|
- CLASSIC ALBUM OF THE
WEEK
- Led Zeppelin "II" 1969 (UK)
- Led
Zeppelin is not really a heavy metal band -- even the surviving members
of the group say as much. Most of their albums are far too
eclectic to be neatly pigeonholed into a single genre, although without
a doubt the most popular tracks from their early records were the ones
that had that heavy metal sound. Perhaps more significantly,
Zep's immense and nearly-overnight success inspired thousands of lesser
"heavy" bands whose lack of finesse defined "metal" in the early
1970's. The group's mastermind Jimmy Page had been all over the
pop charts since the mid-60's, as an anonymous session guitarist
playing on early hits by The Kinks and The Who; he apparently met
up with John Paul Jones (bass) and John Bonham (drums) during sessions
for a Donovan album, then recruited them into the final version of The
Yardbirds (the group Jimmy was recruited into after the
departures of Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck). Once blooz wailer
Robert Plant joined as lead singer and they settled on their iconic
handle (refering to a joke about how the band would go over "like a
lead balloon"), the band shot straight to the top and stayed there
until Bonham's untimely death in 1980. My favorite Zeppelin album
has always been their second, in which the blues basis of their debut
album flowers into a technicolor trip of psychedelia (but before they
expanded into their more eclectic "album oriented rock" style from the
third record onward). II
also contains the group's biggest hit single, "Whole Lotta Love" which
made it to #4 on the American pop charts and was arguably the very
first "heavy metal hit" (Black Sabbath would make the UK top ten the
following year with the even-more-metal anthem "Paranoid", although
that song failed to make the American Top 40. Interestingly, Led
Zeppelin never released ANY singles in their home country!)
- Here's Zep playing that old warhorse "Whole Lotta Love", and some hot footage from their 1969 world tour "Communication Breakdown" and "Dazed & Confused". Though Zeppelin played "hard rock, with a heavy metal song or two on each album", it was Black Sabbath who were the first band to popularize "all-metal, all the time" as a lifestyle. A few years later Judas Priest would add operatic shrieking, faster songs and lots of leather to the mix.
|
