1975 saw two sprawling double platters emerge, one from the largest group on the planet, balanced at the moment when their downward descent began, the other from an obscure group tossed aside by commercial interests. One group, Led Zeppelin, toured the country in a private jet, staying at the best hotels, drugs served on silver platters, groupies as young as you wanted waiting in the halls. The other, Spirit, traveled in a beat up Volkswagen van, playing the same bars and clubs as rock groups without a contract. Ironically, six years earlier, it had been Spirit who were the headliners and Led Zeppelin the opening act in that cold January 1969 tour that started it all.
Jimmy Page had been one of the vanguard of new rock and roll guitarists in London when he signed up with Neil Christian & the Crusaders, only to come down with glandular fever immediately. Becoming a studio musician to protect his health, he was the right man at the right time, who, together with Ritchie Blackmore and Steve Howe, appeared on most of the rock records using studio musicians during the British Beat Boom. It was an exploding market, so much so that when an offer came up to join the Yardbirds in 1965, he suggested good friend Jeff Beck instead. With Beck at lead guitar, the Yardbirds quickly morphed into the most sonically advanced group in England, even if sales didn't match their influence.
When given a second chance to join in 1966, this time on bass, Page jumped at it, tired of stuffy sessions. Within months, the Yardbirds had twin screaming guitars in a lineup sadly under-represented on record. Beck, always mercurial, was fired in the autumn of 1966 during a West Coast tour, not showing up to gigs. The group was deeply impressed that Page could play both the rhythm parts and Beck's incendiary leads at the same time.
After a disastrous attempt at recording an album with Mickey Most as producer, who had worked wonders for the Animals, Donovan, and even Herman's Hermits, the band broke up the next year while floundering through a follow up. In truth, the three original members were severely burnt out. Page was just getting his second wind, and he liked the new manager, Peter Grant, a 400 lbs. ex-wrestler who beat up promotors instead of artists. Together, they formed the power duo ready to launch the true behemoth on the 1970s, Led Zeppelin.
After experimenting with Stevie Winwood and trying to get both Terry Reid and Steve Marriott as singers, Page settled on friend John Paul Jones, an old session pro and occasional arranger, as well as two untested newcomers, Robert Plant and John Bonham. With Glyn Johns engineering the sessions, Page and Grant paid for the album, thus owning the master outright, the first time a major artist did it. Then they shopped it around, finally settling on the best, up until that time, first album deal ever in the record business. The sound exploded, and the band did the same, especially across the stages of America.
By the time of the second album, recorded piecemeal across the United States by Eddie Kramer, fresh off Hendrix's 'Electric Ladyland', the band were as big as the Beatles. The world was ready for heavy metal, and Led Zeppelin took you right up to the line, too diverse and musical, too full of acoustic and keyboard touches, to be considered true metal. But there would be no heavy metal without Led Zeppelin, as well as the Kinks, Cream, and Jimi Hendrix. Zeppelin came the closest, bone crunching and earth shaking music, the drums incredibly loud and aggressive.
The management was the same way, with Peter Grant assembling a motley collection of thugs as roadies and tour managers. Lead by the notorious Richard Cole, who also has on his resume being arrested and tried in Italy for terrorism, the band would hit town, take over the local Coliseum, and beat up anybody trying to do illegal recording or sell bootleg tee shirts. No other band ever kept as much money as Zeppelin, and Peter Grant has become the role model of nearly every rock manager since; terrifying, uncompromising, and incredibly devoted.
The band and management worked like clockwork through around early 1972, when the level of success became entirely too much. Now drugs and groupies, the younger the better, literally flooded the organization, starting with Peter Grant, who seemed to be able to out-party the group. About the time of the fifth album, 'Houses of the Holy', Plant's vocals sounded cocaine ravaged, while Page and Bonham were starting to dabble with the hard stuff, as were the managers. The music started to sound brittle instead of thunderous.
By all accounts, the four members of Led Zeppelin were nice guys at home, when around their significant others and children. On tour, the entire organization became a monster, with physical violence happening as much at the after-show partying as while the band played in front of vast audiences. Jones and Plant tried to moderate a little while Page and Bonham had Jekyll / Hyde transformations. The stories are legendary, so I don't need to repeat them except that they are all true.
Jimmy Page had been the resident genius in the studio, ably supported by John Paul Jones, creating the first great sounding LOUD record. By 1974, mired in turning the production of a disastrous series of filmed gigs at Madison Square Garden into a feature movie, Page seemed more pre-occupied by his study of Aleister Crowley and Kenneth Anger then the music or band. They were on top of the world, with a successful label, able to sell out anywhere in the world instantly with only word of mouth. Yet the music was starting to slip, although just a little bit.
Page was lost in a series of dope-fueled soundtrack sessions for one of Kenneth Anger's Satanist film. While adding a significant amount of new music, nearly half of the album, including most of the second disc, were older recording sitting around. While a duel album, Zeppelin used the format to pad out their ideas with some older material. The results were an interesting collection, but like the live set, over-long and bloated. In other words, the perfect album for 1975.
Songs like 'Kashmir' are certainly ground breaking, as expected from Led Zeppelin. Unfortunately, much of the rest of the first platter consists of overblown heavy blues, while the second one is piled high with outtakes. I still really like the album, as it gives you some idea of the things they tried out but didn't use. 'In the Light' works, but you're not surprised to hear that the track was heavily changed over a long period of time. It's actually almost easy listening compared to the fury of the earlier albums, certainly polished but sometimes not particularly inspired.
