Why we still love Led Zep

They epitomise everything today8217;s rock 8216;n8217; roll lacks

When I was in high school, I hated Led Zeppelin. I was a punk. To me, those long-haired beasts in Zeppelin, with their extended guitar solos and songs about fairy-goddess devil women, were very old hat.

In college, I took up women8217;s studies8212;and hated Led Zeppelin even more. Zep was a particular bugaboo for feminists, put off not only by the strutting machismo of songs like Whole Lotta Love, but also by the infamous offstage 8220;antics8221; that could be labelled groupie abuse.

In the 1980s, the wheel of pop was, as always, turning. The arena-goers who never had stopped loving the band soon found new company in the indie musicians of the Pacific Northwest. Soundgarden created a new hard rock that somehow reconciled punk8217;s no-frills virtuousness with metal8217;s florid virtuosity. In the meantime, metal itself was going underground; with Metallica leading the transformation.

At 24, I was already feeling jaded ah, youth! and in need of something to rejigger my musical libido. My roommate Anne and I became hooked on a local band called the Ophelias. We followed the Ophelias8217; trail to the Zep albums that were so easy to find in the used-record bins. We were going back8212;to a time we never actually had wanted to be a part of and that actually existed only in fantasy worlds like the one Zep8217;s music created.

We hardly wanted a return to the sexism embodied by lyrics like Soul of a woman was created below. But it still felt great to bellow it out, to take it on, to see what it felt like just for a minute to act like these objectionable expressions were OK. Because, frankly, that feeling was a luxury that, as young women fighting for our own voices, we were never allowed. I still love Led Zeppelin.

Fast-forward to the present day. The three surviving members of Zep are reuniting for the first time in many years. They8217;ve recorded a new song and rumours are circulating about a possible US tour. Once again, Zep has come in all its excessive glory to save us from appropriateness.

What8217;s inappropriate about Zep now, and what we long to hear, is the band8217;s sound. Its greatest outings, from Stairway to Heaven to the group8217;s epic live jams, oppose the professionalism, studio-altered perfectionism and clean digestibility of today8217;s mainstream rock.

Story continues below this ad

And nothing could be less like Led Zeppelin than what the Top 40 now calls rock. Even top-notch commercial rock bands favour snappy, tight rhythms and melodies and that compressed production style that makes songs shoot out of a car radio like silver bullets.

A Led Zeppelin song could captivate and bore within the space of a few minutes. A big part of their genius was that they thought it was OK to do both. So welcome back, Led Zeppelin. Enjoy the thunder, the lushness, the boring parts. They don8217;t make 8217;em like this band any more. And we, with our 21st-century ears, probably wouldn8217;t want them to.

-Ann Powers LAT-WP