Led Zeppelin and Philosophy

It’s difficult to explain to anyone who hasn’t felt it what I mean by this aura or presence ⁴⁸ surrounding the band, but to millions of adolescent males like me, it was—and still is—deeply intoxicating. Undoubtedly the Tolkien and the tarot, the black magic and dark glamour, the runes and albums without writing all contributed. So did the band’s inaccessibility, anonymity, and refusals to grant interviews, release singles or appear on television. But it was more than all this, too.

Paradoxically—and paradoxes are quintessentially mysterious—despite being shrouded in secrecy and impenetrable, ancient magic, Led Zeppelin embodied what has now become a virtual cliché—they were rock stars.⁴⁹ More than any other band I can think of, they oozed it. They lived it. They taught me personally what it means to be a rock star and made me and tens of millions of others want to be rock stars. Hell, I still wish I was a rock star! On some level, even though I’m not a kid anymore, I have a hard time understanding how anyone could not want to be a rock star. My wife has no interest in rock stars, and being a rock star hasn’t the slightest appeal for her. I think she might be from another planet, though.⁵⁰

A huge part of being a rock star is, of course, being cool, and nobody was cooler than Led Zeppelin. They looked cool. You don’t have to be good looking to look cool, and a lot of cool rock stars are, quite frankly, pretty ugly.⁵¹ Looking like a god definitely doesn’t hurt though, and the members of Led Zeppelin had that look. Even their name was cool. One day Peter Grant was doodling in his office and dropped the “a” from “Lead” and decided to go with “Led” because it looked better. And he was right. It does. By losing the second vowel, the name became mysterious (as well as pronounceable by the colonials).

But in addition to all of this, Zep and the rock-god lifestyle they embodied represented an ideal of freedom, at least to my teenaged mind. Led Zeppelin could seemingly do what they wanted, when they wanted, where they wanted, with anyone they wanted (especially—and this is important, people—with women). Their incredible wealth, combined with the exemption from the ordinary rules that their celebrity allowed (and perhaps encouraged), meant the band lived privileged lives exemplifying uninhibited and unabashed liberty.

Sure, other rock bands were debauched and rowdy. The Who come to mind, and groups like the Stones more than lived up to their “bad boy” reputations. But Zeppelin kicked all their asses. For one thing, they were not only free to slash their rooms to shreds with samurai swords or toss the furniture off the balcony or piss on their airline seats mid-flight;⁵² they were free professionally. Jimmy Page learned a valuable lesson from Mickey Most’s imbecilic production of the Yardbird’s Little Games. He insisted that Peter Grant secure the group a nearly unprecedented level of artistic independence.

Led Zeppelin maintained total control of their music, the manner of its release—for example, no singles in the UK—and the art-work that contained it. The Who, the Stones, Alice Cooper and AC/DC certainly were able to get away with things I couldn’t get away with, but without diminishing the awesome music they created, few could match Zep’s originality, eclecticism and breadth of imagination. Zep’s raw talent and freedom to control all aspects of their musical output, combined with Jimmy Page’s pioneering vision as a producer, resulted in one of the most stunningly original bands of their era, or any. There. I’ve said it, and I’ll stand behind it.

Now I want to get philosophical. In fact, I am already. The freedom that was such a part of Zep’s allure is, like the band itself, fundamentally mysterious. Everybody wants to be free. That’s partly why we envy rock stars, and Zep in particular.⁵³ Their work is actually fun! They don’t do it because they have to; they do it because they want to. And again, if they want to holiday in Martinique or take off in a Jeep through the Atlas Mountains or scribble on the paintings in a gallery with a magic marker, they can! They did! Now, here’s the thing. We (at least many of us) tend to think that if you can do what you want, you’re free and happy. Led Zeppelin could do what they wanted, so it stands to reason that they were happy and free. Happy and free lives are, all other things being equal, better than lives which are less happy or less free. Therefore, Zep’s lives were better than the lives of most people. (Duh!) It’s just not that complicated. But philosophers—frustrated non-rock-stars, all—can’t leave things well enough alone, and ask “How reliable are these inferences?” Should the rest of us envy Led Zeppelin (at least, in their prime, circa. 1969–1975) for the fantasy lives they led, lives we can only pine for from afar?

