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BEST LED ZEPPELIN BOOK


JiMiHeNdRiX1967

What is your favorite zeppelin book  

78 members have voted

  1. 1. what is your favorite zeppelin Book

    • When Giants Walked the Earth
    • Hammer Of the Gods
    • Stairway To Heaven ( Richard Cole's book)
    • Whole Lotta Led Zeppelin
    • When Jimmy Page's book comes out and everyones read it, i'll put it up, because i guess it counts)
    • Other (sorry if i missed your favorite)


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It's been a long time since I read it and other than mags,it was for me the first book about the band.The good bad and the ugly.A good read but Davis IMHO focus heavily on the black magic/groupies/debauchery things.Nothing wrong with that but was all the truth? Don't know.He did admit that a lot 'insider' info came from Richard Cole,who did write his own book also(Stairway to Heaven,Led Zeppelin uncensored.) You can't go wrong with a Dave Lewis book,I consider Led Zeppelin:the concert files and Led Zeppelin:A celebration, excellent reads.

Remember to read books by their contemporaries on their accounts of the band.

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I second what Anjin-san said; all my LZ "knowledge" is thanks to everything Dave Lewis has written and compiled so far. Other than "Light and Shade" by Brad Tolinski, which is a collection of past interviews with JP, and the chapter on Jimmy in "Isle of Noises" (even if they got his birthday wrong and other factual errors in the Kindle version), everything else is dime store voyeurism.

ETA: this obviously does not include JP's pictorial autobio nor the biography about Peter Grant.

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I found it inflammatory, and not consistent with many other books that I have read. My belief is that this book enhanced and exploited a lot of Zep lore. I don't like it.

It's been a long time since I read it and other than mags,it was for me the first book about the band.The good bad and the ugly.A good read but Davis IMHO focus heavily on the black magic/groupies/debauchery things.Nothing wrong with that but was all the truth? Don't know.He did admit that a lot 'insider' info came from Richard Cole,who did write his own book also(Stairway to Heaven,Led Zeppelin uncensored.) You can't go wrong with a Dave Lewis book,I consider Led Zeppelin:the concert files and Led Zeppelin:A celebration, excellent reads.

Remember to read books by their contemporaries on their accounts of the band.

All three surviving members of the band have cast doubts on its accuracy,with one article summarising their collective view of the book as a "catalogue of error and distortion."Guitarist Jimmy Page has stated:I think I opened [the book] up in the middle somewhere and started to read it, and I just threw it out the window. I was living by a river then, so it actually found its way to the bottom of the sea.According to the band's vocalist Robert Plant:The guy who wrote that book knew nothing about the band. I think he'd hung around us once. He got all his information from a guy who had a heroin problem who happened to be associated with us. The only thing I read was the "After Zeppelin" part, because I was eager to get on with the music and stop living in a dream state.The band's bassist, John Paul Jones stated:It's a very sad little book. It made us out to be sad little people. He ruined a lot of good, funny stories.John Paul Jones once refused to sign a copy of the book.

Thank you all for your input.

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I'm a fan of the Dave Lewis books--and I liked WGWTE. I also liked Heaven and Hell. (This book's introduction--where the writer talks about the sheer volume of crowd noise in Tampa stadium prior to Zep's '77 show--is memorable. He describes how Zep's audience in Tampa is far louder than the audiences for other major bands of the era who played Tampa-- MUCH louder than The Who's audience, for example.) I know that HOTG's is much criticized for being embellished and inaccurate--this seems true--but I still thought it was a good read.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 4 weeks later...

I just finally got around to reading and reviewing When Giants Walked the Earth...for all of its faults, I still think it's the best overall bio on the band.

http://rnrchemist.blogspot.com/2014/06/book-review-when-giants-walked-earth.html

The only bad part were the "imagined" bits in italics he peppered the book with. Otherwise, I thought it was quite good.

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  • 4 weeks later...

"When Giants Walked The Earth". I have it, and it's a good book.

I just read “When Giants Walked the Earth: A Biography of Led Zeppelin” by Mick Wall. I don’t know if it’s the “best” or not but as a narrative it is very thorough and a good read.

I do not have much to compare it to, I have Cole’s “Stairway to Heaven” (bought and read in the ‘90s and forgotten) and Stephen Davis’ “Hammer of the Gods” (bought and read, I'm pretty sure, in the mid ‘80s and forgotten).

Oh, I almost forgot, I have “Heaven and Hell” and it’s a very good book though it is a series of essays so the narrative portion of the entire Led Zeppelin story is far less detailed than WGWTE. Moreover, WGWTE goes up to and quite a ways past the O2 show in London whereas HAH is circa 1991. HAH is almost a reference book; it has a great section on bootlegs, a complete listing of all of the band’s shows, back story on all or almost all of the songs, and the pictures are great. Try to get HAH used somewhere, it’s definitely worth having on your shelf!

Back to WGWTE… The italicized bits at the beginning of chapters/sections [where the author works to put you inside the band members’ heads (and Grant’s)] became a bit much for me by the end but I read them anyway so I did not miss any of the info they do contain. That said; I did learn the brand name of Plant’s record player when he was young so there is that. :-)

One last thing about WGWTE, you’re going to learn way too freakin’ much about Crowley, imho.

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"Trampled Under Foot". "When Giant Walked The Earth" and "Light And Shade" are also excellent. I'd say "I'm With The Band" is also pretty good at capturing some of the atmosphere of the band's early days.

"Hammer Of The Gods" is just wall-to-wall scandalmongering - you wouldn't think they'd ever done a stroke of work between the drugs and the groupies and the whatever else. There's not a hint of the hard work or the discipline or the musicianship or the years of practice needed to do what they did. The guy just doesn't write intelligently about music at all - although in "LZ-75" I'd say he did some good work in capturing some of the atmosphere of those days and the personalities. It's depressing how few rock writers seem able to do both.

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these two books by Dave Lewis: then as it was/over europe 1980. both are great reads. he also runs tight but loose website/magazine. he as written other books on zeppelin.

I have thse too and get the magazine

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I just read “Led Zeppelin: The Oral History of the World's Greatest Rock Band” by Barney Hoskyns.

It’s another good read (after recently completing WGWTE). The sheer volume of interested parties quoted from is really something. It is very, very different from WGWTE. Although I enjoyed it, I don’t think I’d recommend it to someone looking for their first Zeppelin book. IMHO, I’d say this title may work best as someone’s second or even third LZ book.

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  • 1 month later...

Can anyone recommend a good book for a beginner Zep fan? I've not read any of them yet. Thanks!

"When Giants Walked The Earth" is the best standard, chronological, start-to-finish biography. (Just skip the bits in italics, it's embarrassing). Then I'd move on to "Trampled Under Foot."

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Can anyone recommend a good book for a beginner Zep fan? I've not read any of them yet. Thanks!

I wouldn't start with WGWTE because the italicized part is too off-putting. I might start with Hammer of the Gods --a controversial recommendation I know -- or perhaps a book such as Trampled Underfoot or Heaven and Hell.

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I wouldn't start with WGWTE because the italicized part is too off-putting. I might start with Hammer of the Gods --a controversial recommendation I know -- or perhaps a book such as Trampled Underfoot or Heaven and Hell.

Cool. Why is it considered controversial?

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