Led Zeppelin Song Rankings
Posted: Thu May 26, 2022 11:20 am
A story about Zeppelin rankings:
When I was about 15 I was probably one of the biggest Zeppelin fans walking the Earth. I made it my business to know everything I could discover about their music and about the members themselves. So for example if they mentioned a guy named Roy Harper, who sang with them, I went out and bought any Roy Harper album or music I could get my hands on and researched him in the library, very old school. Still have some of that vinyl; it's kind of like if Richard Dawkins somehow became a mystical hippie while retaining a few aspects of his former self. Anyway, I did this for everything I could uncover in the liner notes or information available about their albums. I uncritically accepted all the things I learned about them and found it very easy to explain away anything negative as mendacious criticism coming from the same bunch of extremist Christians who probably thought I was going to hell too, and were not shy about saying so. Nobody was actually talking about their sexual abuse of teenagers in a realistic manner - all these stories were told as if they were normal parts of the excess of rock stars. When you are a teenager yourself, and you encounter abusive creeps, it's easy to explain to yourself that those people have nothing whatsoever in common with Robert Plant. It took me a long time to sort all of this out later as facts came to light and I gained an ability to distinguish what was likely true from what was likely the exaggerated raving of people who think Led Zeppelin and D&D are both devil worshiping cults.
So, interestingly the seeds of my discontent with Led Zeppelin were born purely out of appreciation of the music. I literally did not believe my parents when they said that one of those songs was a Joan Baez song until they pulled out the album and played it for me. I assumed that the band treated folk music and blues music in similar ways, as inspirational fodder for its own unique creations. Over time I started to realize first that the original artists were often doing it better, and that something about the way Zeppelin was playing blues music was diminishing the quality of the actual music. Then later of course I started to realize how much of it was flat out stolen and unoriginal. That also took a long time to figure out and the music media really wasn't talking about this in an objective manner. People who didn't like the band would say it, but then they didn't like the band so I didn't believe their biased charges. This is still in the time when modems are rare and one is not popping up research on the phone from Google.
The biggest nail in the coffin of my Led Zeppelin obsession was delivered when I did an actual research project on blues lyrics which required digging through a bunch of library stacks and making repeated discoveries of how much rich and original material was out there and how pathetically and poorly it had been treated by many later white artists, not just this one. I got old enough to start going to blues shows and listening to those artists on my own, finally grasping the disconnect between the reality of their lives as musicians and what was happening in the music industry.
All of these factors were dampening my personal interest in the group but I still loved their music. They still did do incredibly innovative and awesome things, despite all the theft and exploitation and bad behavior. So only now after many decades of listening to other music and being far distant from that initial obsession do I feel like I can look at it with fresh eyes and ears and figure out what I really loved about it and what was dispensable and never good. So now I will give you my ranking and it has been pleasant to consider what was good about the mediocre, truly bad about the bad, and truly excellent about the many moments of excellence in their oeuvre.
When I was about 15 I was probably one of the biggest Zeppelin fans walking the Earth. I made it my business to know everything I could discover about their music and about the members themselves. So for example if they mentioned a guy named Roy Harper, who sang with them, I went out and bought any Roy Harper album or music I could get my hands on and researched him in the library, very old school. Still have some of that vinyl; it's kind of like if Richard Dawkins somehow became a mystical hippie while retaining a few aspects of his former self. Anyway, I did this for everything I could uncover in the liner notes or information available about their albums. I uncritically accepted all the things I learned about them and found it very easy to explain away anything negative as mendacious criticism coming from the same bunch of extremist Christians who probably thought I was going to hell too, and were not shy about saying so. Nobody was actually talking about their sexual abuse of teenagers in a realistic manner - all these stories were told as if they were normal parts of the excess of rock stars. When you are a teenager yourself, and you encounter abusive creeps, it's easy to explain to yourself that those people have nothing whatsoever in common with Robert Plant. It took me a long time to sort all of this out later as facts came to light and I gained an ability to distinguish what was likely true from what was likely the exaggerated raving of people who think Led Zeppelin and D&D are both devil worshiping cults.
So, interestingly the seeds of my discontent with Led Zeppelin were born purely out of appreciation of the music. I literally did not believe my parents when they said that one of those songs was a Joan Baez song until they pulled out the album and played it for me. I assumed that the band treated folk music and blues music in similar ways, as inspirational fodder for its own unique creations. Over time I started to realize first that the original artists were often doing it better, and that something about the way Zeppelin was playing blues music was diminishing the quality of the actual music. Then later of course I started to realize how much of it was flat out stolen and unoriginal. That also took a long time to figure out and the music media really wasn't talking about this in an objective manner. People who didn't like the band would say it, but then they didn't like the band so I didn't believe their biased charges. This is still in the time when modems are rare and one is not popping up research on the phone from Google.
The biggest nail in the coffin of my Led Zeppelin obsession was delivered when I did an actual research project on blues lyrics which required digging through a bunch of library stacks and making repeated discoveries of how much rich and original material was out there and how pathetically and poorly it had been treated by many later white artists, not just this one. I got old enough to start going to blues shows and listening to those artists on my own, finally grasping the disconnect between the reality of their lives as musicians and what was happening in the music industry.
All of these factors were dampening my personal interest in the group but I still loved their music. They still did do incredibly innovative and awesome things, despite all the theft and exploitation and bad behavior. So only now after many decades of listening to other music and being far distant from that initial obsession do I feel like I can look at it with fresh eyes and ears and figure out what I really loved about it and what was dispensable and never good. So now I will give you my ranking and it has been pleasant to consider what was good about the mediocre, truly bad about the bad, and truly excellent about the many moments of excellence in their oeuvre.