Although I feel a certain temptation to try to disprove the idea to assuage my superego and the University administration (who may not groove on faculty running around wishing they could cut loose like Bonzo), in all honesty, I’m not so sure. Part of me thinks Zep basically had the right idea. It’s easy for lesser mortals to try to diminish their Idols, whether out of resentment or a pathetic effort to redeem their own less-than-exciting lives. That’s one reason we eventually needed the Punks. So we could spit on our heroes. What I’m going to try to do is be honest, and look at the philosophical arguments to see where they take us. When all is said and done, we may or may not wind up envying Zep. But the place to start is with the concept of freedom itself. What is freedom?

Since the time of John Locke (the philosopher, not the guy on Lost) it’s been customary to distinguish two types of freedom, “strong” and “weak.” Locke (1632–1704) illustrates as follows: Jimmy Page is in his suite at the Continental Hyatt House in LA with his latest pubescent paramour. Unbeknownst to him, Peter Grant has ordered that the door to his suite be sealed shut so Jimmy can’t get out.⁵⁴ If anyone catches wind of the fact that Page is, uh, friends with a fourteen-year-old, nobody but Michael Jackson will understand. And having your guitar player in prison makes it hard to get to your gigs on time. Jimmy, however, doesn’t know his door is locked, and couldn’t care less, because he just wants some down time with Lori Lightning, and they’ve got all the room service they need for awhile. Jimmy wants to stay in his room, and gets to do what he wants. Locke would say he’s free in the “weak” sense. Weak freedom is being able to do what you want. For the sake of argument, assume that Jimmy wants to have sex with Lori and be left alone, and that’s exactly what he gets. On the other hand, because the door is barred, he can’t do otherwise. I don’t mean they couldn’t play backgammon or just cuddle instead. I mean he couldn’t leave his suite, even if, contrary to fact, he wanted to. Locke would say Pagey lacks “strong” freedom (at least with respect to staying or leaving), because strong freedom is the ability to do otherwise than as we do and Page pretty much has to stay put.

Now, we might think Page is free as long as he doesn’t try to leave and is ignorant of the fact that he’s essentially caged.⁵⁵ Maybe Pagey only becomes unfree when he discovers he has no option but to stay. If we think this, we’re making freedom a matter of psychology. It doesn’t matter whether you’re bolted in or not, it only matters whether you know that you are, and what you know is in part a matter of having beliefs, and beliefs are things in your head. (Well, maybe.) Locke takes a different view. Consider, he says, two scenarios, one where Page is happy to be confined to his room, and one where he wishes he could leave but can’t. The difference, according to Locke, isn’t that Page is free in the one scenario and unfree in the other; it’s that in the first case Page is fortunate and in the second he’s unfortunate. The happily imprisoned Page is lucky because the very thing he must do is exactly what he wants to do. The frustrated Page is unlucky because he doesn’t want to do what he has to do. They’re equally lacking in freedom, but in the one case that’s experienced as an inconvenient hindrance and in the other it isn’t.

Okay, well and good. There are these two types of freedom, strong and weak. What has this to do with whether rock stars, and especially Zeppelin, are free? We might agree that they have weak freedom, in the sense that they can generally do what they want. At least, they enjoy more weak freedom than most of their fans do because they’re rich, adored, extremely creative, and so forth. Locke, and many others following his lead, think that it’s strong freedom that really matters, however; only strong freedom is “real” freedom. According to Locke, just being able to do what you want doesn’t make you free; you have to be able to do otherwise. This line is plausible for several reasons.

