Alex Burnham
March 11, 1998
Period 3 British Literature
“Dazed and Confused”: Led Zeppelin’s Profound Impact on Modern Music

	The legendary group of four British lads began practicing in a small London flat in the summer of 1968 with nothing but raw energy and some experience in the music industry.  By the time they broke up with the death of drummer John Bonham in 1980, they had become a music industry all to themselves.  This group that had to pay tribute (and royalties) to its American influences to fill out three songs on its debut album was later venerated by its proteges from several styles of music -- acoustic, new age, but mainly hard rock and heavy metal -- on a 1995 album.  Some magical transformation occurred throughout Led Zeppelin’s twelve years of melody-manufacturing.  Robert Plant’s outrageously high-pitched vocals, James “Jimmy” Page’s inventive guitar playing and producing skills, John Paul Jones’s melodic bass lines and keyboard wizardry, plus John Bonham’s insanely fluctuating styles of drum playing all resulted in a style of music that was much more melodic, creative, experimental, heavy, and just plain loud than anything else ever released by the music industry before.  In addition to this music combining the different tastes of each band member, this powerful group introduced an era of glamour and excess on the performance stage on tour -- as well as in the hotel rooms out on the road.  It is no wonder why some of the most feral band members of the past twenty-five years have gone on record citing Led Zeppelin as one of their most inspiring sources to enter the world of rock-and-roll.  And so, during the period 1968-1980, the British group Led Zeppelin formulated an innovative style combining musicality and lifestyle that has served as a major influence for the future course of subsequent rock-and-roll bands, especially those belonging to the so-called “heavy metal” genre.
	Before one can definitively examine the aspects in modern music in which Led Zeppelin has been seminal as an influence, one must construct as much of a description of the Led Zeppelin sound as possible on paper.  On one of their first meetings together in 1968, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant exchanged ideas for forming a new band.  Page wanted to create a new, “heavier” rock sound, yet one accented by slower portions in its songs, exaggerated dynamics (both soft and loud), more insidious passages, and a veritable crossroads between light and more guitar-dense music.  Meanwhile, Plant talked of his innovative idea of having the lead singer perform in unison with the melody of the guitar’s music -- a practice unheard of before in rock music because there were few groups willing to compose melodic guitar parts (Davis 51-52).  This decision resulted in perhaps the most definitive element of the group’s music as well as of the music of those bands affected by this one that could be found: the repetition of a guitar chord (a simultaneous series of notes that produces harmony) common to the genre of American rhythm and blues or of a pentatonic (five-tone scale in contrast to the standard of eight tones) pattern that served as the main phrase of the song (Wheeler, IFMTL3 1; Leonard 87).  Both Plant and Page had blossomed by listening to such African-American blues artists as “Howlin’” Wolf and John Lee Hooker, and this background in the fierce-driving music of the southern United States was transferred into the group’s music by such vehicles as the seven blues songs on their first four albums (VH-1 Legends; Led Zeppelin, I, II, III, `%~@).  However, despite the intense blues infatuation in the younger years of the group, Led Zeppelin soon created the wild juxtaposition of styles that has been emulated by all of heavy metal’s true legends -- songs (and entire albums) that start with subdued and restrained parts that gradually accelerate and expand into a blasting zenith that almost always depended solely on the electric guitar for volume support (Wheeler, IFTML3, 1).  Although this style was popularized by the classical music of Nineteenth-Century composers, Led Zeppelin brought the style to its most expansive audience and to its most electric usage (Macan 44).  This characteristic has been called by Rolling Stone music editor Gordon Fletcher “graduated heaviness” due to its varying levels of intensity, and it has been embodied in their acoustic/electric guitar favorites “Over the Hills and Far Away” and “Stairway to Heaven” (54).  
