Jump to content

Random Newspaper Articles

Conneyfogle
 Share

Recommended Posts

PlanetPage

PlanetPage

Posted
Posted

Thirty five years later these two articles have been warmly welcomed to the archive...and shared here:

19770107WinnepegFreePress.jpg

Winnepeg Free Press, January 7, 1977

19770117MontrealStar.jpg

Montreal Star, January 17, 1977

Scans courtesy Steve A. Jones Archive

...tks SAJ for these, I searched for this earlier along with Man-Pop but not far enough to '77...I will look into some further publications, if there is any further commentary, please post it..

Link to comment
Share on other sites
  • Administrators
sam_webmaster

sam_webmaster

Posted
  • Administrators
Posted

Thirty five years later these two articles have been warmly welcomed to the archive...and shared here:

19770107WinnepegFreePress.jpg

Winnepeg Free Press, January 7, 1977

Scans courtesy Steve A. Jones Archive

$%28KGrHqN,%21mEE8Lkme5u3BPIZWim3Z%21%7E%7E60_3.JPG

http://www.ebay.com/...R-/260942791324

$(KGrHqV,!qEE8WZ9U-wIBPItNz6zNg~~60_3.JPG

http://www.ebay.com/itm/270126CR-LED-ZEPPELIN-CONCERT-ADVERT-MONTREAL-JANUARY-17-1977-NEWSPAPER-1-1977-/260943948931

Link to comment
Share on other sites
  • 2 months later...
  • 1 month later...
  • 1 month later...
  • 7 months later...
kenog

kenog

Posted
Posted

I have been looking for articles to post on the site. I found this one from the International Business Times following the Kennedy Centre Honours. I think I hate the person who wrote it. He/she makes so many digs at Zeppelin e.g. saying that Peter Grant was "... essentially a thug" and "Thank God Bonzo never lived to see this". I am sure Bonzo's family, friends and fans would rather he was alive no matter what.

Source: International Business Times, 20121218


Led Zeppelin: When Rock Stars Age And Become Ordinary



If anyone needed a reminder that rock-and-roll is indeed dead – dead and buried with no hope of resurrection – ample evidence was provided recently in Washington DC when the surviving members of immortal super-group Led Zeppelin received The Kennedy Center Honors at the U.S. State Department for “lifetime contributions to American culture through the performing arts.”

Messrs. Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones (none of whom are US citizens as far as I know) were also feted by U.S. President Barack Obama.

“When Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham burst on the musical scene in the late ’60s, the world never saw it coming,” Obama gushed.

“It’s been said that a generation of people survived teenage angst with a pair of headphones and a Zeppelin album, and a generation of parents wondered what all that noise was about… Appreciate the fact that the Led Zeppelin legacy lives on.”

Obama also playfully referred to the band’s violent, self-destructive lifestyle on the road.

“We do not have video of this, but there were some hotel rooms trashed and mayhem all around, so it’s fitting that we’re doing this in a room with windows that are about three inches thick and Secret Service all around,” the president quipped, before referring to the rockers’ advanced ages.

“We honor Led Zeppelin for making us all feel young, and showing us that some guys who are not completely youthful can still rock.”

In a world where aging rock stars receive MBE awards, knighthoods from Queen Elizabeth and even appear as panelists on schlocky TV ‘talent’ programs, one should not be surprised by rock musicians appearing with the highest pillars of the Establishment.

However, the spectacle of Led Zeppelin with the most powerful man on earth – and everything that implies – was bizarre and beyond depressing.

When I was a boy, Led Zeppelin dominated pop-rock music like a colossus – they supplanted The Beatles and The Rolling Stones as the biggest, baddest, most popular and influential band on the planet. Not only did they sell an enormous amount of albums (reportedly at least 300 million records globally to date), generate tremendous revenue and wealth, but lived a life of excess and profligacy that established a standard of licentiousness that has never been matched, much less exceeded.

Indeed, Led Zeppelin, who were managed by a former wrestler named Peter Grant who was essentially a thug, lived out every red-blooded boy’s wildest nihilistic fantasies – incredible wealth, sex with thousands of girls, the consumption of every known type of alcohol and drug, and the ability to do virtually anything without fear of prosecution or any kind of responsibility and accountability.

