redstate.com By Jerry Wilson
In popular music, each decade brings its highs and lows wherein quality exists independently of popularity. A classic song or artist often stands next to something and someone from the same time period best forgotten out of the sheer embarrassment that people should feel for having bought this stuff. For example, the 1970s subjected us to disco, “Feelings,” and “Desiderata.” It apologized for this with Led Zeppelin.
Led Zeppelin’s mix of heavy blues, acidic psychedelia, and pastoral English folk worked seamlessly with lyrical perusals of topics such as Tolkien’s contemporary mythology alongside more standard fare of love and love lost. Channeled through the ferocious guitar of Jimmy Page and soulful wail of Robert Plant’s vocals, with invaluable enablement from John Paul Jones’ bass and keyboard work locked in with John Bonham’s nimble sledgehammer drumming style, at their peak, Led Zeppelin was, indeed, as Plant sang in “Immigrant Song” from the band’s third album, the hammer of the gods.
Based in an era well before social media informed everyone of everything about everyone else whether you wanted to know it or not, Led Zeppelin reveled in creating a mystique about itself that would be impossible to replicate today. The band established an image as musical warriors from a distant time, an unearthly specter unencumbered by societal limitations, as it was not content with merely stretching the boundaries of what was possible but eliminating them altogether.
Multiple books have been written about Led Zeppelin’s history since its end as an active entity following the 1980 death of Bonham from pulmonary aspiration due to excessive alcohol consumption. Aside from a photo-heavy coffee table book, there is no band-authorized biography. Given the band’s deserved reputation for backstage decadence, it is not difficult to understand why the remaining members prefer letting people talk — which they will anyway — than feed the salacious gossip machine. Into this background steps “Becoming Led Zeppelin,” an authorized documentary with full band participation that completely ignores the sex and drugs angle in favor of rock‘n’roll. As it turns out, this is a wise decision…
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