Martin Popoff - Led Zeppelin: All the Albums, All the Songs

Boston Tea Party, Boston, Massachusetts, January 1969.

And there was one other subtle reason for taking on this project. I got to framing this book as essentially a listeners guide to Led Zeppelin. Ive lately quite fancied the whole concept of a listeners guide. In this day and age when so much music is coming out all the time, and with hundreds of thousands of albums completely accessible to us through streaming services, I increasingly value an educated opinion as to what to listen to (and for) and the various reasons why listening will be an enriching experience.

If you think about it, take some twenty-year-old kid and throw on a Led Zeppelin record, and theres a pretty good chance he or she is going to think it sounds like crap. And bloody ancient. Underwritten or barely written. Heck, these debates were going on even in the 70s. I certainly never wanted to hear another blues song as long as I lived, or as long as Tank and Raven and Witchfinder General were lurking around the corner.

On sound alone (lets forget how many guitar players think Page is sloppy), yeah, by some measures, most Led Zeppelin albums sound, variously, distorted, lacking in low end, midrange-y, flat. This is a long discussion that will be touched upon throughout the following pages. I really dont want to go there right now, but Ive spent my whole life wrestling with the idea of Led Zeppelin as overrated in so many waysbut how can you not be overrated when you are rated the way Led Zeppelin are rated, as gods who walk the earth? Who can live up to that?

On the pages that follow, I propose to you a few hundred very specific reasons why Zeppelin should be greatly admired and lauded as artists and craftsmen and poets, even. In that respect, I do what every DJ loves to do: try to turn you one to something you might not know well, or if you do know it, point out myriad subtleties deep inside, many of which will have you digging out those headphones you have stashed away somewhere and listening intently for squeaky bass drum pedals and ringing telephones.

Enough said. Thanks again to all who have written about Zeppelin, in book form and in all corners of the internet. And thanks to those experts who shared their opinions (and sometimes best guesses) with me. Ive certainly regurgitated many of the factoids others have unearthed, which is not normal for me and a bit uncomfortable. But with a band this mysterious, especially when it comes to their recordings, Id venture a guess that every Led Zeppelin scholar is guilty. And so, without further ado, lets dive down the rabbit hole of an action-packed nine-record catalog thats long been baffling to some, thrilling to millions more, and sometimes a little of both.