But it came at a heavy price – Page developed a multi-year heroin addiction and, most tragically, drummer John Bonham died in 1980 at the very young age of 32, leading to their break up, exactly ten years after The Beatles disbanded.

In retrospect, in the pantheon of immortal rock bands, Led Zeppelin occupies a space somewhat below the Beatles, Stones and The Who. Detractors point out that Page and Plant were mediocre songwriters (in fact, many of the group’s earliest songs were simply re-workings of American blues records) and, worse, their massive success virtually single-handedly created the phenomenon known as “arena rock” where bands performed in huge outdoor stadiums before tens of thousands of fans.

Having wisely shunned appearing on TV, Led Zeppelin prompted (forced) fans to see their heroes in person at wild, loud – often four-hour long marathon -- concerts.

Partly due to the efforts of Grant, Led Zeppelin was granted extraordinary (perhaps unprecedented) creative control over their material, including the content of their albums and their release dates. Moreover, lead songwriters Page and Plant gained lucrative royalty rates that made them the envy of their peers.

Led Zeppelin’s sensational rise – and seemingly endless string of colossally successful LPs – coincided with the moral deterioration of the rock music genre. By the mid-1970s, under the stresses of high inflation, rising unemployment, and the Arab oil embargo, the idealistic, communal nature of 1960s pop-rock music – best exemplified by the stirring songs of The Beatles and Bob Dylan – had vanished, replaced by cynicism and nihilism. This movement would reach its peak in the explosion of violently angry British punks, but Led Zeppelin already embodied this negative spirit a few years earlier.

However, the characterization of Led Zeppelin as a “heavy metal” band is patently unfair and inaccurate. Indeed, I would estimate that at least one-third of their output comprised gentle acoustic ballads, often inspired by folk and Celtic music (a world away from head-banging rock-and-roll).

I always regarded Led Zeppelin as a better-looking, but somewhat less inspiring, version of The Who. Whether by design or by coincidence, Led Zeppelin’s parallels with the earlier group were uncanny. There was the dark-haired, cerebral, tormented, intellectual leader and principal songwriter (Page and Pete Townshend); the handsome, muscular, sexy blonde front-man (Plant and Roger Daltrey); the quiet, immobile, unemotional bassist (Jones and John Entwistle); and the wild, uncontrolled, manic, suicidal drummer who died young (Bonham and Keith Moon).

Now, more than 30 years after their glorious peak, the surviving group members are old men in their 60s. Plant, still wearing his now grey-hair long, is stooped and seemingly frail; Page, a legitimate ‘rock guitar god,’ is aged and subdued, while Jones, perhaps the most nondescript, anonymous rock star in history, looks like a retired insurance salesman.

Bonham avoided this sad spectacle by dying young – after all isn’t that in keeping with the true ethos of rock and roll?

Witnessing Led Zeppelin wearing tuxedos and glad-handing with US politicians reminds us that rock-and-roll is simply a business – a multi-billion dollar industry – that is just as soulless and profit-driven as any other ‘boring’ corporation. It’s really all about money and joining the mainstream establishment.

Thank God Bonzo never lived to see this.

Source: International Business Times, Tue, 18 Dec 2012
Item: 416353.20121218


Link to comment
Share on other sites
kenog

kenog

Posted
Posted

This isn't an article as such - it's a review of Susan Fast's LZ book, but I thought I'd include it anyway.

University of Toronto Quarterly 74.1 (2004/2005) 604-605

Susan Fast. In the Houses of the Holy: Led Zeppelin and the Power of Rock Music. Oxford University Press 2001. vii, 248. $22.00

In the annals of rock music, the British quartet Led Zeppelin remains both an iconic presence and a crucial dividing point. Ruling over the rock landscape for the initial two-thirds of the 1970s, the band, with its alternately thunderous and gentle musical approach, and its well-documented Dionysian excesses committed while on tour, eventually became one of the favourite targets of the punk-rock movement late in the decade, and soon found itself portrayed by brash upstarts such as The Clash and The Sex Pistols as the ultimate symbol of all that had gone wrong with rock and roll in the years since Elvis first shook his pelvis.

