Music The masterplan Jimmy Page had for Led Zeppelin and their debut album
It’s hard for us who weren’t alive to fully comprehend the extent of how remarkable Led Zeppelin were in their heyday. Jokes about golden gods and Aleister Crowley aside, the band pulled music into the future, taking the crown from The Beatles, even when the Liverpool quartet still had two more years of life left.
Formed by one of London’s most sought-after guitarists, Jimmy Page, in 1968 as the New Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin quickly became pioneers of hard rock and heavy metal. They provided Page with a vehicle to make guitar music more expansive, as he had aimed to do in his old outfit.
To achieve his dream, Page knew he had to assemble the right lineup to save it from abruptly imploding like The Yardbirds. Page was turned down by his first choice frontman candidate, Terry Reid, who instead sent him in the direction of Robert Plant, a singer for the Band of Joy and Hobbstweedle. Plant accepted the job and suggested his old friend, John Bonham as the drummer, who also took the gig.
The final piece in the puzzle proved to be John Paul Jones, a talented multi-instrumentalist who, like Page, was one of London’s most revered session musicians. The two had known each other for a while and worked together occasionally because of their overlapping careers in the studio. When Jones enquired about the vacant bassist position at his wife’s suggestion, Page welcomed him into the fold without hesitation.
Immediately, the group hit it off personally and creatively. After only a few weeks of existence, the four-piece were already in the studio recording their eponymous debut album. They also toured Europe and North America within their first six months. The album introduced the band to the world with a bang, opening with the track ‘Good Times Bad Times’, and boasting other fan favourites such as ‘Dazed and Confused’ and ‘Communication Breakdown’. Since its release, it has been hailed as a stone-cold classic and one of the definitive albums of the year.
1969’s Led Zeppelin was no surprise success, as Page had calculated an artistic blueprint right from the beginning, which he believed would take the group to superstardom. His main aim for the record was to showcase the guitar, but not to the point of peacocking or overshadowing his bandmates.
When speaking to Michael Hann of The Guardian in 2014, Page revealed that he intended the band’s first album to be a statement of intent. He said: “You’ve got all these layers and depths, but you still need to capture people’s attention within the first few seconds, really. So when you’ve got something like ‘Good Times Bad Times’ and you’ve got the sort of accents and the bass drum coming in and people going ‘What the hell is that?’ that’s what you want.”
Jimmy Page achieved what he set out to do and conquered his dreams. As he envisaged, fans were hooked from the very first seconds of Led Zeppelin. From then on, they went from strength to strength. Even the band’s much-maligned third album, 1970’s Led Zeppelin III, still contains masterful artistic flourishes, including the timeless ‘Immigrant Song’.