The album sold massively anyway, with a clever die cut cover design, using the windows of and NYC brownstone to display different images when the inner sleeves were switched. The 1975 tour was competing to be the event of the year, along with the Rolling Stones, so Grant actually hired a press agent, the exact opposite of his typical 'shut-out-all-access-to-the-media' policy. Page was unfailing polite and frail in all his interviews, while staggering through the live sets. Every song became epic, nothing was ever edited.
It was the proto-typical life of a rock star, complete with private jet and groupies barely past puberty. By this time, after years of excess, we expected out stars to be perpetually wasted. It's easier to list the ones who didn't partake, at least of the drugs; Frank Zappa and Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull. Everyone one else was keeping up with the times to one degree or another. If Page had died during that tour, looking as bad as he did, no one would have been shocked. It was what was expected to play the part.
It was one disaster after another from now on. Plant's oldest child suddenly died of a viral infection. Page was too wasted to produce the last album, forcing John Paul Jones to fill in ably. Bonham died in 1980 after drinking at least 40 shots of vodka at a rehearsal for the next US tour. People started to whisper about Page's Satanism, of a deal with the devil, of past bills coming due.
It only made the band bigger and more legendary. Once it was over, Led Zeppelin mania continues to this day. The best business decision was to disband after Bonham's death. Unfortunately, Peter Grant and Richard Cole were more addicted than even Jimmy Page, and that was saying a lot. Suddenly it was large quantities of cash being stolen, guns in the office being drawn.
It didn't matter; Led Zeppelin has the mostly carefully archived collection in rock as far as price per song matters, making billions without ever doing anything. Grant was eventually fired, even though it took Page nearly 14 years to sober up after the death of Bonham. There was a single night reunion in 2007, with Jason Bonham doing a tremendous job of sitting in his father's drum stool. But Robert Plant always wants to distance himself from the taint of Zeppelin, of those crazy years and wild living. He's now an old man.
In 1975, Spirit was at the opposite end of the musical spectrum, having once been a semi-prominent West Coast band, but due to massive personnel changes had slipped completely off the radar. Things were so bad that the band didn't own the name anymore, having to pay $25,000 for the rights to get it back. Instead of top billing, it was third on the bill if they were lucky not to be playing bars and clubs. Lead guitarist Randy California had suffered a closed head injury, rendering him emotionally unstable for years. Drummer Ed Cassidy, twenty years older, took the fragile young talent under his wing during this time.
Starting from scratch once again, the duo of Cassidy and California started touring again with various configurations, barely making travel money. Cassidy, being middle aged and in it for the long run, was a great influence on California, who had once been his step-son. When another terrible gig in Tampa, opening for Ten Years After, split since 1973 but still fulfilling touring obligations, fell through, manager Marshall Berle (nephew of Milton) talked the venue into letting Spirit play alone. It proved to be their biggest paycheck in years.
Using the profits from the gig, they ran into Barry Keene, who had been an engineer for Frank Zappa, meaning his competency was not in question. He worked at a local studio, so the duo booked in as much time as they could and produced three albums worth of music. Psychedelic beyond belief five years after the style had been declared dead, the two disc collection 'Spirit of 76' was surprisingly good and actually sold pretty well. Spirit seemed to be on the way back, although nowhere near the stratospheric heights of Led Zeppelin.
'Spirit of 76' is perhaps the only rock album to reflect on the 200th anniversary of our country. It starts with 'America the Beautiful' and ends with the National Anthem. 1976 was a weird time, and the anniversary was a pretty dull party, with the President resigning two years before and the military losing it's first conflict just months prior. The playful absurdity of the album helps swallow the more bitter pills delivered by Randy, such as 'Victim of Society'. By far the best thing the band ever did, it takes it time, meandering between tender introspective ballads and blasts of Hendrix-style guitar. The overdubs are endless, the arrangements marvelous.
'Like a Rolling Stone' doesn't get the Jimi treatment, instead, using masses of echoplex arpeggios and flanging. 'Veruska', a leftover from 1968, shreds better than Hendrix could have. Cassidy plays perfect accompaniment while Randy did everything else. The quality of the songs, both originals and covers, only gets better over the course of the album. And in the midst of all this sonic wonder is a gently mocking send-up of our nation at the brink of another millennium.
It should have been the start of something big, but it quickly went south. During a re-union of the original five member unit gig in Santa Monica, a drunk and out-of-tune Neil Young staggered on stage. Randy gave him the boot, causing three of the group to leave on the spot. Only Ed Cassidy stayed. The band wandered on, Randy and Ed tight as ever, tons of music pouring out that was barely if ever heard.
Randy died in a freak surfing incident in 1997, Ed following much later at the age of 89. Spirit and Led Zeppelin are forever linked now, with Randy California the guy that Jimmy page stole parts of 'Stairway to Heaven', the anthem of anthems, from. Despite opening for the band as well as co-headlining the Texas Pop Festival in 1969, Jimmy Page says under oath that he has never heard a Spirit song in his life. That day, I'm sure the cock crowed three times before dawn.
Doesn't matter now. Head to head in 1975, Spirit put out the better double album, one that rocks but is also playful and fun. Zeppelin was headed into a death spiral after years of bad karma, but things remained tough for 'Spirit' up until the end. Randy and Ed did it out of love, for each other and the music. I'm not sure what Led Zeppelin's motivation was...
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