Here in the new millennium, Led Zeppelin, its champions, and its detractors are still going strong: in the short space of time since Susan Fast's In the Houses of the Holy was published, Zeppelin has returned to top the charts with the CD and DVD release of How the West Was Won, which documents searing live performances from 1972; meanwhile, post-Zeppelin 'grunge' rocker Courtney Love has recently released the satirical 'Zeplin Song,' which excoriates a male companion for constantly playing the same Zeppelin hit on his guitar. No doubt none of this attention comes as a surprise to musicologist and music criticism professor Susan Fast, who places herself and her ecstatic (initial and continuing) response to Zeppelin at the centre of her work: 'Listening to the strength and energy of [Led Zeppelin's] "Immigrant Song" was an empowering experience,' Fast writes. 'I had no idea what the lyrics were, but that riff ... its timbre so insistent and confident ... and [singer Robert] Plant's majestic if incomprehensible proclamations, made that song where I wanted to live.'

It is Fast's obvious love and enthusiasm for her subject matter that makes In the Houses of the Holy ultimately cohere, despite her at times unwieldy multidisciplinary critical approach, which combines journalism, musicology (including musical notation), critical theory, and even (in a democratic postmodern gesture) solicited fan responses. Of 'Stairway to Heaven,' the band's quintessential hit (and likely target of the aforementioned [End Page 604] Courtney Love satire), Fast notes that the song's movement from its folksy acoustic (rooted in seventeenth-century Tudor music) intro to its crashing electric climax comprises 'a journey ... from the rural/folk/archaic to whatever we might equate with electric instruments - certainly something more contemporary, technological, and ... urban.' The song's enduring appeal to a vast audience is rooted, she contends, in its creation of a living, contemporary mythology 'of connectedness to other people, to history, and to the supernatural world,' thus providing a psychic balm for those 'who feel alienated in their daily lives.'

Especially valuable here is Fast's critique (aided and abetted by the aforementioned fans) of Zeppelin's oftentimes uppity and elitist academic critics, those who seek to define the band's music as mere 'cock rock,' and its female fans as naïve, innocent dupes of this rampaging group of metallic marauders. Employing Bakhtin's theory of the carnivalesque, Fast instead portrays the band's characteristic excesses, both musical and performative, as a challenge to defined cultural boundaries and to societal decorum. Inverting the feminist notion of the harsh 'male gaze' by which women are turned into objects of desire, Fast repositions singer Plant and guitarist Jimmy Page as, 'in one sense ... passive objects of the female gaze, a controlling gaze that is partly responsible for the man acting as he does.' Humorously, the author further contends that, 'however many reasons there may have been for Plant to wear tight pants, it must be acknowledged that one was to attract women ... this is so obvious to my nonacademic women friends that they are incredulous when I tell them that the point still needs to be made in academic writing.'

Indeed, for all of the highfalutin' theorizing, pro or con, that surrounds a band as iconic as Led Zeppelin, perhaps one female fan of the band who speaks in Fast's book sums up the crux of the matter best: 'IT'S THE MUSIC, STUPID!' For those who enjoy intelligent commentary on the music, however, In the Houses of the Holy should suffice.

John V. Walker

Link to comment
Share on other sites
kenog

kenog

Posted
Posted
The untethered decadence of Led Zeppelin

Washington Post, The, 07/12/2012


In Led Zeppelin's heyday, the early 1970s, I noticed that certain women of my acquaintance seemed to shake with a near-visceral disgust when the band's name was mentioned. Now I know why. At first, rock journalist Barney Hoskyn's oral history of the band, "Led Zeppelin," captivates, and then slowly it begins to horrify. Not everyone described in it is a villain, but enough of the main characters become so grotesque that it's hard to avoid a sickly feeling that worsens as one turns the pages. As a group, the musicians and their entourage are like star athletes who turn up in the headlines as thugs; you can't forget the thrills they gave you, but you'll never feel the same about them again.

In the beginning, the four musicians were like any other hardworking lads besotted with a new sound. There was singer Robert Plant, a blues enthusiast who could go on for hours about his favorite American roots musicians when the rest of the band just wanted to party. Guitarist Jimmy Page was one of the most in-demand session players before he helped form the group. Page's studio work sometimes had him playing next to the third member, John Paul Jones, a virtuoso on several instruments and a skilled arranger as well. Percussion was supplied by John Bonham, the loudest, fastest drummer of his and perhaps any era.

Planty, Pagey, Jonesy, Bonzo, as they called each other: Like thousands of other young Englishmen of that day, they devoured the blues that American musicians took for granted, but they took their fandom one step further and transformed the sounds of Howlin' Wolf, Robert Johnson and Blind Willie McTell into something never heard before.

