DarkSeaDream

I’m not here to change anyone’s mind on the untouchable, legendary, almighty Dred Zeppelin. Just want to make a few irrefutable points against the band’s legacy. 

Plagiarism: 

Led Zeppelin 1. Of the 9 songs on this great debut album, 6 are stolen, or I should maybe say they inspired 6 of the tracks from this album. They’re blues artists, and blues artists are inspired by and often copy the work of other blues artists, right? Wrong. Led Zeppelin mostly credited themselves with their “compositions”—lyrics, instruments, and all.

Anyway, back to the stolen songs.

Led Zeppelin 1:

Stolen: Babe I’m Gonna Leave You, You Shook Me, Dazed and Confused, Black Mountain Side, I Cant Quit You Baby, How Many More Times.

Original: Good Times Bad Times, Your Time is Gonna Come, Communication Breakdown. 

Led Zeppelin II:

Stolen: Whole Lotta Love, The Lemon Song, Moby Dick, Bring It On Home.

Original: What is and What Should Never Be, Thank You, Heartbreaker, Livin Lovin Maid, Ramble On.

Led Zeppelin III:

Stolen: Since I’ve Been Lovin’ You, Gallows Pole, Hats off to Harper

Original: Immigrant Song, Friends, Celebration Day, Out On The Tiles, Tangerine, That’s The Way, Bron-Y-Aur Stomp.

Led Zeppelin IV:

When The Levee Breaks is credited to the original writers, everything else on this album is original. No, the Stairway to Heaven guitar melody isn’t stolen—end of.

Physical Graffiti: 

Boogie With Stu, credit to Ritchie Valens. They received a lawsuit over the deceased Valens for this one, though.

Traveling Riverside Blues by Robert Johnson, credited (I believe) to him, was covered by LZ.

A majority of their songs just suck.

Zeppelin I, II, IV, and Houses of the Holy are all great albums. I can’t name a bad track on them. Zeppelin III has one good song. Immigrant Song. Everything else is meh. Physical Graffiti has Kashmir, The Rover, and Houses of the Holy. Presence has Achilles Last Stand and In Through the Out Door has Fool in the Rain. Zeppelin songs are either really great or flat out garbage, no in between. With the great songs being Frankenstein studio monstrosities, they couldn’t perform live. Their discography isn’t as strong as anyone makes it out to be.

They were undisputedly the greatest at their respective instruments.

Many that were better than them, before and after. I’ll just use some of their contemporaries as examples, though.

Guitar: Blackmore, Jeff Beck, Robert Fripp, Frank Zappa, Alex Lifeson, Jimi Hendrix, and David Gilmour.

Vocals: Ian Gillan, Paul McCartney, Steve Marriott, Freddie Mercury, and Roger Daltrey are a few examples—no shriek-shrilling from these guys. 

Bass: Geddy Lee, Paul McCartney, Geezer Butler, John Entwistle, and Jack Bruce.

For drums, I don’t think anyone tops Bonham. He has equals on the instrument, and that’s as far as it goes for me. 

This is not to say they are bad players. They were a great collection of musicians. Just weren’t the greatest at what they did.

Disgusting Humans

I’m not going to delve into this one too much. I’m a fan of “separate the artist from the art”. The things these guys did were downright disgusting, though. Have a scroll through YouTube comments, and you’ll see unabashed support for their actions. Cause who wouldn’t want to be raped by Page or a Bonham, right? These guys are criminals.

The incidents:

Mud shark story involving Bonham tying up a 17-year-old and sodomizing her.

Page(26) having his manager Richard Cole abduct Lori Maddox(14)

Bonham is assaulting a woman in a bar

The entire group tried to rape a journalist 

Bonham attempted to rape a stewardess

As I said at the beginning of my post, I’m not trying to change anyone’s mind. Zeppelin was a great band, but not up to the praise they receive, though.