	Page’s sound-distortion techniques likewise became standard for Led Zeppelin tunes.  Some of the playing techniques which he indubitable pioneered in the world of rock music include the backwards echo effect, the multiple-tracking of his different guitars on one riff on the master tapes of songs, and the Westernized use of guitar string tunings that were developed by traditional Indian and African guitarists (Wheeler, IFMTL3, 1).  John Paul Jones stated after the band’s dissolution that all the members, having enjoyed North African, flamenco, and Near Eastern styles of music, utilized non-Western tonal patterns and odd meters such as 7/4 (where there are 7 beats per measure instead of the standard 4) and 3/16 (where each of the three beats per measure of music has a time value equal to one-quarter of the length of each beat at the former tempo) -- time signatures that they had heard in abundance in Indian and Greek music (Gore 28; Leonard 121).  However, the lyrics sung by Plant, who became well known for his howling and high-pitched voice, over this new Paean sound forged new ground of their own.  The singer’s own fascination with the supernatural, combined with Page’s love of the occult, led to abundant mythological references in songs as well as the presence of more exotic and sometimes Middle Eastern moods in the melody (Walser 10).  This marriage of psychedelic lyrics and contrasting but unfamiliar and sometimes disturbing sound effects formulated the sound of most of Led Zeppelin and the pattern for the completely new genre of rock music brewing -- heavy metal.
	The actual name for “heavy metal” was mainly organized by music writers, who needed a label to slap on the new sound produced by Led Zeppelin and others during the 1970’s, and by record companies, who too needed to find a base for their growing commercial markets (Walser 11).  Despite the further splintering of these wild groups into several sub-categories of metal by the late 1980’s, all of the parties nearly unanimously cited (both via interview and poll, such as MTV’s massive 1988 information-seeking undertaking) Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and Deep Purple as their most profound roots (Walser 13, 16).  Each of these bands contributed multiple and varying attributes to the second generation of heavy metal bands, but the following traits constituted the main prongs of the template established by Led Zeppelin.  First, the entire band would be featured as one whole, with the bass and percussion performing unison rhythms.  While the drummer’s rhythm would be strong, he would play in conjunction with the other band members rather than either just keeping a dull beat or else overriding the entire band with sound.  Second, the vocalist would emit distinctly perceived lyrics.  Third, the guitar would take over the focus formerly assigned to background instruments (such as saxophones) and would be nowhere nearly as ubiquitous as with the chord-strumming groups of the 1960’s -- just as an American blues artist would ad-lib a solo in a sporadic rhythm, so would the lead guitar’s solos in Led Zeppelin numbers (McDonald 1).  Thus, the group’s debut album, Led Zeppelin [I], could qualify as a heavy metal release since it included deeply resounding and pounding drums from John Bonham, the drug-influenced lyrics of Plant’s screeching and piercing voice, and the attention-grabbing distortion and innovative techniques of Page’s guitar (e.g., the use of a violin bow to play the solo in “Dazed and Confused”) (White 170).  Steven Tyler, the lead singer for the hard rock group Aerosmith, once noted a major characteristic of Led Zeppelin that greatly contributed to its own “heavy” sound -- the parallel melody of the guitar and bass lines that were adopted from Led Zeppelin II onward.  With two instruments thus leading a song, the net effect was twice as dense, twice as loud, and twice as forceful (Wheeler, Quotes File, 1).  Giles argues that the greatest factor which contributed to future metal music was the band’s sheer mammoth volume, both in the studio and especially in concert.  This trait, in conjunction with the pounding guitar like that of Page and the abstract, magical lyrics such as Plant’s, was to be one of the major defining points for heavy metal (203).  From its very first album, the band ushered in an aura of music that the world had never experienced before and later adopted as heavy metal.
