bonzo and I have already started talking about the new album, which will have a much harder rock approach. It'll definitely be more interesting" — not knowing that there would be no time left to record another album.

The epitaph and the legacy

In June 1980 the band embarks on a mini-tour around Europe. The results are encouraging enough to push the four of them to plan a new American tour. But on 25 September, at Page's house near Windsor, where the band had shut themselves away to rehearse, John Bonham is found dead, after a long night of heavy drinking. It's the end: the band decides to split up. On 4 December 1980 comes the band's epitaph statement: "The loss of our friend and the sense of undivided harmony felt by ourselves and our manager have led us to decide that we could not continue as we were".

Due to contractual obligations, Coda is released posthumously, two years after the tragedy. It's an album pieced together from the remaining unreleased tracks. The first three songs date directly from 1970-71: "We're Gonna Groove" is an energetic cover of Ben E. King, "Poor Tom" is a relaxed, very minimal acoustic number. This first section closes with a live recording of "I Can't Quit You Babe". From Houses Of The Holy comes the unfortunate boogie "Walter's Walk", hampered by a terrible recording. The three tracks dropped from In Through The Out Door, however, are a pleasant surprise: free of synth overload, "Ozone Baby", "Darlene" and "Wearing And Tearing" (which could have become a minor classic) sound far more Zeppelin-esque than the unluckier versions that ended up on the '78 album. A tribute to their unfortunate bandmate is "Bonzo's Montreux", nine minutes of percussive experimentation.

Since 4 December 1980, the void left by the band has never been filled. Both Page and Plant later pursued solo careers far removed from the glories of Led Zeppelin (Page's being especially disappointing). Despite this, the three survivors have reunited to play together on several occasions: with the Honeydrippers' "old rock" session (1984), at Live Aid in 1985 (Phil Collins on drums), and at a concert celebrating Atlantic's fortieth anniversary (1988, with Jason Bonham, John's son, behind the kit).

Page and Plant have even released two albums together: in 1994, No Quarter: Jimmy Page & Robert Plant Unledded, which reinterprets several Led Zeppelin classics with an Eastern flavor alongside four newly written songs, and in 1998, Walking Into Clarksdale, leaning more toward rock/blues but uneven in quality.

But the biggest gift to fans came from Page in 1997 with the two-CD remastering of Led Zeppelin's historic BBC Sessions, which had circulated for years via countless bootlegs. The first disc collects tracks from the first two albums in the versions recorded for two 1969 radio broadcasts: live, direct-to-tape performances that capture the explosive energy of the then-young band. Only a handful of overdubs were added (some backing vocals and guitar solos). Among the unreleased tracks is Robert Johnson's "Travelling Riverside Blues", already included in the "Remasters" box set. The first CD closes with a short live set recorded at London's Playhouse Theatre for the "One Night Stand" broadcast in June 1969. The second disc, meanwhile, captures the show two years later at London's Paris Theatre for the "In Concert" program, also including tracks that were performed but never broadcast on the radio.

Even today, nearly thirty years after their split, the Led Zeppelin airship is still flying high. Interest in the British hard rockers shows no sign of fading, as proven by the steady stream of releases that keep coming out: among the many, it's worth mentioning the triple live album How The West Was Won, recorded shortly before the release of IV, the double Led Zeppelin DVD (five hours in total), which traces the band's history through some of their best concerts, as well as the double anthology Early Days and Latter Days, extremely useful for anyone wanting to get into their career. "We wanted to reach a new generation," Page explained. "I always thought our music could last a long time; what I never imagined was that I myself would live this long. At 18 I thought I'd die at 30, it seems incredible to me that I've even made it past 50."

The controversy over "satanic rock" is dying hard, though, having dogged the band ever since Page bought Boleskine House, the "cursed house" of the magician Aleister Crowley near Loch Ness in Scotland. In the late Nineties, Page even won a lawsuit against "Ministry Magazine", which accused him of standing idly by as Bonham died, wearing a "satanist" robe and attempting to cast a spell. Robert Plant, meanwhile, was criticized for writing flower-child lyrics long past their expiry date: "How can a flower child ever be dated?" he replied. "The essence of what I write is the desire for peace, for harmony. It's all that anyone has ever wanted. How can that ever become an outdated subject?"

Today flower children are an extinct breed, but the children of Led Zeppelin are countless. The last of them were perhaps the Seattle bands of the grunge generation, Nirvana and Pearl Jam, who updated their hard rock with an iconoclastic, desperate punk approach, or the champions of stoner rock, from Kyuss onward. But Led Zeppelin don't need heirs. They've already sold 200 million records. And they're still worshipped by crowds of old and young fans alike. An elixir of eternal musical youth: that's their own "stairway to heaven".

Contributions by Paolo Avico

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