The best band ever of the Led Zeppelin. ‘I’m In A Rock And Roll Band!’ crowned the Seventies rock gods, after boiling it down to a short list of three: Zep, Queen and The Beatles.
All good choices, of course, coming from a longlist of The Clash, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Joy Division, Nirvana, Radiohead, The Rolling Stones & The Smiths. Presumably a lot of names got weeded out along the way but it’s hard to argue with Led Zeppelin, an incredible coming together of nice musicians who pushed and pulled rock music in a host of new directions while fundamentally defining what it meant to be a hard, heavy, sexy rock band.
But personally, I would put them third on the list. The Beatles and The Rolling Stones are the bands who set almost the entire parameters for rock music in the Sixties. They remain the quintessential rock bands, and everything that followed is a kind of offshoot, either by reacting against them, or following through on their inspiration. Led Zeppelin certainly took up the baton and charged into the Seventies, but by that time the core of what it meant to be a rock band had already been defined.
I was talking this morning to the great English folk and rock guitarist Richard Thompson (he’s curating the Meltdown festival which starts this week). I made an observation about how rarely you hear the electric guitar in modern pop records, to which he retorted, “Good, its about time”. His argument was that the truly original and creative use of the guitar dominated rock template was essentially over by 1971, but its visceral and commercial entreaty is so great it has lingered on long past its sell by date.
All good choices, of course, coming from a longlist of The Clash, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Joy Division, Nirvana, Radiohead, The Rolling Stones & The Smiths. Presumably a lot of names got weeded out along the way but it’s hard to argue with Led Zeppelin, an incredible coming together of nice musicians who pushed and pulled rock music in a host of new directions while fundamentally defining what it meant to be a hard, heavy, sexy rock band.
But personally, I would put them third on the list. The Beatles and The Rolling Stones are the bands who set almost the entire parameters for rock music in the Sixties. They remain the quintessential rock bands, and everything that followed is a kind of offshoot, either by reacting against them, or following through on their inspiration. Led Zeppelin certainly took up the baton and charged into the Seventies, but by that time the core of what it meant to be a rock band had already been defined.
I was talking this morning to the great English folk and rock guitarist Richard Thompson (he’s curating the Meltdown festival which starts this week). I made an observation about how rarely you hear the electric guitar in modern pop records, to which he retorted, “Good, its about time”. His argument was that the truly original and creative use of the guitar dominated rock template was essentially over by 1971, but its visceral and commercial entreaty is so great it has lingered on long past its sell by date.
No comments:
Post a Comment