CHAPTER 3
“Over the Hills and Far Away”
As the new decade dawned, no one could foresee the changes that would happen to American culture. The 1960s utopian hippie dream of peace and love had turned sour. We believed that music could set us free—that rock and roll was bigger than our lives and that it could raise us above the problems of growing up, of society, of violence and war. But the curtain came down on the 1960s with the Rolling Stones’ free concert at Altamont Raceway outside of San Francisco. On that strange day, in the midst of 200,000 people, Hell’s Angels hired as stage security stabbed and killed a member of the audience not far from the stage. Let it bleed ...
On a larger scale, violence continued in the form of the Vietnam conflict. The war in Southeast Asia dragged on. We had a front row seat in front of our televisions to the killings, atrocities, and body counts on the nightly news. It was the first televised war—one in which parents had actually seen their sons killed during the news broadcasts. If you were a male and had a low draft number, life was pretty scary. Country Joe’s antiwar anthem, “Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die,” had become too uncomfortably real for any draft-age guy. He realized that his mom could be “the first one on your block to have your boy come home in a box.”
For Jerry Prochnicky, it didn’t look too bad as far as being invited into the army was concerned. After he’d gone to college for two years, he still didn’t know what to major in or what he wanted to do. But he had gotten enough units to get an Associate Arts degree in Liberal Arts. “So I got the piece of paper to show something for my time,” he recalled. “Beyond that, I stopped going to school. My lottery number was something like 212, so there was little chance that I’d be drafted and sent to Vietnam. The world heavyweight boxing champion at that time, Muhammad Ali, was unjustly stripped of his title for refusing induction into the military. He said it best for us all: ‘I got nothing against those Vietcong.’”
America was at war with itself over Vietnam. Tension was in the air. Generational and cultural clashes at home intensified. Antiwar protests spread on campuses all over America. Then in 1970 President Nixon sent troops into Cambodia, escalating the war instead of ending it. What was going on? The fall of Saigon in 1975 finally closed the book on an ugly chapter that should have never been written—at the cost of 55,000 American lives.
The Watergate hearings in 1973 and 1974 were great televised theater. The collapse of the corrupt Nixon administration was far more globally entertaining to many than O. J. Simpson’s flight and trial would be two decades later. Nixon’s eventual resigning—or chickening out—of office was a disgrace to many Americans.
Growing up in the 70s was a comedown from the 60s. Most young Americans were angry, frustrated, and bored. One needs to remember that there were no MTV, no cell phones, no Internet, no reality shows, no DVDs or videos, no Game Boys. More than ever, the biggest popular cultural thing was music. But the music had changed.
The Beatles, the most influential band of the 1960s and perhaps of all time, announced their breakup in April 1970. Jim Morrison and rock and roll went on trial in Miami that August, the aftermath of the Doors concert there on March 1st, 1969. Morrison was charged with four counts: 1) Lewd and lascivious behavior 2) Indecent exposure 3) Open profanity 4) Drunkenness. There then followed three major deaths in rock within the next twelve months—Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison. The Miami trial had “killed” Morrison’s spirit and his body wasn’t too far behind. For fans Hulett and Prochnicky, who had both seen Morrison onstage, it was a sad end to what had been a talented rock performer and gifted poet. Jerry said, “I would have followed him to the end of the earth. He was a special friend of the music, and a part of me died with him.” But it was dangerous to be a rock star, to act like one, to be treated like one.
Music throughout the 1970s was fragmented, mirroring America’s dissatisfaction with the real world. There would be country rock, hard rock, easy listening, disco, funk, glam, metal, reggae, punk. Above it all rose Led Zeppelin. They appealed to both sides of the dividing line. Zeppelin had that hard edge, but didn’t drive you nuts. They were sort of cosmic and heavenly at the same time, too. It was a balance that people were drawn to, one that they really liked.
Led Zeppelin would become rock gods, arguably bigger than the Beatles. Just when music and big money came together, they gave new meaning to “sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll.” Led Zeppelin ruled the decade and no one did it bigger, badder, or wilder. They were tailor made for the louder, faster, post-hippie rock kids. Going to a Led Zeppelin concert was a rite of passage. To be a fan of this band was like being a member of an exclusive club. Zep news traveled in the back of cars, over the telephone and on the radio.
Zeppelin kicked off 1970 with a seven-city British tour. The news about the band’s appearance at London’s prestigious Royal Albert Hall spread quickly. Stuck with high taxes and unemployment, young Britons were also angry, frustrated, and bored. But on January 9th, all their troubles were left outside the hall, as inside, there would be some good rockin’ tonight. Albert Hall was stark and simple, so intimate that it was almost like you were alone in a living room with the band. There was nothing flashy. The show had no special lighting, dry ice clouds, fog machines or smoke bombs. There were just four hardworking musicians that concentrated on delivering an explosive performance.
Robert Plant’s face was all but obscured behind his mane of hair, but his voice was heard loud and clear. John Bonham was all muscle and moustache behind his ferocious drumming, while John Paul Jones clutched his bass guitar like a machine gun and threw out the lines with fitting strength and speed, holding together the volume that cascaded from the stage. Jimmy Page’s sleeveless harlequin sweater made a vivid contrast to his coming guitar theatrics. New Musical Express said that he looked like he had just come out of a department store. “The slight frame of Jimmy Page, clad like a Woolworth’s sales counter in Alf Garnett shirt, jeans and white plimsoles, belies the fearsome aggression of his guitar.”
