A Traveler of Both Time and Space

When we talk about identity, what it means for something to be the thing that it is, the place to start is always with a challenge posed in ancient Greece by the writer Plutarch. When Greek civilization was rising, the Persians possessed the mightiest military on Earth. Trying to put down Greece, the Persians launched an offensive against them, an attack that was foiled by Theseus, whose naval maneuvers cleverly defeated the stronger Persians.

Out of reverence, Theseus’s ship was kept as a monument to the battle, symbolizing Greek strength and freedom. Being made entirely of wood, it was subject to rot. So, each rotting board would be replaced with a new fresh one so that the ship would remain to remind each generation of what happened.

But, Plutarch asked, after each and every piece had been replaced over the course of time, was it still Theseus’s ship? Was it a different ship? Let’s change the example a little. Suppose there is a captain who fixes part of his own vessel. Surely it is still the same one he had when he bought it. Over the course of many voyages, parts would be replaced, eventually all of them, but when he goes to sail away and leave today, he can truly say that “This ship has been all around the world.” It seems like there is a difference between the working vessel and the ship of Theseus. To figure out what, we need to know what makes a thing a thing.

There are three standard approaches to answering this question. The most obvious is that a thing is what it is if it is made of a certain stuff. Comedian Stephen Wright’s joke about coming home to find everything in his house had been replaced with an exact replica is funny, but not impossible. There could be exact replicas that are nevertheless still distinct things. If someone claimed to have the guitar Page used in the Houses of the Holy sessions, you’d call bullshit. Pictures of the guitar from the sessions, no matter how exacting, would not be convincing evidence. This is, most likely, a replica. The difference between the two guitars is that this is not the actual wood Page had in his hands while recording. It’s a question of material identity. To be the same guitar as Page’s, it has to be the same actual matter. Of course, the strings, tuning pegs, and pickups may have been changed on the original, maybe even the frets and neck; this is a normal response to wear and tear on a guitar. But at the least there would still have to be the original matter that comprises the body. We can call this the “matter notion of identity” and according to it, Theseus’s ship and the replica guitar are different from the originals.

Unfortunately, the matter notion of identity, while plausible, runs into problems when we talk about people. It’s true that Alison Krauss recorded with the vocalist of Led Zeppelin. But the Robert Plant of 2008 is not the Robert Plant of 1978. That’s not to say he lost his chops over the last thirty years, but rather that the cells and chemicals making up the cells of Robert Plant in 2008 are not the same as those of 1978—not to even begin to consider what chemicals they might have been in 1978! Our cells divide, they die, we eat, we squeeze our lemons, we do what Bonham did in Page’s girlfriend’s purse; in many different ways the composition of our bodies, the matter that makes us up, changes over time. But surely, we remain the same. “Your honor, that was a different group of cells that were in that hotel room with the fourteen year old Lori Maddox,” is not likely to get you off the hook. You are you and you remain you, even if the stuff that makes up you changes. So what could account for identity after such alterations?

One notion comes from Aristotle who argued that there are essential properties that define things. There are qualities that are accidental, that could change without affecting who you are, and then there are some that define your very being. Identity is about maintaining essential characteristics. In this way, the ship of Theseus may be defined by its shape, by its having thirty oars, by its style. As long as these are kept, the ship is the ship of Theseus.

In the same way, we have accidental and essential properties. If Bonzo had shaved off the moustache, he still would have been the same person; but get rid of the intensity and the rhythm and you are talking about someone else entirely. We can call this the essential notion of identity. Different philosophers have cited different things as comprising this set of identifying properties. Some talk about memories, others about characteristics of character or body, but the key here is that there are certain features that make you, you, and without them you would be someone else.

A different approach comes from John Locke who says that what guarantees identity over time is being a continuous thing flowing through time. As people we constantly change: we grow, we learn, we experience, we mature (some of us—others not so much). Though the song remains the same, the singer never does. And yet, despite the fact that our properties are always in flux, there’s a path through time that is uniquely ours. We’ve all had our share of good times and bad times, and it is the continuous history of them that makes us the very person who did those things back in the days of our youth. In this way, the ship of Theseus would still remain the same because at any given time, the ship traces its origin smoothly back to the ship sailed by Theseus. We can call this the continuation notion.

The Band Remains the Same

But things get weird when you talk about groups rather than individuals. Peter French in his book Collective and Corporate Responsibility argues that collections of people arrange themselves in different ways and that there is a difference between what he calls aggregates and conglomerates. An aggregate is a group defined by its membership. It is just some bunch of people and it is therefore defined by the fact that it is those people in the bunch. The people I camped out with for Robert Plant tickets on his first solo tour is just a set of people.

