Sunday, August 24, 2003

Yeah But Which One Is The Guy Named “Led”?

Last night I drank beer and watched disc one of the new Led Zeppelin DVD. I’ve never seen The Song Remains the Same, so this was my first exposure to Zep onstage.

Jimmy Page was the one I couldn’t keep my eyes off of – he looked more like a mid-eighties college rock cult figure than a prototypical hard-rock guitar hero: white sneakers, non-faded straight-leg Levi’s, shiny belt buckle, long-sleeved oxford shirt, and sleeveless diamond-shapes cardigan sweater. Plus he did these little Chuck Berry-ish dances (followed by genuine toe-tapping) while playing. Very charming.

Zep as a whole took some getting used to. Almost all the songs were way too long, though when Page broke out the violin bow (ha! I forgot about that one!) I couldn’t help but laugh and smile and nod, thinking: blessed excess. Such excess comes back to haunt ya though. The next tune was “White Summer” which featured Page sitting on a chair making cool-sounding Middle Eastern noises on an electric guitar. Damn that dude played fast. Unfortunately this tune went on forever, but because I have endured Ravi Shankar in Monterey Pop I was able to tough it out.

“Whole Lotta Love” sounded much better than I thought it would; partly because I was reminded as to how as a kid hearing this tune on AM radio I thought the first line was “You need Kool-Aid…”, partly because during the “freakout” part Robert Plant kinda sounded like the freakout part in “Surfin’ Bird.”

The encore was cool as it featured the shortest, most intense songs, including Eddie Cochran’s “C’mon Everybody” and “Something Else.” Hmmm, the early days of rock ‘n’ roll?? … this sent me scrambling, rifling through my collection. Check it out:

1969: The Jeff Beck Group covers Elvis Presley’s “All Shook Up” and “Jailhouse Rock” on Beck-Ola.

1970: Rod Stewart (former Beck Group frontman) covers Eddie Cochran’s “Cut Across Shorty” on Gasoline Alley. Zep covers said Eddie Cochran tunes in concert.

1971: Stewart covers Elvis breakthrough song “That’s All Right” on Every Picture Tells A Story. Zep does “Rock and Roll” on their untitled fourth album, the beat is a direct lift from Little Richard’s “Keep A-Knockin’.”

Then I pulled out my Rod Stewart biography by Paul Nelson and Lester Bangs (out-of-print, but laugh-out-loud hilarious thanks to Lester’s put-ons and asides … look for it on ebay) and found an excerpt from a Stewart interview in the January 1972 issue of Creem:

“We (Beck Group) did a gig in New York City … the stage was full of people including Bonham, Page, Beck, me and Planty, and the guy who used to play bass with Jethro Tull. We were doing ‘Jailhouse Rock’ …”


So there you have it: two supergroups founded by ex-Yardbirds Guitar Gods, one of these bands features a soon-to-be solo superstar singer. And what do all these hepcats have in common? They all secretly wanted to be in Creedence Clearwater Revival.