“We’re gonna groove!” Plant cried to the packed hall, and Zeppelin did just that. The audience became so excited that many people were dancing around the stage. Plant incited this frenzy with his stage motions that made him appear as a whirling dervish. He wildly shook his head and hips, wailed and groaned to Page’s echoing volume, and strutted about the stage with complete confidence and arrogance. But he also was an accomplished vocalist in the best blues-soul–shouter tradition. As he leaped in the air, energy seemed to first ripple, then bounce off his body. Plant said about this show, “We had no expectations, but we knew we had something between us that was special.” As Page jumped, he unleashed a frenzy of climactic notes. Jones’ bass rumbled throughout the building, and every crack of Bonham’s snare or kick of his bass drum bombarded the audience. This was a band that was very much the sum of all its parts.
It was a two hour-plus blitzkrieg, a dynamic showcase that blew everyone’s minds. Page’s lightning-fast guitar breaks flew out on “I Can’t Quit You, Baby.” His Danelectro sounded like an army of guitars on “White Summer/Black Mountain Side.” And Plant went into part of one old blues song after another during “How Many More Times”—from “Boogie Chillun” to “Traveling Riverside Blues.” Plant led into “squeeze my lemon” by moaning, “One thing that everyone needs and wants so bad ... We’re gonna do it in Birmingham and Glasgow ... Glasgow needs it!”
And then John Bonham really got down to it with “Moby Dick.” His drum solo got a standing ovation. Near the end came “Whole Lotta Love” and “Communication Breakdown,” which provoked a response that easily could have been a flashback to an early Stones concert. Fans packed against the stage pounded it with their hands, shook their heads in wild, electric ecstasy. Then Page came out for the encores with his custom Gibson Les Paul Black Beauty model. The band devastated everyone with Eddie Cochran’s “C’mon Everybody” and “Something Else,” then ended on the blues with Plant on harmonica for “Bring It On Home.” And Zep sure as hell brought it on home that night! The entire spectacle was originally filmed as a one hour television special, but the idea was later scrapped. In 2003, Page finally had the show released on DVD, and fans can experience the event for themselves.
The Albert Hall show was a significant moment in Zeppelin’s history. First, it was a hugely triumphant return to London for the band. Even people like John Lennon, Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton had requested tickets. Second, it had taken place on Page’s birthday. And finally, Page met someone who would become very important in his life—French model Charlotte Martin. The two were introduced backstage and were instantly attracted to each other. After the tour ended on January 24, the two new lovers settled down at Page’s Pangbourne riverside house. Page would eventually marry Charlotte and have his first child with her, a daughter named Scarlet.
About this same time Page bought Boleskine manor, Aleister Crowley’s estate on the shores of Scotland’s Loch Ness. Along with persistent stories of a lake monster in the area, there were also rumors concerning the estate, including the ghost of a beheaded man haunting the house. According to Page, it was a residence long associated with tragedy. He said, “There were two or three owners before Crowley moved into it. It was also a church that was burned to the ground with the congregation in it. And that’s the site of the house. Strange things happened in that house that had nothing to do with Crowley. The bad vibes were already there.”
One will hardly be surprised at the vibes of the place when taking a short tour of the grounds. At the entrance to the property hangs a sign that reads PRIVATE—KEEP OUT ... BOLESKINE HOUSE. Loch Ness surrounds most of the property, and there is a long driveway that leads up to the actual house. The road wasn’t lit at night, and there were guard dogs that ran the grounds to keep out unwanted visitors. This sort of scene evokes images out of The Hound of the Baskervilles. If you’re lucky enough to outpace the dogs, then you pull your car up to the house. The house itself appears like a variety of different-shaped white cottages all pieced together, some with rounded towers and others with square towers. Each section has long, oblong windows made up of twelve rectangular panes of glass. Around the back of the house is an old graveyard containing ancient graves, crypts, and tombstones, many of which are several centuries old. Huge trees stand around the cemetery, silent sentries that also overlook Loch Ness Lake. Inside one of the rooms off a hallway is an old plaque that reads N, ALEISTER CROWLEY, POET, BLACK MAGICIAN, AND IMPRESSARIO.
Why was Page so fascinated with a character like Crowley? Part of the reason dates from Page’s schoolboy days, when he first read about him. (It’s useful to keep in mind the time in which Zeppelin became a phenomenon. By 1970, the 1960s’ dream of peace and love was faltering. Perhaps the revolutionary spirit and mysticism of the era darkened with the times. Page said that the first book he read about Crowley was The Great Beast, and this aroused a curiosity.
Born in 1875, Crowley said that he was driven to rebellion from his parents, who belonged to a strict Christian cult. He also claimed that he was visited by an ancient Egyptian spirit in 1904 who dictated The Book of the Law to him.
The basis of Crowley’s belief was rooted in personal liberation, to “enjoy all things of sense and rapture.” He wanted to use rituals and magic to create individual change. How did he specifically try to do this? With ritual orgiastic sex and drug taking. This credo fit right in with the 1960s philosophy of sexual liberation and drug-crazed behavior, one that Page lived in to the hilt.
Crowley viewed the Devil differently. Rather than seeing him as the complete personification of evil, he saw him as the bringer of intellectual and spiritual freedom—hence his saying “Do what thou wilt.” However, Page said, “I do not worship the Devil. But I am interested in magic. I feel Aleister Crowley is a misunderstood genius. Because his whole thing was liberation of the person, of the entity, and that restriction would foul you up, lead to frustration which leads to violence, crime, mental breakdown.”