In this they were enabled by Granty, that is, Peter Grant, the physical giant who became their manager and helped create a new business model that, in addition to the band's talent and passion, is the other half of the formula that rocketed Led Zeppelin toward unimaginable riches as well as unspeakable decadence. Whereas earlier business people tried to wring the most out of bands before discarding them, the new crowd went all in to nurture and guide the groups.

Unless it's happened to you, you can't know what it's like to be eating beans on toast one day and pheasant under glass the next. The Led Zeps became gods before they became men. Hoskyns quotes Page: "People say, 'I grew up to Led Zeppelin.' And I say, 'So did I.' "

No wonder it all went to their heads. The sex and drugs were nonstop, as is to be expected. What appalls here is the violence. Bonham, Grant and tour manager Richard Cole veer out of control again and again; a journalist says, "I've never seen anyone behave worse in my life than Bonham and Cole. I once saw them beat a guy senseless for no reason and then drop money on his face." True, cocaine and alcohol, especially in combination, make people do things they wouldn't do otherwise, but I've never read a musical history that uses the words "sociopath" and "psychopath" as much as this one.

Not everyone was in on the mayhem, of course. Plant and Jones come off as decent chaps, overall. And when he wasn't leading the havoc, Grant was an extraordinarily successful manager. Part of his strategy was to keep the world's most outrageous band a relative secret by not issuing singles or appearing on television or cultivating the press; that way, as legendary groupie Bebe Buell recalls, "You didn't hear Led Zeppelin on the radio; you heard about them from the boys in your class. . . . I don't know if the music was designed to give boys power and sexual prowess, but I do know that when boys listened to it, they would become extremely cocky and full of themselves."

In the end, the songs speak for themselves: The permanent appeal of "Black Dog," "Immigrant Song" and "Whole Lotta Love" make Led Zeppelin, along with the Beatles, the Stones and Pink Floyd, one of the rare bands with intergenerational appeal.

Still, now I know why no woman ever asked me, "Who's your favorite Led Zep?"

bookworld@washpost.com

Kirby teaches at Florida State University and is the author of "Little Richard: The Birth of Rock 'n' Roll."

Led Zeppelin

The Oral History of the World's Greatest Rock Band

By Barney Hoskyns

Wiley. 538 pp. $35

Link to comment
Share on other sites
SteveAJones

SteveAJones

Posted
Posted (edited)

The untethered decadence of Led Zeppelin

Washington Post, The, 07/12/2012

In Led Zeppelin's heyday, the early 1970s, I noticed that certain women of my acquaintance...

...the Washington Post reviewer can turn in his Man Card, if he hadn't already done so during Led Zeppelin's heyday...

Edited by SteveAJones
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Dallas Knebs

Dallas Knebs

Posted
Posted

In the beginning, the four musicians were like any other hardworking lads besotted with a new sound.

uhhh... no, no they were not like any other...what a misinformed, misdirected statement.

Grant used harsh methods no doubt and a darker element was going on but to call him a thug is incorrect. Truly loyal and watchful is more accurate. I was around him on a few occasions not knowing who he was other than that he was important. No negative impressions whatsoever other than a potty mouth.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
kenog

kenog

Posted
Posted

Hi Dallas Knebs :) ,

Thanks for sharing your personal experience. I was in two minds as to whether to post the article, but generally if I find something LZ relevant, I put it on the site whether it is favourable or not.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Dallas Knebs

Dallas Knebs

Posted
Posted

Hi Dallas Knebs :) ,

Thanks for sharing your personal experience. I was in two minds as to whether to post the article, but generally if I find something LZ relevant, I put it on the site whether it is favourable or not.

glad you shared. Several forum members some of whom reported and answered to Grant are best suited to speak about him. Its awful that anyone would pull isolated actions or appearances out of the context of someone's job and hype, scrutinize and label. It's wrong.

Hope you find more articles to share.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
 Share
Go to topic listing

LEDZEPPELIN.com

Site Navigation

  • LedZeppelin.com Home
  • News
  • Discography
  • Merchandise
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy

    • Led Zeppelin Timeline

  • Concert Timeline / Database
  • Events
  • Photos
  • Video
    • ×
    ×
    • Create New...