	Two indispensable and contrasting Led Zeppelin songs which contained most of these key traits are “Whole Lotta Love” and “Stairway to Heaven.”  The density of an unusual one-chord guitar theme throughout the song, heavy drums, shrieking lead vocals, and sheer volume from the master tape of the song served as the mold for the most popular metal songs from 1969 onward. This was also the first truly heavy metal song to reach the Top 10 on US sales charts, thus proving its merits to a mainstream audience as well as the budding metal bands (Marshall 81).  “Stairway to Heaven” likewise features blazing guitar solos and the strong presence of bass and percussion parts, but it also contains the contrast of an acoustic-guitar beginning with an electric-guitar conclusion as well as fantastical lyrics that seem to have been taken right out of the Biblical book of Revelation (Schwarz 165).  Yet, while this latter song was never released as a single from the group’s fourth album, `%~@,  it did become the most requested song in radio history and resulted in sales of over 15 million copies of the fourth album (VH-1 Legends).  In fact, Led Zeppelin was responsible for popularizing the anti-single, whole-album focus of releases in the 1970’s.  This technique was adopted by most heavy metal bands as the most popular method for marketing their music -- all at once, not individually, song by song.  Led Zeppelin also began the metal tradition of using the concert venue in conjunction with album releases in order to stay in contact with its fans rather than using the media, which despised the group and which the group despised in return (Erlewine 1).  This group formulated not only the musical style which became the standard for heavy metal groups but also the format in which the music was presented.
	Plant has since denied the metal label for Led Zeppelin [I], stating, “That [album] was not heavy metal.  There was nothing heavy about that at all ... It was ethereal” (qtd. in Walser 6).  He also pointed out that “Black Dog,” a heavy and complex song that has been the source of frustration for homemade “garage” bands, has an alternating and unsteady rhythm that is far from the standard, headbanging beat of most metal songs (Mercurius 1).  Macan even argues that Led Zeppelin qualifies more as a band belonging to the second wave of rock-and-roll -- a class known as progressive rock.  Its attributes involved the prominence of acoustic guitars (like on the albums Led Zeppelin III and `%~@), varying time signatures (as in that 3/16 rhythm in “Black Dog”), and the technique of “layering,” or addition of instruments to a song one by one (as exhibited through the increasing volume of “Stairway to Heaven”) (138).  On the other hand, Jimmy Page has pointed out in an interview that he believes that the lyrical statement of Led Zeppelin were throwbacks to the former days of rock, when singers crooned emotional-laden and personal ballads instead of the more political and pragmatic statements being made during the late 1960’s and 1970’s.  When the same question of the applicability of the heavy metal label to this band, Page stated that it had no meaning for a group such as Led Zeppelin which relied on dynamics, “light and shade, drama, and versatility” -- all traits which he did not observe in the constantly amplified riffs of the whole metal genre (Davis 104).  Even though by the 1980’s he began to concede that, in some musical aspects of some tracks, the band had crossed over into the metal style, Page was still vehemently opposed to the idea of the generic “metalness” of Led Zeppelin (Davis 327).  Although it was apparent that critics and fans alike would be swift to judge the group’s music as a primary influence in heavy metal, the actual members of Led Zeppelin have consistently attempted to deflect any such attempt to define their style without regard to the varied styles of all the songs in their catalog.
	Nonetheless, the musical impact which these four British artists have had on the sound of several forms of heavy metal has been substantial.  The band’s celebrated sound contrasts of quiet, slower portions with explosive, faster ones has been incorporated in songs like “Take Me Back (Deja Vu)” by Van Halen in the 1980’s (Wheeler, IFMTL3 1).  Porl Thompson, guitar player for the British rockers in The Cure, has stated that his early playing was laced with the intense energy component of Jimmy Page’s technique.  While The Cure pursued a musical path headed in a different direction of experimentation from Led Zeppelin, the band still covered songs like “In My Time of Dying” in its formative days (Wheeler, Quotes File 1-2).  Candlebox, a hard-rock band arising from the “grunge” music era of Seattle, Washington, has publicly named Led Zeppelin as one of its greatest influences for its own style of blues-based music and poetic lyrics (Cohen 24).  Although he originally found rock to be too sticky-sweet to be taken seriously, Flea, the bassist for the highly popular hard-rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers, claimed in Rolling Stone that he was really turned on to harder rock by a fellow guitarist who played Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix albums for him (Neely 66).  Scott Weiland, the lead singer of the Californian band Stone Temple Pilots, has called Led Zeppelin “probably the single most influential band” on the sound of his own group.  “For Robert [DeLeo, guitarist], Dean [DeLeo, bassist], and Eric [Kretz, drummer], Zeppelin are [sic] like their bible, their Elvis Presley.”  As for his own tastes, Weiland said that he could appreciate his predecessor’s musical style but that he did not have the stratospheric vocal range or affinity for “dungeons-and-dragons-esque” lyrics necessary to mirror the voice of Robert Plant(qtd. in Culley 22).  Solo artist Tori Amos has confessed to borrowing sound clips from Jimmy Page and that one can simply listen to her music once or twice to note how she “steals from him” (qtd. in Wheeler, Quotes File 2).