The emphasis on personal achievement and fulfillment no doubt appealed to Page’s hopes and desires for the band. Indeed, he said, “When you’ve discovered your true will you should forge ahead like a steam train. If you put all your energies into it there’s no doubt you’ll succeed. Because that’s your true will.”
Although this point of view is obviously unapologetic ambition, it can hardly be considered a pact with the Devil. But besides engaging in self-destructive behavior like drug use, how far did Page go in flirting with the darkness? He did have quite a collection of Crowley artifacts like capes, wands, and boots. After Page acquired the ultimate Crowley artifact, the Boleskine House, he attempted to restore it to its condition when Crowley conducted his rituals. He even went so far as to have a satanist paint murals. The place was pretty freaky and scary, although Page didn’t seem to think so in 1970. “It’s not an unfriendly place when you walk into it, it just seems to have this thing.... I’m attracted by the unknown.”
But Page kept much of his occult interests private. B. P. Fallon, who knew the band well as its publicist, humorously explained, “He believed his philosophies and it shaped how he acted, but it wasn’t directing every iota of his life. I don’t know far he took it. I never observed him conducting any rituals. In my experience he didn’t even practice yoga. He certainly wasn’t sacrificing any virgins at midnight. He couldn’t find any!”
Miss Pamela had her own extreme explanations as to why Page had such an interest in the occult and acquired so much magic paraphernalia. Remembering when he showed her his whips, she claimed, “He was curious about the dark aspects, he carried his whips around and he liked to inflict a little damage on willing girls.... I think Jimmy really believed the Crowley stuff. He gleaned a lot from it. It helped create his aura and mystique. Sure there was an element of play-acting, flapping around those big halls in Crowley’s cape. But ... he’s a notorious tight wad; he had to be totally into something to pay for it!”
Interest in sorcery and magic stretches back to ancient civilizations that used supernatural means to contact the spirit world in an effort to control life, foretell the future, and gain guidance. But the Bible warns that messing around with magic and trying to tell the future is dangerous, that Satan is behind occult practices, and that only God knows the future. Wizards, witches, enchanters, and those who called on spirits were condemned by Moses. In short, sorcery leads to a dead end.
Crowley’s efforts at magic were futile and his life went downhill after an aborted attempt to contact the Egyptian god Thoth, whom he called his Holy Guardian Angel. Crowley made enemies of other occultists like the famous Irish poet William Butler Yeats. The crazy ways that Crowley lived his entire adult life were as radically opposite as one could get from the greatest commandment given by Jesus—to love both God and people. Crowley’s reputation finally went completely sour, his band of followers were gone. He became hopelessly addicted to heroin, and he died in 1947 a lonely, tormented man.
Page now downplays the connection he had with Crowley. For Page, it was merely one part of his formative years while in Zeppelin. He told Guitar World that “it’s unfortunate that my studies of mysticism and Eastern and Western traditions of magick and tantricism have all come under the umbrella of Crowley. Yeah, sure, I read a lot of Crowley and was fascinated by his techniques and ideas. But I was reading across the board.... It was quite a major part of my formative experience as anything else.”
Page would make reference to his interests in Tarot cards, Crowley, and magic in his film fantasy sequence in The Song Remains the Same from 1976. But although he would share some of his interests, he claimed that he never had any intentions of wanting to get others to follow Crowley’s teachings, practice magic, take drugs, or get involved in other types of crazy behavior. “I wasn’t really preaching, because it wasn’t really necessary,” Page elaborated. “My lifestyle was just my lifestyle. I didn’t feel the need to convert anyone; it was just the way that my life was taking me at that time. At the end of the day, from this vantage point, it can either be glorified or criticized.”
Shortly after the short British tour, Plant encountered some bad luck that would return to haunt him. In February, he suffered a car crash near Birmingham while coming back from a Spirit concert. Both cars in the accident were write-offs. Plant was admitted to Kiddermeister Hospital with facial lacerations and damaged teeth. Later that month came Zeppelin’s first full-fledged European tour, which included Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
The band had an unusual, comical experience when it toured Germany. Eva von Zeppelin, a relative of the designer of the doomed airship, had became furious that rock musicians were performing using her name and threatened to sue the group if they played as Zeppelin. She even went into a recording studio where the band was recording and tried to get them thrown out. In the newspapers she fumed, “They may be world famous, but a couple of shrieking monkeys are not going to use a privileged family name without permission.” She got some publicity, and the band got a temporary name change. For the only time in Zeppelin’s history, they played one Copenhagen show on February 28 as the Nobs.
They returned to their name Led Zeppelin on their next date, March 7, at Montreux, Switzerland, a quiet, peaceful mountain community. News spread quickly and fans came from all over Europe. The small casino where they played held only 2,000 people. A review in the local newspaper praised the group, declaring that Zeppelin’s music “seduces the senses” and that Led Zeppelin’s triumphant show was unprecedented in the small mountain town. The group had enjoyed their visit to Montreux as much as the fans.
The peace and quiet of Montreux was a far cry from what was upcoming on their North American tour from March 21 to April 18. These were troubled times—a battlefield of confrontation as political tensions brought out the cops nightly, especially in the South. At some venues, police employed unnecessary violence against fans. The tour got off to a bad start as the band was on its way to Canada. Page’s Gibson Black Beauty Les Paul “disappeared” off the truck at the airport. He seldom took it on the road, but things were going so well that he decided to start using it. The 19,000 screaming fans that greeted the band at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver had to ease the loss a little. The crowd was rewarded with two and a half hours of ear-splitting rock.
