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What did Led Zep listen to in their creative heydays


Giordano

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Jimmy was influenced by Clapton's Let it grow, without which Stairway would have been denied.

In Clapton's autobiography he says that he was pretty chagrinned when he realized that he'd stolen "Let it Grow" from "Stairway" because he'd been critical of Zep not crediting blues artists for some of their songs!

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From Eric Clapton's book "Clapton: The Autobiography" page 148:

"One of the songs I had started was coming along quite well, and I was very proud of my inventiveness in the verse. This was "Let It Grow", and it was several years before I realized that I had totally ripped off "Stairway To Heaven", the famous Zeppelin anthem, a cruel justice seeing as how I'd always been a severe critic of theirs."

Now this can be put to rest.

Ah, I should have read further before I posted.

Thanks!

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I'm honestly not trying to be a smartass or anything so please don't take in that way but Giordano mentions Elvis in his very first post and then goes onto explain that he's looking for albums from their collections that Zep and their colleagues may have appreciated rather than the obvious early influences like Elvis and blues artists that are well known to most Zeppelin fans. He clarifies further by narrowing it down to what they may have been listening to between the years of '68-'76. At least that's the impression I got as to what he was looking for.

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I'm honestly not trying to be a smartass or anything so please don't take in that way but Giordano mentions Elvis in his very first post and then goes onto explain that he's looking for albums from their collections that Zep and their colleagues may have appreciated rather than the obvious early influences like Elvis and blues artists that are well known to most Zeppelin fans. He clarifies further by narrowing it down to what they may have been listening to between the years of '68-'76. At least that's the impression I got as to what he was looking for.

Point taken

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Point taken

"that's allright, mama" , Luckily this is just a LZ forum, imagine making such a mistake in real life :-)

Indeed, Jahfin is right.

I was kind of looking for a Led Zep take on what IMO is the golden age of rock music.

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I'm honestly not trying to be a smartass or anything so please don't take in that way but Giordano mentions Elvis in his very first post and then goes onto explain that he's looking for albums from their collections that Zep and their colleagues may have appreciated rather than the obvious early influences like Elvis and blues artists that are well known to most Zeppelin fans. He clarifies further by narrowing it down to what they may have been listening to between the years of '68-'76. At least that's the impression I got as to what he was looking for.

Thank you. :goodpost:

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I can imagine them not really having too much time to actually dig into what is hot and what is not while living the schedule they were living.

especially those first two years with the tours and constant travelling.

Later on they had more time and luxury to maybe expand their horizons a bit

But i'm betting that their knowledge of the current music scene in 69/70/71 limited itself mostly to whoever they shared the bill with... and some record that got spun during an after party.

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I know that in the late 70s they were very into stuff like Dave Edmunds, Nick Lowe and Dr Feelgood . Bonzo was very keen to watch DF and Rory Gallagher play live when they were on the TV show "Alright Now" with him in 1980.

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I'm guessing "Reeling in the Years" or "Bodhisattva".

Sounds plausible.

the intro to Reelin' is so creative.

slightly of topic: the solo of SD's Kid Charlemagne on The Royal Scam is also breathtaking.

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"that's allright, mama" , Luckily this is just a LZ forum, imagine making such a mistake in real life :-)

Indeed, Jahfin is right.

I was kind of looking for a Led Zep take on what IMO is the golden age of rock music.

Yup, my bad :peace:

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Sounds plausible.

the intro to Reelin' is so creative.

slightly of topic: the solo of SD's Kid Charlemagne on The Royal Scam is also breathtaking.

I do remember reading that Page was impressed by the Reelin In The Years solo. And I totally agree about Kid Charlemagne, one of my all time favorite solos!

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  • 2 weeks later...
Jimmy was influenced by Clapton's Let it grow, without which Stairway would have been denied.

It's a stretch. There is a guitar melody in there that resembles the opening Stairway melody but it doesn't match up for long. Let it Grow repeats that same melody, but Stairway's is more dynamic. Let it Grow has a standard verse and chorus structure, which also repeats the guitar melody throughout the whole song. This doesn't occur in Stairway, which has a progressive structure that builds until releasing at "And as we wind on down the road..."

Stairway is an entirely different animal, with no chorus, while Let it Grow is more pop sounding with repeating choruses at the end of the song. There's probably 3 or less Led Zeppelin songs that repeat the chorus at the end.

Unless Page admits to listening to the song pre-Stairway or starting with the guitar melody as a base for Stairway, I'd say there's no relationship between the songs. There's only so many notes and chord progressions and at the end of the day there's a good chance you've done something similar to someone else's work.

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The Police, Rush, and Captain & Tenille (Muskrat Love in particular).

You kid, but Bonzo was photographed with a Police patch on his jacket, and had mentioned to his brother Mick when the Police first came onto the scene that (paraphrasing) they might be the type of band that could topple Zeppelin.. Not that Bonzo had anything to worry about as good as the Police were, they were no Zeppelin.

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  • 3 weeks later...

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