I read this book about Led Zeppelin over a year ago…and recently while waiting for a Beatles book to get released I went through it again. The book is much better than The Hammer Of The Gods released in the 80s. There are many things in this book that I didn’t know. Overall I liked it…but..
Mick Wall would do these interludes that are supposed to be some kind of interior monologue by the protagonists (but in second person). The book is well researched and he would be going along great and then all of a sudden he would try to get into each member’s head and have a monologue (in cockney many times) on what they were thinking at that moment…I don’t care how much you researched someone you do not know what they were thinking at that time.
He would sprinkle these monologues out so it’s not like they are the entire book but it was totally unnecessary to me…and it was annoying.
Here is a small example of a Jimmy Page interlude…and “G” is Led Zeppelin’s manager Peter Grant. Now it’s down to just the two of you, Jimmy and G. And of course, the name, for what it’s still worth: the Yardbirds. Or maybe the New Yardbirds – G’s suggestion. That way, at least, it won’t be like starting again from scratch, he says. Not entirely, anyway. And you can still get paying gigs. Keep the wolf from the door until you can come up with something better. That’s the plan anyway, this long, rainy summer of 1968…
From 1968 to 1980 Led Zeppelin were together and left a giant legacy and myth behind. The book is solid and I found out many things I didn’t already know. I am a fan of some of their music…the less indulgent side of them anyway. I’m not the person who wants to listen to a 25-minute live version of No Quarter.
The author does go in-depth about Page’s infatuation of black magic and the dark image of the band. He also goes into the songwriting and about how they got the sound they did…so he covers the personalities, the music, and events that happened.
Things were going great for them until 1975 when Robert Plant was in a car wreck with his family and from that point on everything started to go downhill. This book covers everything you would want and it covers what happened after John Bonham died. They did think about regrouping many times through the decades but it was always Robert who had doubts…and after what he went through I cannot blame him. His wife was almost killed in the car wreck and Plant’s leg was badly hurt…then when he recovered his young son (Karac) died of a stomach virus and 3 years later Bonham died.
After Zeppelin unlike Plant and Jones, Jimmy Page didn’t adjust as well to life without the band. The book was written in 2009 and he does cover the O2 Arena reunion.
If you are a Led Zeppelin fan or a fan of classic rock through the seventies…this is a good book. Out of five stars, I would give it 3.75 out of 5 for the information it gives…without the monologues, I would consider a 5.
Those monologues sound weird…might be just a personal preference though? Nice review —enough here for me to look out for it.
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My thought process during those was…the writer was taking an educated guess based on events…it was a different approach but I would have rather just heard what the facts were…which you get for the most part.
I’m reading a book on Peter Grant the manager now.
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Thanks. I’d like to check it out as a long time Zep fan.
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It’s a good book…the interludes are a different approach that I didn’t care much about but it might just be me…
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The famous bio is the salacious one with the shark story, right?
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Yes The Hammer of the Gods… of course this one talks about it also
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It’s hard to avoid.
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Thanks for the review. Yes, it is ludicrous to presume one can guess what another is thinking, especially this band so many years ago! Sounds like a good book to check out.
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I wanted your opinion on the interlude. At first I thought wow that is interesting….but then no it wasn’t. I give him an A for trying something new but no…it didn’t work. It was like non fiction and then parts of fiction.
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Ah, reality fiction! lol Just like those reality tv shows.
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Thats a great way to describe it….thanks for reading it. I was going to ask you if you didn’t comment lol. I’ve never seen that done in a biography.
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I’m not sure I have either. I have seen where a chapter might start with an actual quote from someone, but never what he did. I’m sure he could have found actual quotes to support his beliefs and it would have been better than what he did.
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The rest of the book is really good…that spoiled a lot of it…Thanks Lisa
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