The March 27 show at the L.A. Forum was pumped! The band played with an enthusiasm and vibrancy that began to set Zeppelin further and further apart from all other rock acts. John Paul Jones now played organ onstage, which added a new dimension. By now, Zeppelin had embraced L.A. as their second home—it was an awesome place to have a great time—and the music showed it! Plant started off the festivities with commenting to the crowd, “Good evening. Everybody feel all right?” Without a doubt, the crowd was feeling all right. There was spontaneity to the max! After “We’re Gonna Groove,” Plant ad-libbed lyrics to “Dazed and Confused.”
During his trademark solo, Page bowed his Les Paul to new heights. With the help of his Echoplex units and wah-wah pedal, his amplifiers emitted sonic howls that swirled around the Forum’s round walls. Neil Zlozower was there on one of his first photo shoots, taking pictures from the audience with a telephoto lens. He was amazed at Page’s theatrics. He clicked away with his camera as Page went up and down on the strings with his bow. Zlozower recalled, “You know, the highlight for me of any Zeppelin show was you’d always be waiting to see Jimmy whip out that violin bow and be strummin’ his guitar with the violin bow, because no one ever did that back in those days as far as I know. He was the originator. There was just always something about watching him, where it was like ... c’mon, Jimmy—whip out the bow—whip out the bow—whip out the bow!”
Everyone was enveloped in an unearthly, mesmerizing mass of electronic effects. But fans weren’t just captured by the sound. New material from the second album was added—“What Is and What Should Never Be” was now a permanent addition in place of “I Can’t Quit You.” Before the band broke into a sizzling “Heartbreaker,” people sprang out of their seats and filled the aisles, so Plant told people to sit down on the floor. After a few more songs the aisles began to fill up again, and people tried to crowd up to the stage. In an effort to be humorous, Plant dedicated “Since I’ve Been Loving You” to “the little men with the suits who keep pushing everybody back down the aisle. It’s their big day, y’see.”
The show continued with more humor from Plant during “How Many More Times” as the band members were introduced as “the four survivors of the Graf Zeppelin.” In a nod of tribute to the Beatles, Bonham was said to perform “for the benefit of Mr. Kite” and Page was described as “the man who made rock, rock!” Plant encouraged everyone, including the police, to clap, but the authorities overreacted when the crowd filled the aisles again. It had become a cat-and-mouse game: police got everyone seated, then backed off, only to have the crowd get up when security was not in sight. There was an “us versus them” mentality in the crowd, the antiwar attitude of not listening to anyone in a uniform. Added to this, the loud, aggressive music would get everyone going. There was no solution in sight. Plant warned everyone again to cool down, “Easy! Easy! I want you to be cool ’cause these men have got big sticks and they don’t care! You keep cool and we’ll keep cool!”
This helped to quiet things again, and the show went on with a powerful medley that included Maurice Ravel’s “Bolero” and the Yardbirds classic “I’m a Man.” With this, the crowd again leaped up. This became too much for the authorities, who now feared that the situation was close to an all-out riot. To monitor the situation, the house lights flashed on. The first encore of “Whole Lotta Love” flew out over the Forum crowd—Page ferociously attacked his theramin after the first two verses. He waved his hand over it, and his magic motions drew low moans and shrill shrieks. He used his Echoplex sound boxes atop his amplifiers to full effect, creating pulsating auditory vibrations that rose and leaped out, with life all their own. The audience was mesmerized like never before in the Forum that night. Plant asked in vain to switch off the house lights before the final number, a wildly rocking, frantic “Communication Breakdown.”
As the crowd filed out, the emcee announced an upcoming Forum concert, “April 25, the Forum presents Jimi Hendrix. If you wanna mail for tickets, mail for them now!” The Forum in 1970 was becoming the place to see unbelievable concerts. The 18,000 who saw this Zeppelin show had been treated to an outstanding performance. The newspaper even reported that 4,000 fans hung around for half an hour in the hopes of another encore, but this was not to be. This show turned out to be bittersweet because of all the crowd problems and police reactions.
A few nights later in Pittsburgh, Zeppelin stopped playing in the middle of the set and walked off the stage to let things cool down. The cheering fans stood on their seats and went wild with enthusiasm, but baton-wielding cops ran into the crowd and pushed people off the chairs. It could have turned out pretty ugly. When you were being bombarded with the Zeppelin sound, it was hard to just sit there. After a short break, the band came back onstage, and there was no more trouble.
The tour rolled on—no opening act, no intermission, just high volume. The band was playing really well together. Although Zeppelin was bursting with adrenaline, the loss of privacy, the endless travel, the highs and lows (musical and narcotic), the sheer hard work, the superficiality of on-the-road relationships compared to home life, all these ground their emotions to a pulp. Furthermore, for all their strutting confidence, Zeppelin did come under fire. As well as loving them, America scorned them. Long hair was still frowned upon, let alone sex, drugs and loud music. Death threats were made at the band, so armed guards rode along with everyone. Like something out of a scene from the movie Easy Rider, the band was ridiculed and refused service at roadside diners in the South by rednecks. Upon their arrival in Memphis on April 17, Zeppelin was given the keys to the city. But by that evening, the band was threatened backstage for their long hair. So the band got out of town fast by concert’s end.
In part, the American experience had gone bad on them. And the quartet knew they had neglected their British audience. Now their instinct was to put that right and re-engage with what were genuinely strong elements in their background: country life and folk music. All of them hailed from small towns. Plant pointed out: “That’s one thing Led Zeppelin has done for me. It’s slowed me down ... It’s exactly what I wanted. It gives me room to think, breathe and live. I wake up in the morning and there are no buses, no traffic. Just tractors and the odd pheasant hooting in the next field.”