For one, our interest in freedom is all tied up with ethics; we intuitively recognize that it makes no sense to praise or blame someone unless they could have done otherwise. Ethics, at least since Kant, doesn’t mean doing what you want, but doing the right thing, even if you don’t especially want to do it. On at least one occasion Led Zeppelin were scheduled to headline a gig for which another band was the opening act. LZ refused to play unless they could switch the order of the bill right before the concert and go on first. They did this because opening the show would leave more time later in the evening to jet off to their favorite club in New York and party.

Most people would probably blame the group for a shocking lack of professionalism, because they didn’t have to do what they did. There was no necessity to it. If, on the other hand, they insist on playing first because Page has a mild case of food poisoning which they fear will worsen, we don’t blame them. If Page is sick, they can’t perform, and we don’t hold people responsible for things they have no control over. Better the band plays first than not at all. Here the band has no choice; they have to go on first or risk disappointing the fans even more. They can’t really do otherwise, and so aren’t culpable for last-minute changes to the program.

This explains why it’s useful to have a concept of strong freedom ⁵⁶ but doesn’t answer the question whether Zep are free. So consider the following: Suppose I’m at a Led Zeppelin concert, on the floor near the front, close to the stage. (I was: Seattle Kingdome, 1977!) The crowd surges at the first familiar notes of “Whole Lotta Love,” and I get pushed in the back. This makes me bump you, and you spill your beer. You give me a glare and I yell into your ear, “SORRY MATE! COULDN’T HELP IT! I WAS SHOVED!” If you’re a reasonable person, you might still be pissed (in the American sense) but you won’t blame me for the mishap. I didn’t jostle you of my own free will; I was caused to do so by the surging crowd, and couldn’t help it. To put it in a somewhat philosophical way, we might say that being caused to do something is excuse-providing. Because I was caused to bump you, I didn’t do it freely, and therefore I’m not to blame. I have an excuse. Now consider a second scenario. Once again, we’re at the concert and once again I bump you and make you spill your beer. You’re about to punch me when I explain, “SORRY MATE! I MADE YOU SPILL YOUR BEER BECAUSE I THOUGHT IT’D BE FUNNY AND WANTED TO HUMILIATE YOU IN FRONT OF YOUR GIRLFRIEND!” You, being a reasonable person, hit me. The fact that I wanted to make you spill your beer doesn’t provide me with an excuse.

One way to interpret this scenario is to say that because I wanted to do it, I did it freely, and if I did it freely, I didn’t have to do it, and therefore, I’m without excuse. But this assumes that if I have weak freedom I have strong freedom too, and earlier (when Pagey was locked in his suite at the Riot House) we noticed that this can be false. Besides, even if I want to do something and do it, that doesn’t mean I do it freely. Maybe I really did want to make you spill your beer because I thought it’d be funny, but I bump into you not for that reason, but because someone shoves me into you. I had the desire, but that doesn’t make my bumping into you a voluntary act. I still have an excuse because bumping you was caused by the crowd surge and not by my desire.

Another way to interpret the situation is: If I explain my action in terms of causes, I have an excuse. If I explain my action in terms of my reasons (for example, “I did it because I wanted to”), I don’t have an excuse. Therefore, reasons are not causes of behavior! And if my desires don’t cause my behavior, how can they account for my freedom? They could do so only if being free has nothing to do with how I act! This is very strange.

This can be put in terms of a logically valid syllogism: All Causes are Excuse-Providing-Events; No Reasons are Excuse-Providing-Events; Therefore, No Reasons are Causes. By the way, this suggests another argument that reasons are not causes of behavior. For causes are generally thought to be events—a cause occurs when something happens—and reasons are not events but states—psychological states of persons. A desire, for example, which might be a reason for doing something, is not an event, but a condition of the desiring agent. We might put it this way: desires are not “things” that happen to people but things that people have.