	Sometimes, the influence of Led Zeppelin on the sound of other bands has not been so specifically stated by the band itself, but instead made by the observations of critics and the general public.  The hard-driving bands U2, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains have all been cited for borrowing clips of Led Zeppelin tunes for some of their own respective works (Davis 338).  Since many listeners had commented on a significant correlation between the opening section of Edward Van Halen’s guitar solo “Eruption” and Jimmy Page’s guitar solo in the middle of “Heartbreaker,” the Van Halen member admitted that he had been inspired to write the technique used in the song after he had seen Page perform his composition live in 1971 (Wheeler, IFMTL1 1).  A newspaper critic for The Washington Post once remarked that, in the early days of the Canadian metal group Rush, its style in concert was reminiscent of Led Zeppelin through the high-pitched, Plant-like vocals from bassist Geddy Lee and the Page-emulating solos from guitarist Alex Lifeson (Rohter 1).  A recent single by the hard-rock band Pearl Jam, “Given to Fly,” has repeatedly been noted to resemble the Led Zeppelin song “Going to California” in terms of chord structure and mood (Strung 1; Led Zeppelin, `%~@).  Beat, an Australian magazine, has derided another song by the same band, “No Way,” for having a drum rhythm nearly identical to Bonham’s part in Led Zeppelin’s “When the Levee Breaks” (Joveski 1).  An issue of Playboy Magazine stated that the sound of the group Soundgarden was an interpretation of Led Zeppelin’s harder aspects, as exhibited through songs such as “Black Dog,” through the perspective of a grunge band in the vein of Candlebox (Milne 1).  The 1994 single “Shine” by Georgia hard-rockers Collective Soul, while not an overt copycat of any particular Led Zeppelin tune, had some of its mid-1970’s characteristics like multiple guitars, a quieter start than finish, and a sandpaper quality in the singer’s voice (Kenny 30).  Even subconsciously, hard-rock and metal groups produce results that perceptive listeners can easily link to former Led Zeppelin sources.
	Led Zeppelin, with its mythologically inspired lyrics, has proven to be the grandfather of a type of metal music entitled folk metal, a genre which has taken the traditional songs and roots of Celtic and Scandinavian music and overlaid the heavy percussion and distorted strings of the electric-guitar-based rock world (Ratliff 33).  Welsh writer Aleisteir Crowley, whose black magic compositions deeply intrigued Jimmy Page, has also been cited as the lyrical source for “black metal” bands that have fascinations with the occult, pagan rituals, and interpreting these subjects with the orchestral and gothic interpretations on record (VH-1 Legends; Ratliff 32).  Likewise, the band is viewed as seminal in the category of “new metal” -- i.e., a type of music identified mainly for its mixture of the heavy overdubs and post-recording production of modern “industrial” music with the on-stage spontaneity and fervor of the punk bands of the late 1970’s (Ratliff 32).  Even with the numerous sub-categories of heavy metal music as a whole, Led Zeppelin has managed to serve as the avowed basis for the metal basics from which all of these groups emerged.  Perhaps, as Gill and Rotondi believe, the well-dispersed musical roots of each of the band’s members in world music crafted such a varied sound that the multiple subdivisions of the metal genre have initiated in order to emulate each of Led Zeppelin’s audible aspects separately (76, 78).
