{"id":1119,"date":"2012-01-17T07:52:26","date_gmt":"2012-01-17T12:52:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/keenerpodcast.com\/?p=1119"},"modified":"2012-01-19T11:38:22","modified_gmt":"2012-01-19T16:38:22","slug":"led-zeppelin-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/keener13.org\/?p=1119","title":{"rendered":"Led Zeppelin 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>January 16, 1969 – That’s 43 years ago as of this writing – A new rock band burst on the American scene. And the landscape hasn’t been the same since. It’s a group that Rolling Stone to the raw energy and originality of the MC5<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0the Stooges<\/a>, and it evolved into one of the most successful acts of the 1970s.<\/p>\n

It all began five months earlier in England when the Yardbirds disbanded. The group hit three times on Keener, with “For Your Love”, “Shapes of Things”, “Over Under Sideways Down” and “Little Things”. But by August 1968, only\u00a0Guitarist\u00a0Jimmy Page<\/a>\u00a0remained. Obligated to perform additional dates in Scandinavia, Page, enticed\u00a0bassist\u00a0John Paul Jones<\/a>, vocalist\u00a0Robert Plant<\/a>\u00a0and drummer\u00a0John Bonham<\/a>\u00a0to come along.<\/p>\n

By the time the summer was over, the band had returned to England with a new name: Led Zeppelin<\/a>, and a studio date at Olympic<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Even though, as individuals, Led Zeppelin had rock n roll street cred, they had yet to sign with a record company. So cost efficiency was the watch word and time was of the essence. Page later said that the entire album was recorded over several weeks, using just 36 hours of studio time at a cost of less than 2000 British Pounds. The material had been well rehearsed and test marketed to the\u00a0Scandinavians so production went smoothly.<\/p>\n

“I wanted artistic control in a vice grip,” Page told Guitar World magazine in 1993, “because I knew exactly what I wanted to do with these fellows. In fact, I financed and completely recorded the first album before going to Atlantic… It wasn’t your typical story where you get an advance to make an album\u2014we arrived at Atlantic with tapes in hand… Atlantic’s reaction was very positive \u2013 I mean they signed us, didn’t they?”<\/p>\n

Atlantic Records<\/a> founder Ahmet Ertegun<\/a> was a believer. “From the first time I heard the first cuts of their first album,” he told the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, “I knew we had something that was undeniably great. Robert Plant was a revelation – a singer who had his own style of singing great old blues as well as new songs. John Bonham, a drummer without equal. Peter Grant, their manager, was a mountain of a man, and he kept them hidden in a shroud of mystery.”<\/p>\n

The album cover is still considered one of the most striking of the rock era. It features a photograph of the German Zeppelin, Hindenburg<\/a>, in full flame as it crashed to the ground<\/a> at Lakehurst New Jersey on May 6, 1937.<\/p>\n

It was the era of the Super Groups and Zeppelin had lots of competition. It didn’t help that the press reaction to the album was mostly negative. But as often happens, the public chose to listen to the band and not the critics. As Zeppelin’s concert tour progressed, interest in what we now call Led Zeppelin 1 started spinning up. \u00a060 days later it was top ten on the Billboard chart and remained on the survey for 73 weeks.<\/p>\n

Seven years later, the accountants totaled the take and Led Zeppelin 1 had earned more than $7 million dollars. Today, over 10 million copies have been sold. And that’s just here in the US.<\/p>\n

Rolling Stone<\/a>, initially critical of the album, sang it’s praises in 2006. “The arrangements were more sculpted than those of\u00a0Cream<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0Jimi Hendrix<\/a>, and the musicianship wasn’t cumbersome like\u00a0Iron Butterfly<\/a>‘s or bombastic like\u00a0Vanilla Fudge<\/a>‘s. The closest comparisons might be to\u00a0MC5<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0the Stooges<\/a>\u2014both from\u00a0Michigan<\/a>\u2014yet neither had the polish or prowess of Led Zeppelin, nor did Led Zeppelin have the political, social or die-hard sensibility of those landmark bands. What they did have, though, was the potential for a mass audience.”<\/p>\n

Rolling Stone certified the LP’s place in history in 2003 when it at put Led Zeppelin 1 at #29 in their listing of the top 500 albums of all time.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=7csuooyqtBM<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

January 16, 1969 – That’s 43 years ago as of this writing – A new rock band burst on the American scene. And the landscape hasn’t been the same since. It’s a group that Rolling Stone to the raw energy and originality of the MC5\u00a0and\u00a0the Stooges, and it evolved into one of the most successful acts of the 1970s. It all began five months earlier in England when the Yardbirds disbanded. The group hit three times on Keener, with “For Your Love”, “Shapes of Things”, “Over Under Sideways Down” and “Little Things”. But by August 1968, only\u00a0Guitarist\u00a0Jimmy Page\u00a0remained. Obligated to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-keener","wpcat-2-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/keener13.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/keener13.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/keener13.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keener13.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keener13.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1119"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/keener13.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1131,"href":"https:\/\/keener13.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1119\/revisions\/1131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/keener13.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keener13.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keener13.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}