Alongside their studious passion for the blues, Page and Plant were also besotted with Fairport Convention, The Incredible String Band, and Joni Mitchell. Page’s “all-time favorite” guitarist was not a bluesman named Johnson, Waters, or Wolf, but acoustic virtuoso Bert Jansch. Page said that “he tied up the acoustic guitar in the same way Hendrix did the electric.”
By late April, the band had completed their fifth stateside trek. They had promised themselves a break when they got back from America. Bonham and Jones returned to the peace and tranquility of home. But Plant was restless and called Page about a remote cottage in the Welsh hills that he fondly remembered from childhood. On summer weekends his father would drive the family up to the wooded Snowdonia area near the River Dovey. As a child, Plant fell in love with not only the mysterious dark forest but also with the tales of sword and sorcery associated with the area. Plant recalled: “When I was little, I dreamed heroic dreams. Most of the time I was the hero ... the odds were always pretty much against me. Sort of like Davy Crockett, but the English equivalent of Davy Crockett—Robin Hood.”
This place had a magic all its own. So in early May, Page and Plant retreated to Bron-Y-Aur to relax and write. This place had a faraway feel because it was halfway up a mountain with the nearest town two miles away. Here at this derelict 18th century cottage, they set up camp. The place was abandoned. It had stone walls, no electricity, and no running water. They collected wood to fuel the open-hearth fire which heated a range. The two worked by firelight and log fires. Water was fetched from a stream and heated for washing. This was a real contrast to hotel rooms. The stress of the last tour was left behind. A sense of relief and freedom was found in their new surroundings—a feeling that would be reflected in a song later titled, “Over the Hills and Far Away.” The Welsh countryside would provide inspiration for songs on the next album and set the mellow tone.
With boots on their feet, backpacks on their shoulders, and a cassette recorder, Page and Plant walked in the spring flower-decked hills. There wasn’t a soul for miles—just the privacy of nature. With Page strumming an acoustic guitar and Plant tootling away on harmonica, the songs came—“That’s the Way,” “Friends,” “Bron-Y-Aur Stomp.” It was an idyllic sabbatical where Page and Plant just wrote. The beauty of this evolving quieter side of Zeppelin III was the band’s ability to take traditional English instruments, folk songs and arcane myths and make them speak to the kid in Struthers, Ohio, wearing K-Mart jeans.
Later in May, when Page and Plant reported back, Jones and Bonham needed little persuasion that the band should go acoustic. The group began recording at Headley Grange, an empty, damp, run-down mansion in the country that bore the memory of elegance past. The band chose engineer Andy Johns to assist with the recording because he had a reputation for being top notch. Johns recalled: “I was uptight because these guys were so good. You always wanted to do your best for them. Pagey was really easy to get along with, and I don’t remember him having an emotional block, not knowing what to do.”
Jimmy Page indeed had complete control in the recording studio and had studio smarts. When more recording for the album was being done in June at Olympic Studios, something got acci-dentely erased. Page said, “I was very good at salvaging things that went wrong. For example, the rhythm track at the beginning of ‘Celebration Day’ was completely wiped by an engineer. I forget what we were recording, but I was listening to the headphones and nothing was coming through. I started yelling, ‘What the hell is going on!’ Then I noticed that the red recording light was on what used to be the drums. The engineer had accidentally recorded over Bonzo! And that is why you have that synthesizer drone from the end of ‘Friends’ going into ‘Celebration Day,’ until the rhythm track catches up. We put that on to compensate to make up for the missing drum track. That’s called ‘salvaging’.”
“Since I’ve Been Loving You” was the first song written for the album, coming out of just a day’s rehearsal. It was a “live” take with John Paul Jones playing organ and foot bass pedals at the same time. Listening to Ray Charles got Jones into organ. He loved Charles’s blend of gospel with rhythm and blues, his sort of church sound on the instrument. Page explained, “I’d still like to keep trying everything through the framework of Zeppelin, and I think everybody feels the same way, too, because everybody’s got ideas and as yet we still haven’t reached the full potential of what’s there ... And the organ, the keyboard things that John Paul Jones is doing now, has helped to broaden the outlook of everything.”
Richard Digby Smith, often Andy Johns’ tape-operator assistant, was awed to sit in on a session when Plant sang “Since I’ve Been Loving You.” Smith remembered, “I can see Robert at the mike now. He was passionate. Lived every line. What you got on the record was what happened. His only preparation was a herbal cigarette and a couple shots of Jack Daniel’s.”
I loved Jones’s keyboard work. It gave the band a fuller sound—not that they needed one. But it added a whole new dimension to the Zep sound. Page is celebrated as rock’s heaviest guitarist, but when he reached for his acoustic, his touch could be as light as a feather. So as a result he’d work away on the acoustic. Johns found it much easier to record acoustic guitars and drums instead of a loud rock band. Page would say, “Any set of circumstances can be inspiring, really. I guess a lot of the acoustic songs came after tours, when you couldn’t really go home and set up a 200-watt stack and just blast out, and consequently you just work out on the acoustic. That was a good balance, really, because you can explore riffs in other ways.”
About this same time, my own life would take a turn toward creativity in music. By now I’d gotten off active duty in the Air Force. In 1970 I’d moved from Laguna Beach and wound up on some bluffs in the south end of San Clemente. My little apartment was a stone’s throw from the beach off Buena Vista Street, by the Miramar Theatre, a rock and blues venue over the years. Just north of the pier was a glassy beach break named 204, after the railroad sign next to the tracks. I climbed down the hill and surfed there every day and enjoyed the small yet sometimes tubular waves. Back then it wasn’t a well-known break and there were plenty of waves to go around. It was a temporary paradise.