	Not only was the recorded music of Led Zeppelin a holy book for heavy metal and hard-rock bands that followed the group, but also the physical presence and visual style of the quartet inspired both disciples and copycats during the late 1970’s and 1980’s.  The music of the group never sold well because of the intervention of radio or the media, but instead due to the enormous and lavishly-produced venues at which Led Zeppelin performed and stayed in touch with its fans when on tour (VH-1 Legends).  This flashy style of putting on shows at stadiums rather than for television was later adopted by the aptly-deemed “stadium rock” bands of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s -- Kansas, Boston, Styx, Journey, Foreigner, Rush, Toto, REO Speedwagon, and others (Macan 138, 186).  This method of physically presenting the band in the flesh to its fans resulted in the attraction of equal numbers of female and male fans, which is interesting considering that other such heavy bands have generally appealed only to die-hard teenage males (McDonald 1).  Those female followers who gave their bodies as well as their money to Led Zeppelin’s men became known as groupies and installed themselves as another excess, along with drugs, of the huge productions of stadium performances (VH-1 Legends).  When Led Zeppelin did not tour in 1976, a new spawn of bands patterned on the group cropped up in the United States to perform Led Zeppelin covers or to attempt to reproduce its sound and stage domination.  These bands, like Boston (whose “More Than a Feeling” followed up and was modeled after the intense popularity of “Stairway to Heaven”), featured guitarists chugging out power-filled chords like Page had done and blonde-maned lead singers belting out mythological lyrics like Plant (Davis 268).  The metal groups Whitesnake, Great White, and Kingdom Come were all decried as Led Zeppelin rip-offs both in music and in style of sexually-alluring dress -- tight leather pants and wide-open shirts (Davis 340, VH-1 Legends).  Even the ex-lead singer of Whitesnake, David Coverdale was often plastered on the cable television channel Music Television (MTV) as a Robert Plant twin -- both in terms of appearance with his long blonde locks and high, shrieking vocal range (Davis 340).  Plant derisively declared him to be “David Coverversion” (qtd. in Davis 340).  Although the guitarist for the band Guns ‘n’ Roses, Slash, is famous for his cool, collected pose with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, with his black curls of hair flowing all over his shoulders, and with his Les Paul model guitar strapped low on his body, this exact look was veritably invented by Page, who has been photographed resembling Slash’s posture a decade before Guns ‘n’ Roses even existed (Wheeler, IFMTL3 1; Drury 1).  Although the music of Led Zeppelin defined the sound of later metal bands, the same groups were often quick to emulate the physical traits of their idols in Led Zeppelin as well.
	The multitudinous influences of this band have not all fallen in the world of heavy metal.  Numerous softer rock-and-roll groups and artists have pointed to Led Zeppelin as an influential factor in their styles, and their most common method of displaying that impact and of paying homage to the band has been to cover Led Zeppelin hits in concert and on recordings.  A 1995 tribute album seemed to reflect this result across a wide spectrum of modern musicians, from the lighter popular rock (“pop”) of Duran Duran and Sheryl Crow to the more metallic Helmet and the Rollins Band to the quirky alternative artists Four Non-Blondes, Blind Melon, Big Head Todd and the Monsters, and Tori Amos (Puterbaugh 79).  Other heavily-inspired groups included the acoustic Hootie and the Blowfish (who did their version of the acoustic Led Zeppelin tune “Hey Hey What Can I Do”)  and Stone Temple Pilots (who rendered the electric “Dancing Days”) (Puterbaugh 79; Led Zeppelin, Houses).  It is fitting that Stone Temple Pilots chose this song to cover, since the band stole the main riff from “Dancing Days” for their own 1996 release “Trippin’ on a Hole in a Paper Heart” (Led Zeppelin, Houses; Stone Temple Pilots).  