A conglomerate, on the other hand, isn’t just some collection of individuals, but rather a group with an internal structure, an organizational arrangement in which different people have well-defined roles and jobs. A conglomerate is therefore not just the people in the group, it is also defined by its particular structure. People in the jobs can change, but the conglomerate still survives. In an aggregate, though, since it is just the people, if you change the composition, you change the aggregate. Substitute someone else in the line, someone who hasn’t waited all night, and it’s a different set of people—many of whom would have been mighty pissed.

Corporations, on the other hand, are conglomerates. If the receptionist for Swan Song records left and a new hire was made, you do not have a different company. It’s the same company with a new member. Mobs, jam sessions, and pick-up basketball games are aggregates; the Supreme Court, colleges and universities, and any other group that maintains an identity when the people making it up come and go are conglomerates. As Aristotle would say, aggregates are just matter, but conglomerates are both matter and form.

Are bands conglomerates or aggregates? It seems clear that a band has to be a conglomerate because we can have Led Zeppelin with Jason instead of John Bonham. Aggregates follow the matter notion of identity, and we can have different matter, different band members and still have the same band.

So, if a rock band is a conglomerate, is it one whose identity is based on its smooth transition from the past or some essential condition? A conglomerate has a structure. What would that structure look like in a band? One part is who is playing what instrument. Page went from being the bass player to co-lead to lead guitar player in the Yardbirds and they kept their identity. Changes in who plays what doesn’t seem to necessarily change the identity of the band.

But the move from Plant to another vocalist would force a change in identity. Is it something about Robert Plant? Does he bring something essential that cannot be done without? Something that John Bonham didn’t? Or could it be that John Bonham did and Jason just happens to have it too? If so, what is it?

Father of the Four Winds

The place to start seems to be the sound. No one else is Robert Plant. No one else could sound like Robert Plant. What he does within the structure of the band could not be duplicated by anyone else occupying that position. But there are so many rock drummers influenced by Bonzo that it would not be difficult to find one to play in his style. What is it that makes Jason’s playing more authentically Zeppelin? If there is an essential property he picked up, surely, it has something to do with being John’s son. What could that property be and how did he get it? This leads us to the traditional question of nature versus nurture.

Whenever rumors started about a Beatles reunion, John Lennon’s place was always asserted to be filled by his son Julian. The reason, of course, is that Julian sounds just like John. The Beatles were all about the Lennon-McCartney harmonies and the only person who sounded enough like John Lennon to pull it off would be his son. Why did he sound so much like him? Of course, the answer is genetics. Shape of the throat and head, thickness and length of the vocal chords, there are any number of inherited properties that explain why family members sound alike in ways that non-relatives don’t.

But Jason Bonham isn’t singing, he’s playing the drums and there doesn’t seem to be a physical component that could be genetically passed along by inheritance that would give a unique family sound on the kit. Could it be a matter of upbringing? It was his father who taught him how to play. Could it be style that could be transferred by environment? Could it be certain tricks, techniques, or habits that someone trying to pick up the Bonzo sound by ear could never replicate?

After Duane Allman’s death, one of the people brought in to take his place in the Allman Brothers Band was Derek Trucks, nephew of Allmans drummer Butch Trucks. Derek seemed natural and fit in so well because he was weaned on the Allmans sound and knew the ins and outs of the band’s personality and culture. The dual-lead structure of Allman jam style requires a certain sort of sense many players never develop, but one he came to understand as a young guitar phenom. He was a member of the family both metaphorically and literally, and this would have given him a sixth sense necessary to hit the coordinated runs and to play around and through a second soloist.

Could this sort of thing also be what Jason brings to the table? Is his being a part of the family something that would be subtly heard in the music? When the band performed with him for the first time in 1988 at the Atlantic Records Fortieth Anniversary celebration, the band was deeply disappointed with its performance, but John Paul Jones remarked that there were points where he would play a riff, get the response from the drums, look up and be shocked not to see Bonzo. He thought it eerie that something personal that had been developed in the rhythm section, something that came with years of hearing each other, could be picked up by someone who wasn’t there. Catch some of the recordings of the O2 show in 2007. Jason certainly drives the music and gives it a sense of life in the way his dad did, something that may not have been the case had there been a fifty-nine-year-old holding the sticks. But isn’t it possible that this could also be the case with a non-related drummer who was a complete Zeppelin freak? What is it about the father-son relation that is essential?

To Think of Us Again

Is it possible that it’s not a matter of the sound? Maybe it’s something else entirely. Consider why Plant is now an essential component of Led Zeppelin. There was serious talk of replacing him after the first album and had that happened the band that recorded Led Zeppelin II would have still been Led Zeppelin even without Plant. But now, Page and Jones agree that you can’t have Led Zeppelin without him. What’s the difference?

