Happy 40th Birthday to Led Zeppelin’s First Album
40 years ago today, on January 12, 1969, Led Zeppelin began taking steps to put the mudshark in your mythology with its debut release, Led Zeppelin I. It would be an all-too-fleeting 13 or so years until the group’s last album, The Final Rip-Off, which caused the death of drummer John Bonham. But in those years, Page, Plant, and, well, mostly Page and Plant, would piss off a whole bunch of people, mainly by stealing their music and/or ideas or putting fish inside them. For commemoration’s sake, here’s just a short list of people they’ve allegedly pissed or ripped off or otherwisedmiffed.
— Eva von Zeppelin — Descendant of Zeppelin airship creator Ferdinand von Zeppelin, who wasn’t keen on the name/album cover combination.
— Willie Dixon, Bert Jansch, Bukka White, Jake Holmes, Howlin’ Wolf et al — Led Zep created its sound, basically, off of old blues riffs. When it came time to credit the original authors of said riffs, …dialtone…
— The owners of the Edgewater Inn.
— The parents of Lori Maddox, Jimmy Page’s 14-year-old girlfriend
— Little Roger and the Goosebumps — OK, this one’s the other way round; they pissed off Zep. But was it really necessary to sue over something as paltry as “Stairway to Gilligan’s Island?”
And much later on…
— Me: In 1993, Jimmy Page collaborated with Whitesnake singer David Coverdale to produce a horrifically crappy album that I was compelled to buy.
— And again, me, the very next year, when Page and Plant drank some camel spit from a gourd and dribbled out that Unledded bullshit. Without even inviting Jonesy along!
But we can’t let a band’s reputation for bastardism hamper our enjoyment of their early fruits, or else we’ll be dealing with ah … Ah … AH …
