ON DECEMBER 27, 1969, just a few days before the dawn of the new decade, the music world witnessed an extraordinary changing of the guard as Led Zeppelin II reached Number 1 on the Billboard charts, dethroning the Beatles’ final full-on studio effort, Abbey Road.
After hearing Zeppelin vocalist Robert Plant proclaim “I’m gonna give you every inch of my love” on their hit, “Whole Lotta Love,” the Beatles probably realized their days of singing sweet harmonies in an octopus’s garden were numbered. And if the cover of Abbey Road is any evidence, the Fab Four apparently saw no other choice but to immediately vacate their recording studio and march, single file, into the streets of London, never to be heard from again.
Zeppelin would go on to dominate the sound and psyche of the Seventies. Their first four albums created templates for almost everything that was to follow in the next decade, including riff rock (“Whole Lotta Love”), heavy metal (“Immigrant Song”), prog (“Dazed and Confused”), power balladry (“Stairway to Heaven”), arena blooze (“The Lemon Song”), glam (“Black Dog”) and country rock (“Bron-Yr-Aur-Stomp”).
They even paved the way for late-seventies punk and the first Van Halen album. Guitarist Johnny Ramone once confessed that he honed his pioneering punk-rock skills by playing Zeppelin’s “Communication Breakdown” repeatedly. And Edward Van Halen told Guitar World in 2008 that, “I think I got the idea of tapping [while] watching Jimmy Page do his ‘Heartbreaker’ solo back in 1971.”
This story is from the November 2024 edition of Guitar World.
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This story is from the November 2024 edition of Guitar World.
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