My old buddy Clyde Johnson was still very active in the La Crescenta music scene. He knew that I’d been writing songs and wanted to find out what we could do. So during the last week of July he came down to visit, and brought along a Yamaha nylon string guitar, a harmonica, recorder flute and reel-to-reel tape recorder. The next three days we hung out on the beach, with Clyde on the sand working on riffs while I was out surfing. Then at night we rehearsed, switched on his recorder and created.
We’d bought an old 45 record of the Coasters’ “Yakety Yak” at a thrift shop and were amused at the flashbacks to teenage chores the song evoked. So we recorded that first, using guitar, tambourine and harmonica. It was raw, loose, fun. There was also a ballad I’d written about a lonely guy cruising along the beach, sort of like Crosby, Stills and Nash. We started out with fairly normal songs—then we got pretty far out. I had a poem about an alchemist making gold, working away in a secret lab like an early gothic scientist. The words painted a dreamscape of pointed peaks, slowly moving mist, and a purple sky that changed colors over the alchemist’s hut. Clyde played autoharp which sounded like a warped harpsichord in a cave, then overdubbed flute sounds. The result was a weird mix—the Moody Blues meets the Incredible String Band. The sessions were pressed onto an EP by Clyde. We designed a cover with our own art that had castles, pointed peaks, flying lizards, UFOs, and lost ships at sea. New doors of mystery had swung open to a musical world for us. It had all been inspired by the sounds of waves and seagulls—nature was our muse. For us, there would never be another summer like that one of 1970.
Led Zeppelin started to itch for life on the road again. But before the band tackled the U.S.A. again they were seduced by a yearning for glory in their native England. So they accepted an invitation to play the Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music with the likes of John Mayall, Pink Floyd, Santana, and Jefferson Airplane.
Led Zeppelin’s triumphant appearance at least signaled their acceptance by their home crowd. Europe greeted Zep with open arms and ears. In front of 200,000 people, they played for over three hours. The set included new songs such as “Immigrant Song,” and “Since I’ve Been Loving You” and acoustic numbers like “That’s the Way.” To everyone’s delight, Plant did his Elvis impersonation during “I Need Your Love Tonight” and “How Many More Times.” Page appeared as a rock and roll farmer with a tweed coat, a hat and a beard. Plant told the crowd, “It’s really nice to come to an open-air festival where there’s no bad things happening.”
The crowd went wild for Zeppelin, demanding and getting encore after encore—a total of five. The performance confirmed their ranking in Britain as equal to the Stones and Beatles, and probably was very much the turning point after which the band never looked back. But they knew America was beckoning, and from August to September they were again touring the states for the sixth time in under two years. In America by now they had become as big an attraction as the Beatles had been in their heyday.
At the Oakland Coliseum, Led Zeppelin blasted nearly 10,000 people half-senseless with music of sheer power, force and emotion. There was an assault on all fronts, from hard rockers to acoustic numbers to blues. The band left the stage exhausted and exhilarated. The basic format was simple as possible: the band, a stage and lights but no props or supporting act, and good, loud, wild music. There was one new addition to the music—an acoustic portion, drawn from the new album. Page said that this part went well overall, although there were some exceptions. “Some places, though, it’s been a bit of a shock,” he admitted. “I relate it back to the period after we’d done the first album, but the second one hadn’t come out. We always try to get new numbers on stage; we used to do ‘What Is and What Should Never Be’ and it didn’t really happen when we first started to do it because there’s no association, nobody knew what it was ... A similar sort of thing has happened with the acoustic things ... The audience is hearing them fresh and there have been mixed reactions ... But we always give as much as we’ve got to give that night. When it comes to the encores, we’ll go on and on and on if they want to.”
The band’s return to the L.A. Forum on September 4 clearly demonstrated this different side to Zeppelin. Located off the freeway by Los Angeles International Airport, the Forum stands in the middle of a vast parking lot. Once inside, one was awestruck by the Zeppelin stage. According to a spectator, it looked like something out of a war zone. He described it this way, “It looked like an open-air attack tank. Or some sort of futuristic altar. I was wondering if my ears would be bloodied by such an array of amplifiers upon banks of amplifiers.” The audience quietly waited for the show to start, some people passing marijuana cigarettes. Suddenly the piped-in music stopped, and the entire Forum was thrown into darkness. Many in the first few rows sprang to their feet and began cheering as spotlights flashed on a row of amplifiers. The lights followed Plant as he strode out from behind the amps and entered the glare of center stage. His long mass of blond curls bounced as he smiled and nodded to the crowd. The cries and screams rose higher from the audience as the rest of the band filed out. Hundreds of Instamatic flashbulbs popped throughout the crowd.
A barrage of sound leaped out from the stage with the show’s opener, “Immigrant Song.” Plant’s high pitches swirled around the arena, and within thirty seconds, everyone was caught up in Zeppelin’s presence. Even though the band’s unity was strongly evident, there were also times when each member was given a spot for individual creativity. One of the moments this was truest for Page was early on during “Dazed and Confused.” When he used his guitar bow on his extended solo, the sounds created were hypnotizing, almost otherworldly. Electronic echoes gradually turned into haunting, violin-like notes, not unlike what Paganini may have also played. Also entrancing in his own way was John Paul Jones, who churned out an extended organ improvisation after “Since I’ve Been Loving You.” Through the keyboard, Jones painted pictures of misty Celtic lands, shrouded in myths that echo along the rolling, grassy knolls.