Ultimately, though, this is all beside the point. Everyone will agree that Zep had weak freedom. They could pretty much do what they wanted, and if doing what they wanted wasn’t caused by their wanting it, who cares? For if their reasons didn’t cause their behavior, neither do ours. It isn’t as if they’re worse off or less free than the rest of us. They’re still the ones with the groupies, after all.

The other main reason philosophers think strong freedom is what we normally mean by freedom is that we don’t usually choose our wants and desires. You either like “Tea for One” or you don’t; nobody decides they’re going to like a song. If we could do that, I’d choose to like the songs on Presence and In Through the Out Door more than I do. But I can’t help it. Those albums have great moments, but they’ll never appeal to me the way the first six do. But if we can’t choose what we like or dislike, our desires and aversions, then how can the freedom to act on our desires constitute genuine freedom?

Maybe it can’t. But this is a problem for both strong and weak freedom, and so strong freedom doesn’t necessarily come out on top. Or at least, that’s the situation if we think our reasons and desires affect our behavior. It’s easy to see why. If what I do is caused by my desires, then given those desires I can’t do otherwise! Granted, if I don’t choose my desires it’s hard to see why acting on them should make me free, as the advocate of weak freedom holds. But if I can’t do otherwise given that I have them, I’m not free in the strong sense either. The result then seems to be that we’re not really significantly free in either the strong or weak sense. If that’s so, Zep aren’t any more free than the rest of us, but neither are they less free. We’re all in the same boat (except their boat probably has champagne and groupies).

But then, why is it so natural to think they have more freedom than I do? Maybe because I associate freedom with happiness, and I think they’re likely to be happier than I am. Perhaps we’re happy if our desires are satisfied, regardless of whether or not we choose those desires. Since, judging from afar, it certainly looks like rock stars get to satisfy their desires, they seem to be happy. If we say this, though, we’ll also have to allow that my wife is happy if her desire to listen to Norah Jones is satisfied, even if she can’t help liking Norah. (Can’t help liking Norah? A funny kind of happiness in my book, but okay.)

Let’s assume what seems plain enough—that the members of Led Zeppelin could for the most part do what they wanted. I’m not saying they never had to do anything they didn’t want. Bonzo hated flying, but he had to fly. He sometimes hated being on the road and away from home, but tours happen. Plant may be sick to death of singing Stairway, but find it impossible to disappoint the fans. (And Wayne may want to play Stairway in a music shop, but be forbidden. “Stairway, denied!”) Still, compared to you and me, Bonham, Jones, Page and Plant enjoyed a high level of weak freedom. If someone wants to disparage the rock’n’roll life by arguing that bands like Zep weren’t free—that they were somehow victims of their own success, say—presumably it’s strong freedom which is denied them. But why think the band lacked strong freedom? Or at any rate, that they lacked it more than the rest of us? And is strong freedom really as important as Locke and his followers make out?

There are reasons to be skeptical. First of all, strong freedom—the only freedom worth worrying about according to Lockeans—is purely hypothetical. Someone’s free in the strong sense if they could’ve done otherwise than as they did. But in the whole history of the universe, no one has ever done something different than what they did! The advocate of strong freedom says free people have the ability not to do what they do. What kind of ability is that? How can I not do what I do? Ask yourself honestly: when was the last time you didn’t do what you did? It’s crazy! If Page is improvising during a solo, there are any number of note combinations he might select. But no matter how many solos he plays over the course of a concert, he’ll never play a solo other than the one he played. So what does it mean to say that he’s free if he can do this?

This actually seems to me important for the moral argument mentioned earlier. Remember how it goes: A link between strong freedom and morality is said to exist because it isn’t our moral practice to blame or praise people when they couldn’t have done anything else. But maybe morality is based on deeply confused notions about freedom, and maybe common thinking about morality is misguided. (Rock bands like Zep, in particular, might make this argument!) For if conventional moral reasoning rests upon Locke’s idea of strong freedom, and if strong freedom is purely hypothetical and something for which we have no empirical evidence—because no one has ever observed anyone doing something other than they in fact did—then morality would seem to sit upon pretty flimsy foundations. Better would be to construct a moral theory based on something more solid.

