10th
Theory Of Zepp
Over the past ten years I have always had this “beef” with the band, you may have heard of them, Led Zeppelin. In high school I didn’t like Led Zeppelin because I listened to one of their albums and thought, right off the bat, they were over rated. I couldn’t understand why everyone was going crazy about these guys. It was like everyone was in this trance. From the cool jock kids, to the “hippie” kids skipping the tail-end of lunch to smoke a joint in the parking lot, to the kids that didn’t really fit into a category, to the band kids. Everyone could like Led Zeppelin … if they had listened to them.
It simply didn’t make sense to me. I listened and thought, “this Jimmy Page guy, who is supposedly one of the greatest rock guitarists, is so sloppy on guitar.” Nothing made sense about why I couldn’t walk down a hall of school during class change and not see at least five kids wearing Zeppelin shirts. The whole time I was riding on the 60s and 70s music of The Doors, The Who, Jimi Hendrix, The Allman Brothers and Pink Floyd. Zeppelin took a seat on the far dusty shelf of my mind for a few years.
Later on, in college I would meet this guy that a few buddies of mine knew from Purdue who played drums. This guy loved Led Zeppelin. I would go home for winter break and I thought, “I’m going to learn some Zeppelin songs to jam with that guy when I get back.” I put on some Zeppelin and decided I wasn’t going to learn Whole Lotta Love, Immigrant Song, or the stick in my eye Stairway To Heaven. I finally came upon, what is still my favorite Zeppelin song to this day, What Is And What Should Never Be. I spent the next 20 minutes learning how to play that song and I can’t lie … I really enjoyed it. The days before I could whip that song out during a jam session couldn’t of gone by fast enough. I was pumped.
For the rest of break I would dabble in the tunes of the mighty Zeppelin and I would begin to understand why they always made top lists of bands and how great they were for their time and place in the world. With all that said, I still had the view that they were one of the most “over rated” bands of all time. For years in conversations I would state that opinion and people thought I was crazy. Partially because I couldn’t explain it right and “over rated” wasn’t the right phrase for what I was thinking.
Well, it’s been 10 years now and I have finally figured it out. I was sitting at the neighborhood park reading Chuck Klosterman’s book Sex, Drugs, And Cocoa Puffs and had to stop and think to myself, “THAT’S IT! HE WORDED IT RIGHT AND IT MAKES SENSE!” He explains:
I constantly meet people who love some terrible band (usually the Moody Blues) and proceed to tell me that the reason I fail to understand their greatness is because I only know what I’ve heard on the radio. Most of the time, these people are completely wrong; while the finest Led Zeppelin songs (for example) are all obscure, the most important Zep songs are Whole Lotta Love, Immigrant Song, and Stairway to Heaven. These are the tracks that define what Zeppelin was about, beyond their tangible iconography as a loud four-piece rock band […] saying you like Immigrant Song (or even just saying that you don’t hate Stairway To Heaven) means you like Led Zeppelin - and to say you “like Led Zeppelin” means you like their highly stylized version of cock-rock cool. It means you accept a certain kind of art. Pretty much everybody agrees that Zeppelin is - at the very least - cool to mainstream audiences, so their timelessness and significance is best defined by their best known work. That’s how it works with cool artists (Miles Davis, Iggy Pop, whoever).
It pretty much comes down to the part where he states that “Zeppelin is at the very least cool to mainstream audiences.” They are simply one of the coolest “mainstream” bands to exist. I just couldn’t ever figure it out. Why does the majority choose Led Zeppelin out of all the bands of that time? Well, I think it comes down to the fact that when it’s all said and done they have made music that is not “to weird” or experimental. It’s tangible music for people who want instant gratification and don’t really care what’s going on. However, they are one of the few, because if you’re really into music and dig into their stuff it is brilliant, it is great, it is rock n’ roll! You just don’t have to work to enjoy listening to it I suppose. Feels good to get that out.
Note: The Beatles also fit in this category.
