Led Zeppelin I & Led Zeppelin II

When I first started these reviews and memories, I really wanted to steer clear of the obvious ones like the Beatles and Led Zeppelin. But, the past couple of weeks, I have been listening to a lot of Joe Bonamassa who is currently working on a project with Glenn Hughes(Deep Purple) and Jason Bonham. On Bonamassa's album Live from Nowhere in Particular, He covers the ZZ Top song Just Got Paid. I actually posted a video of him performing this last week. In the middle of the song, he breaks out into an extended Jimmy Page like solo and quotes phrases from bands like Traffic with Dear Mr Fantasy and eventually the song leads into Zeppelin's ending of Dazed and Confused. So, that being said, I will try to relate to a time when I had no clue who Led Zeppelin really was or even who John "Bonzo" Bonham was.

Recent surveys, have said that the three most popular bands that teenagers download are AC/DC, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin. So, in today's world, Led Zeppelin is a classic rock icon and favorite. But, when I was 16-18 years old, they were more known in my circle of friends as that band who does "Stairway to Heaven".

I grew up with 3 older sisters and so I heard a lot of Beatles, Carpenters, ABBA, Bee Gees, Chicago and whatever teen idols were the flavor of the week/month/year such as the Cassidys(David and Shaun), Andy Gibb and Bay City Rollers and a variety of others. So, hard rock bands like Zeppelin, the Who, Deep Purple and Sabbath were not to be heard in our house. I remember in 4th grade overhearing a conversation between two of my classmates talking about KISS. Of course, 10-11 year old boy in 1976-1978 knew that KISS was the "Hottest Band in the Land". The conversation was about what were the biggest Hard Rock bands around. Well, of course....KISS and Led Zeppelin. That was the first I had heard of a band with a name like that.

Years passed, John Bonham passed away in late September 1980 and then John Lennon was killed in December 1980. Obviously, Lennon got the most mainstream press and rightly so.

As I became more interested in playing drums, I kept reading interviews and articles about Led Zeppelin and John Bonham. I remember thumbing through my sister's records and ones that she would put in a cupboard for future garage sales and finding a copy of Zeppelin's In Through the Out Door. But, none of the song titles were ones that had been praised and written about in drum magazines. I found out later that it was one that my sister received as part of a record club subscription. I remember my friend Tom coming to Boy Scouts after being to the North Platte Alco to tell me about a great deal he and his older brother got on some Led Zeppelin 8TRACKS!!! WhooHOO!?

Finally, sometime in my High School Years, I bought Led Zeppelin I on LP. Back then, I had a habit of buying an LP and then I would buy a cassette. I can't remember my rationale but I think if I rotated buying them I would have an even number of cassettes and LPs.

I remember getting it home and dropping the needle on the vinyl and began to take it all in. In the early 80's, the Hard Rock bands had louder guitars with more distortion than something that was produced in 1969. I had read so much about how great this band was that I felt a little let down. I do remember thinking that John Bonham's bass drum triplets were very cool in the song Good Times Bad Times. Anyway, I kept thinking that (for a hard rock band) they didn't seem that heavy. But, I kept coming back to the album and putting it back on over and over again.

Babe I'm Gonna Leave You was kinda bluesy and mellow....so was You Shook Me. Dazed and Confused came around and I found myself sitting down at the foot of my bed and then sitting up to take notice. Black Mountain Side came next and wasn't heavy at all. It was filled with weird guitar sounds and a tabla......HUH?
Side 2 opens with a Rocking Riff that starts Communication Breakdown..now that's a Hard Rocking Song. I thought to myself that this album must have seemed pretty heavy when it first came out. Of course, it may have been my hand-me-down/GE Stereo with Turntable/8track player and AM/FM radio. It wasn't the greatest in High Fidelity.

As time went on, I steadily bought all of Zeppelin's Catalog. It was actually Led Zeppelin II that blew me away with Whole Lotta Love and (of course)...Moby Dick!

Whole Lotta Love seemed much heavier with John Paul Jones bottom end bass filling in the space with Jimmy Page's classic riffing. I bought LZ II as a cassette in my final days of High School before leaving North Platte. I was working as a stock boy/sacker at Gibson's and was given a "going away" present of a $25 gift certificate. One of the things I bought was a cassette of LZ2 and proceeded to cruise around NP in my 1976 VW Rabbit listening to this. As I listened to this, I became enraptured with every aspect of this album.
The Second track What is and What Should Never Be was the coolest to me because (at 3:32) the guitar does a call and response that moves from the left side speaker to the right....whoa cool!
The Lemon Song which features that classic Robert Plant lyric

"Squeeze my lemon til the Juice runs down my leg."

Hmmmmmm? Thankfully, Robert is no longer writing such profound lyrics of this nature anymore.
Bring it on Home, Heartbreaker, Ramble On.....are next....All Bluesy...light but HEAVY!
Ramble On starts on Acoustic guitar and tells of JRR Tolkien's Middle Earth with "the darkest depths of Mordor" and "Gollum at the evil wall!" Then, it kicks in full with Bonham's drums and JPJ on Bass and great guitar sounds from Page.
The first time I head John Bonham's drum solo piece Moby Dick, I was in my VW Rabbitt and I had to stop the car to get a better listen. This was the drum solo that pulled me in HOOK, LINE and Sinker. It starts with a great opening riff and then all of sudden Bonzo goes into the solo and he's playing with his bare hands. ....wait a minute....now he switched back to sticks.....INCREDIBLE! This would be the drum solo that drummers are still copying in some sort of variation almost 40 years after it was recorded.



After these two albums, I was forever a fanatic for Zeppelin. I have loved everything else they did...Which I'm sure I'll write more about later.