Throughout the performance, Plant was an expressive master of ceremonies. As he introduced the next solo spot, he announced that “You might hear in the background the crash of sticks against skins—yes, it’s our own, our very own—John Bonham!” The Forum’s walls shook with “Moby Dick,” and near the song’s climax Bonham demonstrated the influence of rock drummers Ginger Baker and Keith Moon. Frantic cheers and applause broke from the crowd as Bonham simultaneously pounded foot pedal, snare, and tom-tom to create one pounding entity of sound. After he crashed his cymbals at the climax, Plant cried, “All right—what about that? The big B—John Bonham!”
Plant’s expressiveness went much further when a medley was played. He strung together one unexpected song to the next, as with “Communication Breakdown,” “Good Times Bad Times” and “For What It’s Worth”—the last a reminder from his Band of Joy days. He had the audience wildly clapping along. By the time Zeppelin ended with a tribute to England’s peaceful, rolling countryside, “Out on the Tiles,” everyone was screaming for more. It was delivered with an off-the-wall “Blueberry Hill,” Plant sounding like a cross between Elvis and Fats Domino. The response this time was near riotous, and Plant invited all listeners to “get as loose as we are.” This could mean only one thing—another medley that used a more outrageous mix of songs than before. This turned into a jam that included Page’s echoing theramin on “Whole Lotta Love” and Plant’s ramblings on music, love, and sex with “Let That Boy Boogie,” “Think It Over” and “The Lemon Song.” Plant ad-libbed a few lines on this last number that were both funny and unexpected—“I don’t care how you squeeze, mama, just take your teeth out before you get into bed!” The pace changed to accommodate Plant’s new lyrics. An excitement was created onstage—everyone felt anything could happen. The magic was there.
Page put it this way, “Not having a set pattern is what does it. The way it’s such an invigorating catalyst at times, because everybody feels that way and somebody starts doing something. Everybody smiles and away it goes ... you’ve got to keep thinking fast—when it’s working well it’s really great, four people building something, changing gear without crunching them.”
The band didn’t always crunch the audience’s ears with electricity from the stacks of Marshall amps. There was a definite change of pace when Page played his acoustic on “Bron-Y-Aur Stomp.” Plant went out of his way to explain to everyone about the solitude and serenity of the tiles—the British term for rolling countryside. Specifically, Plant mentioned the Bron-Y-Aur cottage in Wales, where the group rehearsed much of the current album’s acoustic numbers. “Bron-Y-Aur is the Welsh equivalent of the phrase ‘Golden Breast.’ This is so because of its position every morning when the sun rises, and it’s really a remarkable place. So after staying there for awhile and deciding that it was time to leave for various reasons, we couldn’t really just leave it and forget about it—you’ve probably all been to a place like that.” The band enjoyed sharing the new material, whether the hard-hitting electric or the softer acoustic.
L.A.’s Forum was the perfect environment for a Zeppelin show. When you were in a place as big as the Forum and you looked around and saw 18,000 people jumping around and going crazy and just having fun, you knew that the band must be doing something right. It must have been challenging to get all those people worked up, especially those who were far away from the stage, but Zeppelin managed to pull it off. Few concerts on the tour matched the excitement of the Forum shows. This was the band flying high and taking the audience right along with them.
Zeppelin was voted best group in a readers poll conducted by Britain’s most widely read newspaper, ending eight years of Beatles domination. And Led Zeppelin played Madison Square Garden for the first time on September 19. On this date, they could boast of grossing $100,000. The bread was nice, but they didn’t let it go to their heads. There was no real “attitude” about them. They were enjoying the fame, but were not drunk with their own self-importance. The members shared a professional state of mind—serious about the music and playing their best. They were always reliable. And Peter Grant believed so much in Led Zeppelin that he got concert promoters to change their agreement from a 50/50 split between them and the act to a 90/10 split in Zeppelin’s favor.
Led Zeppelin III was released the beginning of October. It came out in the days when you’d anticipate a record’s release, then savor the unwrapping, checking out the artwork, reading everything on it, and just feeling the vinyl. There were no CDs or MP3s, just a 12-inch platter of vinyl. The only decision was whether you’d buy it in stereo or mono.
An ad in Circus magazine displayed the front cover with the words: “Led Zeppelin III is here ... and after you play the album, play the jacket.” So I played the album. It presented a very different image of Led Zeppelin from the first two albums. Most importantly, it was predominantly acoustic. Page finally displayed his considerable talent on the acoustic guitar, which he had only hinted at before on cuts like “Black Mountain Side” and “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” (both from Zeppelin I) and “Thank You” and “Ramble On” (both from Zeppelin II). Material like “Friends,” “Tangerine,” “That’s the Way,” and “Bron-Y-Aur Stomp” differed greatly from the Brown Bomber’s intense aggression. “That’s the Way” was my personal favorite of the acoustic material. The song was dreamlike and soothing. Inspired by their surroundings, Plant and Page had written it in the Welsh countryside.
However, the opener, “Immigrant Song,” set a standard for medieval imagery of Viking lust in hard rock. Plant’s wailing war cries sent chills up my spine the first time I heard it. “Celebration Day” was a funky rocker. “Out on the Tiles” was English slang for “a night out on the town” built by a Bonzo riff. And “Gallows Pole” was perhaps Zep’s strangest track ever—a morbid American folk song that Page updated to be about the hangman of a deck of Tarot cards. “Hats Off to (Roy) Harper” was a trip back to the plantation, when blues shouters gathered around a campfire. But for me, the gem of the album was the slow burning, epic blues, “Since I’ve Been Loving You.” Plant did his best Janis Joplin interpretation. And if you’ve been debating about who is the greatest rock guitar player in history, just listen to Page’s tortured solo and move on to another subject.