If I make you spill your beer because I wanted to amuse myself, that’s enough right there to make it wrong; whether or not I had to do it (whether, for example, given my desires, my jostling you was unpreventable) is irrelevant. Suppose Bonzo is sloppy drunk and out of control. If he punches someone for requesting an autograph, we don’t say, “Well, he couldn’t help it; he was wasted; he’s not to blame.”⁵⁷ We hold him accountable. That he couldn’t help it, even if true, doesn’t exonerate him. To the contrary, it’s one of the things that makes the act so distasteful. For we wonder, what sort of foultempered chap can’t help smashing an enthusiastic admirer and fan in the mouth?

If freedom is human nature, freedom is what all humans have in common which makes them human. Animals, according to Rousseau, act purely according to instinct. They feel certain promptings of nature, and have no choice but to yield. Humans feel the same impulses, but unlike the brutes are able to acquiesce or resist. (Well, maybe not Bonzo, but most of us.) For example, if Robert Plant is aroused and wants to bed a groupie, he can refuse to act on this inclination out of respect for his wife. If Bonzo is in the middle of playing “Moby Dick” at Madison Square Garden and fancies a cold, frosty beer, he can resist the urge to stop playing, walk off stage, and quaff a cold one until after his (probably abbreviated!) solo. If Page, a vegetarian, is hungry but there’s nothing around except a platter full of Slim Jims, he can choose not to eat until room service delivers his smoothie (well, actually a banana daiquiri with powered vitamins and protein). And if Jonesy is tired, he can force himself to stay awake to keep working on a string arrangement. Because humans can resist these instinctual urges for things like food, drink, sex and repose, we are free.

As Rousseau also points out, however, the freedom characteristic of humans carries with it certain risks; in particular, it makes possible self-destructive behavior. (The self-preservation instinct is our most powerful natural urge, and freedom, which can nullify that which is natural, enables us to act contrary to our best interests, and even our survival.) Let’s look at some examples.

On the one hand, Rousseau argues, promiscuity is natural and monogamy unnatural. Since it is unnatural, marriage represents a kind of slavery, and particularly, the entrapment of men by women. Married people have surrendered their freedom. Though, with the exception of Page, the members of LZ were married, they didn’t act like it. The rock life is a sexually unfettered one, and Led Zeppelin were nothing if not promiscuous. In this sense, they were liberated. Of course, this is only part of the story. The band sometimes went to epic lengths to deceive their wives and girlfriends, to the extent of producing fake itineraries for their partners with no LA dates and not subscribing to music weeklies that carried pictures of them in compromising situations. And though Page was “free” to seduce fourteen-year-old Lori Maddox, they had to hide in Pagey’s hotel room and couldn’t enjoy an ordinary social life together.⁶⁰ Beyond these limitations, though, Rousseau also argues that from the male perspective, in the state of nature, any woman is as good as any other. This is because, prior to society, aesthetic preferences and hierarchical standards of beauty didn’t exist. Consequently, intercourse was a purely sexual act innocent of considerations of status. Certainly the band was not free of these sorts of desires. They wanted the hot chicks, and instructed road manager Richard Cole to let only attractive women backstage!

Alas, as Rousseau suggested, freedom can be our undoing. Consider drugs. The “natural” state of humans is a sober one. We take drugs, if we do, to alter our natural state and consciousness. Since freedom is displayed through our opposition to that which is natural, the ability to alter our natural state with drugs is the expression of freedom. But at the same time, since freedom which leads us away from the natural is most often detrimental to our wellbeing and happiness, this freedom is a freedom to destroy ourselves. ⁶¹ Though worshipped from afar, rock stars—or at least those heavily into drugs—are not so much to be envied as the popular imagination assumes.

