Un Led-ed

I've been listening to A Biography of Led Zeppelin: When Giants Walked the Earth by Mick Wall. And it's great stuff, for sure. I really enjoy hearing how the band struggled at the beginning, hearing the stories behind the songs, all that lot. In fact, I found that it was impossible not to put the first LP onto the turntable after hearing about the creation of that album . . . a place it hasn't occupied for a very long time . . . and let it spin and flip, spin and flip, spin and flip for the past several days. And I'll most assuredly be moving on to II pretty much any minute now. 

And the bit I just listened to mentioned Roy Harper, so of course that was quite lovely.

But there are two things that really bug me.

The first is just me and my prudish ways, I suppose, but the stories of The Boys's sexual exploits on the road . . . which are not told in gross detail, by the way, so it's just the sheer quantity of it, really     . . . though there was that bit about one of them handcuffing girls in the room while he went off to a gig, which I found very alarming    . . . but the fact that two of the band members were married at the time really put me off. It's just cowardly. If you want to fuck around, then don't get married. Or get divorced if you are married. But apparently The Girls were fine with whatever The Boys wanted to do, so I guess the rest of it is on them.

The second is even more alarming in some ways (since the consenting adult aspect is missing). It seems that quite a few of the early Led Zeppelin songs . . . and maybe of the later ones, too, I'll let you know when I get there . . . were just plain stolen from other people. I've heard some of this stuff before, and I know that there was at least a time or two when an artist got redacted songwriting credit, but I thought that it was primarily old blues songs, and I'd always believed the Page explanation that those tunes were pretty much all reworked versions of older songs, and that that was just how the blues went. You took a song, put your own stamp on it, and that was that. But maybe not. And most assuredly not when it comes, for instance, to stealing "Since I've Been Loving You" from Moby Grape's "Never" (written by Bob Mosley), which begins

Working from 11:00 to 7:00 every night

Ought to make life a drag

And I know that ain’t right

“Since I’ve Been Loving You” begins

Working from 7:00 to 11:00 every night

It really makes life a drag

I don’t think that’s right.

And so far as I can tell, the notes sung are exactly the same. 

I don't think that's right.