Surely David Lee Roth, Bon Scott, and definitely Ozzy were just as much a part of the sound of Van Halen, AC/DC, and Black Sabbath. The bands kept going and made some fine music after their respective departures—in at least two of the three cases not as good, but certainly decent across the board. What is it that makes Plant incapable of being replaced, but not the others?

One big difference is that after the replacement, the other bands did go on to create new music and to make a living playing on the road. Think back to the ship of Theseus question. There does seem to be a difference between the cases of the working ship whose captain has planks replaced to keep the vessel seaworthy, on one hand, and the ship of Theseus that is kept as a monument, on the other. In the first case, the work on the ship is to keep it working or to improve its functionality in doing what it was made to do. The ship was designed with a purpose in mind. It has a function and the change was an act intended to allow it to continue to perform its function or to perform it better. It is getting changed to keep working, to do new things.

In the other case, Theseus’s ship is in a sense not still a ship. Now, it is a monument, an object of remembrance, not performing the task it was created for, but given a new meaning, a new purpose. Theseus’s ship performs this new job by being a reflection of what it was, heralded not for what it is doing, but what it did. The changes made to it are not changes that make it a better boat, but are alterations designed to save it as a remembrance of what it was when it was used for sailing, for what it was intentionally created to do and what it actually did.

Maybe the context matters here in a similar fashion. We’re talking about a Led Zeppelin reunion tour, not the band really going back on the road and into the studio to become a working rock band again. Van Halen, AC/DC, and Black Sabbath all got new vocalists to keep the project alive. They were alive in the same sort of way that John Locke’s person was, having new experiences, still growing, still creating oneself, still developing along its trajectory through time. They were like the working ship.

Led Zeppelin, on the other hand, is more like the monument of Theseus’s ship. What makes Zeppelin, Zeppelin is not just the talent, not just the image, not just the music. It’s that they were a hammer of the rock gods smashing the Abba, Bread, Carpenters sensitive soft rock and the repetitious, flashy disco of their times, taking rock music in new directions, still staying true to its blues-based roots while adding elements never before seen, but soon to become standard. They were trailblazers who made rock’n’roll music what it is today. A Led Zeppelin reunion tour would be a testament to that progress made, to the vision and skill it took to make something new, something both heavy and soulful, raw and smart. The reunion would be a chance to revisit that time for those who were there and to recreate something like it for those who were not yet born. But it would be a recreation, not a revival of the spirit that was Led Zeppelin.

Robert Plant was an inextricable part of the actualization of that spirit. To see Zeppelin was in part to see Plant do his thing, perform his magic. Holding the mic with the cord taut across his midsection, his improvs, his voice and his presence. That is an element that made Zeppelin, Zeppelin and without it, given its history, it wouldn’t be what it is.

Coda

Led Zeppelin was a quartet. Each member had a role and a function. It was what French called a conglomerate. Page was the creative element and guitar god delivering the blistering electric sound that surrounds you. Bonham and Jones were the id and the superego of the band; Bonzo’s animalistic pounding driving the music forward while Jones’ musicianship was the steady, heady intellect that turned metal into art with the adeptness of Alexander Calder. Plant was the face, the sensual and sensuous element that made the music both human and superhuman. It was the melding of these that was Led Zeppelin and any living monument to it must have the four elements. Plant is one of those elements, one of Aristotle’s essential characteristics, and with any other front man to stand on stage, it would not be Led Zeppelin.

But what of Jason Bonham? No one would say it was the same, but would it cross the threshold of being Led Zeppelin? The answer certainly seems to be yes, but on what grounds? We all remember him playing along in The Song Remains the Same, but it’s not like he was really a second drummer up there.

The key here is to remember that Jason Bonham is not being considered for the role of drummer in a new Led Zeppelin or a revived Led Zeppelin, but rather he is being picked to fill the role played by his father in a monument to Led Zeppelin, in a recreation designed to remind us of the greatness of the band. As the son of Bonzo, he not only has the chops and the style, but does two things that another drummer could never do. First, as a matter of family pride, he brings a deep sense of reverence. By taking over the family business, he brings a care and an internal sense of the importance of what he is doing.

Second, for those of us who come to worship at the idol of Zeppelin, it is meaningful that there is a Bonham playing. We can feel as if what we now see is closer to what we would have seen, if we were there back then. The new planks on the ship of Theseus need to be of the same sort of wood. We do not restore George Washington’s home at Mount Vernon and install central air; we want the representation to be as close a facsimile as possible. By having Jason Bonham drumming, we may not have been there, but we can come as close as we can to what it would have been like.

The reunion tour, should it ever happen, would be Led Zeppelin only if it has Robert Plant and even if it has Jason Bonham. What is and could maybe be.