LEARNING TO LOVE LED ZEPPELIN
Author Bob Spitz wasn’t a fan of Led Zeppelin (members Robert Plant, left, and Jimmy Page in 1988) before he wrote their biography.
Led Zeppelin changed the culture. And to Bob Spitz, there can be no better reason to have spent five years immersed in the research and writing it took to arrive at an authoritative telling of the truth behind the myth, the mayhem and the music that continue to define one of the most iconic groups the world has ever seen.
As the author of “Led Zeppelin: The Biography,” a book he’ll discuss with Ann Wilson of Heart at a Changing Hands online event on Monday, Nov. 15, explains, that’s all he’s ever really asked of any subject before signing on to tell their story.
It’s how he arrived at what he thinks of as a “kind of schizophrenic oeuvre,” including books on Ronald Reagan, Julia Child, the Beatles and Bob Dylan.
“No. 1, they’re beloved,” he says. “And no. 2, they changed the culture. That’s the only way that I can dig into a subject. And Led Zeppelin really fit that bill.”
Or so he came to understand while researching the book.
Spitz was not a Led Zeppelin fan before the book
When he was working on “The Beatles: The Biography,” he says, “I realized it was the story of my life, basically — because the culture that the band brought with them changed how I lived.”
Led Zeppelin?
Not so much.
As Spitz recalls his introduction to the project, his editor told him he wanted to publish a book about a band that had sold more albums than any
body other than the Beatles.
After ruling out the Rolling Stones, the Who and Elvis Presley, Spitz thought, “Oh my God, he’s gonna make me write about ABBA.”
He almost fell off my chair, he recalls, with a laugh, when his editor said Led Zeppelin.
“I have 20,000 vinyl albums,” Spitz says. “I don’t have a single Led Zeppelin album. And if you had asked me to name two of their songs at that point, I might have said ‘Whole Lotta Love’ and ‘Stairway.’ I missed Led Zeppelin completely.”
As he thought it over, though, he started liking the idea.
“I thought, ‘I’m the perfect person. I’m an empty vessel. I can go back and absorb this incredible catalogue of music that I missed with a completely open mind.’ And that’s exactly what I tried to do. I was this empty vessel and their music filled me up.”
Spitz spent 5 years digging into Led Zeppelin’s catalog
That’s how he spent the next five years, discovering Led Zeppelin.
“I came to respect them enormously,” he says.
“My wife has made me promise to stop blasting their records in the house. But I came to admire all their music and really dig into it in a way that I’d never dug into it. It was out of my comfort zone and it opened up a whole world to me at this point in my life.”
He wasn’t expecting to be as impressed as he was by their talent.
“I wasn’t aware of what incredible musicians they were,” he says.
“I’ll be honest, I viewed them as kind of a garage band before this. And boy, was I wrong.”
He also came to view Led Zeppelin as a seismic shift in rock ‘n’ roll.
“They put a period on the end of the ‘60s,” he says.
“The ‘60s had ended as Led Zeppelin’s record broke. Altamont had already happened. Woodstock had happened. The whole peace and love aspect of the ‘60s was fading fast. And something new was brewing.”
Enter Jimmy Page, who formed the band in 1968 with Robert Plant on vocals, John Paul Jones on bass and John Bonham on drums.
“Jimmy had this idea for a new sound in his head that really shook things up,” Spitz says.
“It was different from anything we’d ever heard before — except maybe Jeff Beck with ‘Truth.’ So that was attractive to me. It gave the kids someplace to go.”
Separating the band’s myths from reality
One of his primary objectives was to separate the myth from the reality, much as he’d done with the Beatles.
At the time, Spitz recalls, there were 600 books on the Beatles.
When he spoke to Paul McCartney, he was told those other books were loosely based on a story the Beatles themselves had sold to Hunter Davies, whose authorized biography, “The Beatles,” was first published in September 1968.
“They wanted to protect their wives and girlfriends and their families from some of the grittier aspects of the Beatles story,” Spitz explains. “So I looked at those books and thought, ‘Well, that can’t be the Beatles legacy.’”
There weren’t as many books about Led Zeppelin. But he read them all.
“There were about 150 books,” he says.
“You look at them and say ‘Nobody’s sourced anything. Where do these quotes come from?’ Most of them are bogus. Or they took them from the newspaper. Where and when and in what context?”
Spitz set out to interview as many people as he could.
“The book has to be couched in truth and the only way to do that is to go back to the beginning, as a journalist, and to interview everybody all over again,” he
says. “There are 60 pages of sources in my book.”
In Spitz’s estimation, the books that have defined Led Zeppelin’s story thus far have been “Hammer of the Gods” by Stephen Davis and “Stairway to Heaven: Led Zeppelin Uncensored” by Richard Cole, their tour manager.
“And both of them are filled with stories that are just half-baked, not true self-aggrandizement,” Spitz says.
They’re also filled with lurid tales of excess and debauchery.
He couldn’t ignore the dark side of Led Zeppelin’s history
“Look, Led Zeppelin, they were buccaneers on the road,” Spitz says.
“And that’s a kind word. So I tried to put it in context. I went back and talked to a lot of the women they encountered along the way and the people who took a hard beating from them and their managers.”
He didn’t want to write a book like “Hammer of the Gods” and have it be just “one salacious episode after the next.”
He also couldn’t very well ignore that aspect of their story.
For one, his wife had taken him aside and said, “You’re gonna deal with this
properly.”
For another, he was working on the book against the backdrop of the #MeToo movement.
“Rock ‘n’ roll has gotten a complete pass on #MeToo,” he says.
“I don’t know why. And my wife was careful to say, ‘You cannot refer to the groupies as young women. They were girls.’ We’re talking about 13- and 14year-olds. That is way below the age of consent. And so I had to let the reader know what was happening.”
One interview that really hit him hard was with a woman who worked as their press agent.
“She said to me, ‘I never viewed them as sentient creatures,’” Spitz recalls her saying of the groupies.
“I mean, God almighty, that scared the hell out of me. And I think that was the attitude of not only the band, but all the people who worked for them as well. It was part of the culture.”
The #MeToo movement also had an impact on his access to the members of Led Zeppelin.
The surviving members of Led Zeppelin didn’t want to talk for this book
“I was told that they were gonna talk to me,” he says.
Then the #MeToo movement started to get more attention.
“And all of a sudden, none of them would talk to anybody in the press,” he says.
“I don’t know if that was a legal decision or a group decision. But any cooperation was pulled away. It was a heartbreaker.”
He got around it, though, by using quotes from interviews with other sources.
“I realized that so much material was already published, I could use it in a way that made you feel as if they were telling the story to you,” he says.
“And I hope I achieved that.” Now that his Led Zeppelin book has been published, Spitz has moved on to another British band that definitely changed the culture, having signed a deal to write a Rolling Stones biography.
“Big project,” he says. “The Beatles and Led Zeppelin had careers that lasted 10 years and the Stones are working on 60, so ...”
And that book is likely to be published when?
“Don’t hold your breath,” Spitz replies with a laugh. “It’s gonna take a long time.”