Looked at another way, in abandoning that which is natural—a lifestyle dedicated to sobriety—we abandon our freedom. There’s a paradox here. The ability to act unnaturally is a sign of freedom. But using our freedom to take drugs can result in a loss of freedom, since many drugs, after all, are addictive. As Dave Dickson notes, “Crowley discovered [heroin] is eventually going to destroy you, because you become its slave. The heroin stops working for you and you start working for it.”⁶² Drug use by rock bands has the appearance of freedom because the copious and obvious use of hard drugs by musicians amounts to a flagrant violation of the law. Since the law is an unnatural imposition on human behavior, to disregard it is to act “naturally” and outside of society’s artificial constraints and coercive impositions. But insofar as the drugged person is in an unnatural state, the person is, on Rousseau’s account, unfree. That’s because, according to Rousseau, freedom is human nature, and therefore what is natural for humans. The drugged person is in an unnatural—and therefore unfree—state.

The paradox of freedom is that, because we have it, we can use it to enslave ourselves. One way we do this is by forming societies and entering into a social contract which obliges us not to act like Bonzo. Another way is to freely abandon our natural consciousness for a drug-induced and artificial substitute. But this unnatural state is, if persisted in, self-destructive. Sadly, we see this in the band, and not only in Bonzo’s untimely death from alcohol poisoning. After Physical Graffitti—much of which was written and recorded several years earlier—as the group’s heroin consumption increased, there was a marked drop-off in the quality of the group’s music. Not that there weren’t brilliant moments—“Achilles’ Last Stand” is one of their greatest songs ever. But overall, the music, and the band itself, lost its joy. By the time Zeppelin got around to recording Presence, a lot of the magic had gone. The fantasy scenes filmed for The Song Remains the Same were halfhearted. Knebworth notwithstanding, the band was clearly in decline.

The notorious and deeply disturbing violence surrounding the band and its entourage can be analyzed in terms of Rousseau’s account of freedom too. We tend to consider violence natural and law a necessary antidote to our inherent inclination to fight. Thomas Hobbes and Sigmund Freud certainly held this view, but in our culture it’s come to seem almost common sense. If you think humans are given to spontaneous outbursts of fury or that we’re evolutionarily hard-wired to beat the shit out of people we don’t like, Led Zeppelin are acting in a completely natural way. We may not like it, but that’s probably because we play by the rules and they make their own, and while we admire to a certain extent the liberty to do that, at the same time it seems unfair.

What’s interesting, though, is that Rousseau actually doesn’t think we’re violent by nature. Rousseau’s view is that in the state of nature we have an “innate repugnance to see any sensitive being suffer, and particularly other members of our own species.” Like most other animals we have a kind of natural pity or compassion.

We have an aversion to suffering, even when the suffering isn’t our own. Society, however, is based on private property, and property introduces inequality, envy, competition, pride, ambition and a callous willingness to put business interests ahead of human needs. Consequently, Rousseau thinks that when people leave the state of nature and enter into society, their natural pity is squelched or suppressed. This loss of compassion, coupled with the rise of vanity and the egoistic enjoyment in dominating others, actually results in an increase in the incidence of violence. Since violence is bad for business, and the wealthy can’t very well have too many bandits running around without a conscience, religion, morality and law are created to compensate. That is to say, we construct an artificial and external social substitute for the natural pity that has been subordinated to the desire for profit. The main point is, in the state of nature compassion and sympathy flow spontaneously from our very being and are the natural expression of human nature. In the bosom of society, human nature is altered, and in consequence we need to construct a replacement for the sensitivity which has become attenuated. That’s what the norms of religion, morality, and the law are. But since these purely conventional and external devices can’t possibly have the force of the original and natural sentiments they replace, humans in society behave less humanely than in their original and pure, pre-societal state.