Another series of recordings, all called The Song Retains the Name, has been cut with both radical folk artists and punk rock bands covering numerous Led Zeppelin staple tunes (Rumori, [2 Feb. 1998] 1).  Modern-day recognition alluding to the most readily recognized Led Zeppelin song, “Stairway to Heaven,” has included the song “Hairway to Steven” and the album “Elevator to Hell,” both from the Butthole Surfers (Schwarz 165).  Incidentally, this Texas band had one of its albums produced by Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones (Gore 28).  The college-student band Bongwater featured a cover blending the Led Zeppelin [I] songs “How Many More Times” and “Dazed and Confused” with Chinese lyrics called “Dazed and Chinese” plus an intact rendering of the 1971 `%~@ track “Four Sticks” (Rumori, [2 Feb. 1998] 1).  Perhaps the most creative offspring of the band is California’s Dread Zeppelin, which covers Led Zeppelin songs in the reggae style of Jamaica, as Led Zeppelin themselves had done tongue-in-cheek with their song “D’yer Mak’er” (Davis 341; Led Zeppelin, Houses).  The perennial best-selling rock band Aerosmith frequently plays “Train Kept A-Rollin’” -- the Yardbirds’ classic of Page’s early days in the music business -- live (Davis 268).  Likewise, the Seattle-based female band Heart performs several Led Zeppelin songs, especially “Rock and Roll,” which it has made its permanent show-opener in concert, and “The Battle of Evermore” on one of its albums (Davis 268; Lester 1).
	Other tunes and performance styles by these types of more mellow rock artists have been unrelentingly compared to Led Zeppelin over the years by critics.  Heart’s hit “Barracuda” has been believed to have ripped its bass line and drum track off the 1976 epic “Achilles [sic] Last Stand” by the English band (Davis 268; Led Zeppelin, Presence).  The massive hit for the Southern-US rock/country band Lynyrd Skynyrd, “Free Bird,” has, like “More Than a Feeling,” challenged “Stairway to Heaven” as the most frequently requested song on the radio largely because it too was made from the “Stairway” mold of gradually increasing speed and volume (Davis 268).  Modern drummers like Phil Collins and Mutt Lange, the percussionist for “pop”-rock star Bryan Adams, have utilized the explosive reverberation and other special effects that John Bonham had embodied in augmenting his own drums’ sound (as in the post-production manipulation of his part in the song “When the Levee Breaks”) (Wheeler, IFMTL3 1; Led Zeppelin, `%~@).  
	The most blatant copying of Led Zeppelin’s songs has occurred in the field of rap and hip-hop music.  Today’s rap performers “sample,” or remove a segment from one song and insert it into another, guitar riffs and drum patterns from several Led Zeppelin sources.  The songs “Cosmic Trigger Happy” by Glamorous Hooligan, “Valves” from Journeyman, “Because You’re My Baby” by Black & White, and “Beats and Pieces” by Coldcut all have sampled part of Bonham’s drums from “When the Levee Breaks.”  This song, in conjunction with “The Ocean” and “Custard Pie,” completes the Led Zeppelin trio of melodies included in part in one Beastie Boys song -- “Licensed to Ill.”  Meanwhile, Daddy Freddy’s “Daddy Freddy’s in Town” has a handful of various Led Zeppelin samples, but it borrows mainly from “Black Dog” as its theme (Rumori, [2 Feb. 1998] 1).  Some random drum fills from Bonham were incorporated by the 1980’s groups Frankie Goes to Hollywood for their early rap song “Relax,” while other segments of songs have been sampled without credit in other releases by the Beastie Boys with Rick Rubin (Wheeler, IFMTL3 1).  For a 1998 remake of the film Godzilla, the Led Zeppelin tune “Kashmir” will be covered by Tom Morello, the guitarist for the group Rage Against the Machine, and remixed by Puffy “Puff Daddy” Combs.  However, for this release, Jimmy Page himself will be recording some guitar parts as well (2.20.98 1).  Considering that Led Zeppelin produced songs covering the aspects of several musical styles, it is only fitting that its musical influence should extend into more than one genre of sound.