A whole lotta led Zeppelin

Interview, August, 2003 by Tim Blanks

HOW ONE OF THE WORLD'S GREATEST LIVE BANDS BECAME ONE OF THE YEAR'S BIGGEST ZEITGEIST INFLUENCES MORE THAN 30 YEARS AFTER THEIR PEAK

Led Zeppelin changed my life. I was a screwed-up-tight schoolboy when I saw them in Auckland, New Zealand, on a midsummer night in 1972, shortly after the release of their epochal fourth album. The stage was a distant blur. Fortunately, the couple beside me had binoculars. It was during the showpiece "Dazed and Confused" that Jimmy Page began to ravage his guitar with a violin bow and my synapses involuntarily combusted. The sound was so alien, so witchy--coming from a man rumored to be in touch with dark forces--that I was whisked out of my seat, compelled to dance in the pagan style popular among mutant hippies of the day. The binocular duo shrank in terror, but I didn't care--in fact, I never really cared again what other people thought of me. A therapist would have called that a breakthrough--but who needs therapy when you have Zeppelin's Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, and John "Bonzo" Bonham?

I'd pore over the pictures of Zeppelin in the New York City music magazine Rock Scene, which chronicled the era in all its glamour--the boys hanging out at the Rainbow Bar & Grill in West Hollywood with their barely postpubescent groupies. Led Zeppelin's girlfriends! Sable Starr's platinum perm and Lori Maddox's baby Jagger lips signaled, "We're here, and you're not."

That was Led Zeppelin: effortlessly straddling grandeur and the gutter. "Schizophrenic" is how Jimmy Page would probably have described it, but that word also sums up the world's attitude toward the band over the years. From this shadowy vantage point in the 21st century, it's difficult to imagine a gonzo-riff-driven band like Led Zeppelin being discussed in the same breath as the Beatles, but their instant impact was all-consuming. That Auckland concert felt as though a substantial proportion of the country's population had gathered to be alternately assaulted and seduced by a sound that--brilliantly captured on How the West Was Won (Atlantic), the recently released chart-topping three-CD set, featuring performances from a swing through California that same year, and the accompanying DVD, Led Zeppelin, with its reams of previously unreleased footage--was often astonishingly avant-garde.

On the other hand, their career--which began when they were brought together by Page in London in the summer of 1968, following the dissolution of the Yardbirds, and ended when John Bonham, having choked on his own vomit in his sleep after a drinking binge, died in September 1980--also spanned the decade of glam, punk, and disco. Disciples of all three genres regarded Zeppelin as the Great Satan, primogenitor of headbanger hell and poodle-haired heavy metal. For every 16-year-old whose path was permanently altered, there was a fashionista recoiling with revulsion at the rolling thunder of Zeppelin in full flight. And then, to cap it all, the legacy was sealed by tragedy.

But, as Groucho Marx once so astutely observed, time wounds all heels. My favorite observation about the recent Zeppelin CD/DVD double whammy is that it's rock's equivalent of King Tut's tomb; maybe every pharaoh headed off into the afterlife with one of those fabulous golden face masks, but it's only Tut's that we remember. Shorn of the context--the audiences of Quaalude-numbed teens, the antics of the semicriminal road crew and management, the unholy abuse of groupies--the sheer extraordinariness of Led Zeppelin shines out in the face of our current quotidian drear. In one glancing moment during "Dazed and Confused" on How the West Was Won, as Plant's voice scats airily around Page's riffing, it seems as if the planets are aligning. Maybe they are, because at that moment, all things become one.

It's no wonder the zeitgeist is rolling over for Led Zeppelin at this particular moment: Zeppelinisms are seeping into fashion (laced-up denim, tiny tees, big hair) and music (the recent rock revival and the return of bacchanalia). Phoebe Philo claims inspiration from Robert Plant's blousy shirts for her new Chloe collection, and the White Stripes summon the spirit every time they take the stage. "Funk!" said a youthful chart-topper when asked recently why she loved the band. You could also add authenticity, originality, and passion--anything that suggests something rare, precious, and beautiful. Led Zeppelin was a one-time-only offer, and that's what we're responding to right now, when predigested pop culture dominates--however past its sell-by date it may be.

Tim Blanks is the host of the syndicated TV show Fashion File.