Overall, Led Zeppelin III was an intimate listening experience. The more I listened to it, the more I liked it. I got one of the early pressings with Crowley’s motto inscribed in the run-out groove, not only on one side but on both sides of the record. Side one had —Do What Thou Wilt—side two said—So Mote Be it—. Page was able to pull this off in secret by having someone at the studio write the inscription.
After I played the album, I played the jacket. As I turned the wheel, I wondered what was underneath. I bought another copy for the added pleasure of ripping the cover apart to find out what was on the rest of the wheel. The silly cover was meant to represent a crop rotation calendar. There were eleven circular holes on the front that showed different faces of the band members and brightly colored shapes when the wheel was rotated. The final result, created by the artist known as Zacron, wasn’t what Page had in mind. Instead of crops, Zacron had splattered the cover with a wide assortment of images such as butterflies, hummingbirds, and flowers. Page wasn’t amused and thought that it looked too bubble gum. To me, instead of psychedelia, the cover looked too teenybopper for Led Zeppelin. When I spun the wheel, I noticed the band members’ faces popping into the holes as well brightly colored shapes and patterns. As I opened up the jacket, I thought I’d see something more like Led Zeppelin, but instead I just got a rehash of the front cover. The only object with an obvious connection to the band was a zeppelin. I thought the back cover was actually more eye-catching and should have been the front. The black-and-white stipple of Jones, Page and Bonham was similar to Led Zeppelin I. And there was the crusty, tan image of Plant with his hair wrapped in a halo of tangled sunlight. He looked like a sun god.
Maybe the front cover threw the press for a loop, too. They sure as hell didn’t like the record. The album took a critical hammering from the press: “Led Zeppelin Gone Soft” or “Led Zeppelin Tone Down” were the headlines, over comments such as “the wah-wah may be breathing its last screeching breath.”
Zep was pissed. They stopped doing interviews. It seemed that Zeppelin was always being put down. It had to hurt deep down inside. It hurt me too, but endeared me more to the band. When Zep was being trampled on, I felt the press was putting me down as well, for being a fan. I was proud to be a Ledhead, and still am today.
Was the press listening to the album, but not hearing it? Didn’t they notice the band’s broadening range of disparate and sometimes exotic influences, such as East Indian scales on “Friends,” American country music in “Tangerine,” and traditional English folk on “Gallows Pole”? Today, thanks to the success of MTV’s “Unplugged” concert broadcasts by such artists as Aerosmith, Eric Clapton, Neil Young, and Nirvana, the notion of heavy rockers being sensitive balladeers has been accepted as a great step forward. Led Zeppelin were not only twenty years ahead of the pack, but the band still demonstrated that going acoustic didn’t have to mean that its hard edge had been lost.
Zeppelin played by its own rules. The members were pleased with the album and that was all that mattered. They felt it was the key to their future progress and showed people that the band wasn’t going to be one-dimensional. They were determined to continue the search for new ideas, sounds and direction, a process Zeppelin would maintain until the end.
In late October 1970, Page and Plant returned to Bron-Y-Aur. As before, the pair sat around the cottage hearth with a decent log fire burning and played and sang. They already had a backlog of half-finished songs and fragments of ideas for the next album. Page had begun creating a lengthy instrumental track which had no lyrics, just a nice chord progression and an extended crescendo.
At the end of October a record was released that was acclaimed by critics. No piece of rock music has ever induced more interest in religion than Jesus Christ Superstar. For most people growing up in the 1950s and 60s, religion was just a word, or at most, a responsibility. It wasn’t about knowing God, just something to do on Sundays. Many churches appeared to be more interested in self-perpetuation and finances than making God known.
John Lennon’s remark about the Beatles being more popular than Jesus carried a lot of weight and also created an outcry. For millions of fans, the Beatles were more relevant than most religious leaders. Jesus Christ Superstar deglamorized the New Testament version of Jesus. He wasn’t portrayed so much as the Son of God but as a human being bothered with such human emotions as self-doubt, conflicting motivation, and confusion. For once, Jesus was more popular than the Beatles. Jerry Prochnicky saw Zeppelin as a positive force: “For me, Zeppelin served as a great escape from a lot of things. I was questioning God, but I believed in Led Zeppelin. Rock music was my religion and Jimmy Page, Jim Morrison, and John Lennon were my messiahs.”
During 1970, I was grateful to be in the Reserves, being a medic at March Air Force Base in Riverside, California, instead of dodging bullets in a rice paddy in Vietnam. I also believed that I was serving God and my country. But as time went on, I got very disillusioned as I experienced many angry and frustrated people at the Air Force Base. Their take on serving their country was, “Thank God when I get discharged! I can’t wait to get out of this!” I started feeling the same way too after a while. When Nixon began bombing Cambodia, many really started seriously questioning our government’s activities in other parts of the world and also started questioning God, too. After all, if I was serving my country, how could this be right? When I finally got off active duty in October, I felt like I had gotten out of jail. By now, I was totally ready to grow my hair long, start listening to more music and do my own thing.
Led Zeppelin had a special type of attraction to me—I seemed to be drawn to their music, almost like a spiritual magnetism. Like many other fans, I would continue to get intrigued with each new record. But no one knew that 1971 would prove to be the year for Zeppelin’s most successful album ever. It would also herald the band’s most inspiring song.