From the author of the definitive New York Times bestselling history
of the Beatles comes the authoritative account of the group many call
the greatest rock band of all time, arguably the most successful, and
certainly one of the most notorious
Rock star. Whatever that term means to you, chances are it owes a debt
to Led Zeppelin. No one before or since has lived the dream quite like
Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham. In Led
Zeppelin, Bob Spitz takes their full measure, separating the myth from
the reality with his trademark connoisseurship and storytelling flair.
From the opening notes of their first album, the band announced itself
as something different, a collision of grand artistic ambition and brute
primal force, of English folk music and African American blues. That
record sold over 10 million copies, and it was just the beginning; Led
Zeppelin's albums have sold over 300 million certified copies worldwide,
and the dust has never settled.
The band is notoriously guarded, and previous books provided more heat
than light. But Spitz's authority is undeniable and irresistible. His
feel for the atmosphere, the context--the music, the business, the
recording studios, the touring life, the whole ecosystem of popular
music--is unparalleled. His account of the melding of Page and Jones,
the virtuosic London sophisticates, with Plant and Bonham, the wild men
from the Midlands, in a scene dominated by the Beatles and the Stones
but changing fast, is in itself a revelation. Spitz takes the music
seriously and brings the band's artistic journey to full and vivid life.
The music, however, is only part of the legend: Led Zeppelin is also
the story of how the sixties became the seventies, of how playing clubs
became playing stadiums, of how innocence became decadence. Led Zeppelin
wasn't the first rock band to let loose on the road, but as with
everything else, they took it to an entirely new level. Not all the
legends are true, but in Spitz's careful accounting, what is true is
astonishing and sometimes disturbing.
Led Zeppelin gave no quarter, and neither has Bob Spitz. Led Zeppelin
is the full and honest reckoning the band has long awaited, and richly
deserves.