Now apply these lessons to Led Zeppelin. Bonzo smashes someone in the face without provocation and simply drops a handful of bills on the man’s prone body as he walks away. Bonzo, Richard Cole, Peter Grant, and security goon John Bindon beat to a pulp an employee of Bill Graham’s who reprimanded Grant’s son for removing a sign from Zep’s dressing room door in Oakland. Bonzo apparently attempts to rape Ellen Sanders, a journalist for Life magazine traveling with the band, on board the group’s hired plane. Bonzo offers Benoit Gautier, a French employee of Atlantic records, heroin to snort while pretending to offer cocaine, a “joke” that clearly could have killed the man had he not discovered the ruse in time.

What are we to make of such “we are your overlords” conduct? On the one hand, we might think “boys will be boys” and that this sort of thing is only natural and to be expected. Rousseau, on the other hand, would say it’s unnatural and symptomatic of an important impoverishment of the human psyche. Bonham’s oft-times barbarous behavior shows he’d lost all sympathy. Unfortunately, the “rules” society has enacted to compensate fail miserably. The group’s wealth, security detail, and well-practiced knack for making a quick getaway enabled them largely to avoid the consequences of such lawlessness. Although one of Bonzo’s nicknames was “the Beast,” for Rousseau, he was anything but. No animal would be so cruel without purpose.

If we’re enamored of the Zeppelin lifestyle, we probably think Socrates was a buzz-kill busybody out to harsh everybody’s mellow. Socrates would argue that he’s keeping us from bondage. Living for pleasure, Socrates argues, is slavish, for we come to be ruled by our appetites when we should be master of them. Only through self-control can we achieve our long-range best interests instead of sacrificing them in the moment before the idol of instant gratification. Only the temperate person is free. The rest, in the words from “Nobody’s Fault but Mine,” have a monkey on their back.

Until now, I’ve been assuming that Zeppelin have weak freedom because they can do what they want. Socrates challenges this assumption. Admittedly, Zeppelin can do what they please, but for Socrates, that’s not the same thing as doing what they want. If, as we defined it at the outset, being free in the weak sense is a matter of doing what we want—what we really want, that is—Zep, like most of us, may fall short. Just listen afresh to “For Your Life.” If Zep, or any of us, do falter as we seek what is truly to be desired, Socrates would say the solution is philosophy. That alone can provide the wisdom to really get from life what we want. Philosophy liberates the soul. In short—loath as I am to admit it, especially in print—maybe my wife has a point. She thinks a lot of rock stars look miserable most of the time. If Zeppelin’s hedonistic lifestyle didn’t ultimately work to their advantage, only a fool would envy the life they led. Indeed, Socrates suggests, such are to be pitied. The enjoyment of pleasure in and of itself isn’t enough to give life meaning. It can actually make life less meaningful if it detracts from, interferes with, or works against our having a good life.

Is there any evidence that Led Zeppelin’s pursuit of pleasure did in fact interfere with their ability to lead a good life? Who am I to pass judgment? I don’t know. But, somewhat reluctantly, I have to admit it’s possible. Whether or not it was caused by the pursuit of pleasure, their superstardom came at a price. It made them tax-exiles from the homes they loved. Drugs and drink undoubtedly took their toll. I do know I’m not as envious now of their wealth, drugs, and women as when I was in high school. I do envy their musical talent and achievements. Now, when I still sometimes think I’d like to be a rock star, it isn’t because I want to party like a rock star. It’s because I want to make music. That was true of Zeppelin too, I’m sure. It’s what brought them together. The rest—the excess—came later, and at least for the less-experienced Midlanders, somewhat as a surprise. Plant mused, “I’ve all this wonder of earthly plunder / will it leave us anything to show?” It’s a fair question. Socrates thought, what we really want is always something good, and Zep’s music is way beyond good, beyond transcendent. It’s sublime. Wanting that is hard to fault. To quote Socrates again, whether the rest of it is worth pursuing at all is probably “known to no one, except the gods.”

Tell Me that I’m Free to Ride

The State of Nature Is in LA

Singing of the Good Things