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Thread: Help me understand Led Zeppelin?

  1. #76
    She'll be standing on the bar soon
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  2. #77
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    I love Led Zeppelin. Every album is great and the boys played a lot of different styles from metal to folk, prog to the blues - just awesome!!!

    Led Zeppelin 9/10
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  3. #78
    Quote Originally Posted by Zappathustra View Post
    I don't know if it has been explicitly stated, but it's clear to me that Page was very well aware of Townshend as a player and writer, and part of the high level of artistic expression that Zeppelin always maintained was due to this hidden antagonism.
    Indeed: Page appears as a session man on The Who's very first single, "I Can't Explain" b/w "Bald Headed Woman." He was brought on because the producer (Shel Talmy) wasn't sure Townshend could cut it in the studio, but in the end Page just played rhythm.
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  4. #79
    Quote Originally Posted by notallwhowander View Post
    I'd have to go over the catalog again with an intentional ear when it comes to misogyny. It is quite possible I've glossed over some stuff, lacking critical skills in my early days, and now the songs being so overly familiar I haven't examined them with fresh ears. However, I do think there are the songs themselves and what we as listeners ascribe as intention. Women dig Zeppelin. While on one hand that doesn't say much, many women dig the Stones and Mick's lyrics are pretty notorious, it's still worth noting. While there was a ton of erotic objectification, I don't recall any hate. There is plenty of heartbreak, but there was comparatively little bitterness. I can think of "Your Time is Gonna Come," and the part of "Gallows Pole" where the narrator pimps out his sister and she dies for it - that's dreadful - but I'm not recalling a whole lot more. I could, however, be conveniently leaving out things that did not comport with the intentions I ascribed to the songs.
    Women also dig "Norwegian Wood," a song about a guy who burns a woman's house down because he couldn't get laid.

    Perhaps "misogyny" is the wrong word. What I'm saying is that women are generally portrayed as either sex objects or (for example, "Stairway" or "Celebration Day") nasty. Classic Virgin/Whore complex.
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  5. #80
    Jon Neudorf
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    Quote Originally Posted by miamiscot View Post
    I love Led Zeppelin. Every album is great and the boys played a lot of different styles from metal to folk, prog to the blues - just awesome!!!

    Led Zeppelin 9/10
    Led Zeppelin II 10/10
    Led Zeppelin III 9/10
    Zoso 10/10
    House Of The Holy 10/10
    Physical Graffiti 8/10
    Presence 9/10
    In Through The Out Door 8/10
    Coda 7/10
    This.

    Jon

  6. #81
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    Quote Originally Posted by Sturgeon's Lawyer View Post
    Women also dig "Norwegian Wood," a song about a guy who burns a woman's house down because he couldn't get laid.
    For someone who can't turn off the critical thinking part of his brain, you're not thinking very clearly about this song. The guy in Norwegian Wood gets laid. What he is struggling with is meeting a woman who is as powerful, independent, and liberated as he is. And he can't handle it. You're not supposed to identify with the guy - other than identifying the double-standard that is being intentionally portrayed in the song - and most people, women in particular, totally get this.

    As far as Zeppelin's portrayal of women, I'd agree it doesn't exactly elevate rock music above well established norms for that period. But I'm not sure they are that different from a lot of bands or artists from that era. Is Zeppelin's stuff really that much worse than Foxy Lady or Crosstown Traffic? And a lot of it can be traced back to the blues artists Page and Plant revered (Killing Floor, How Many More Times, etc.). To criticize Zeppelin for this, or stuff like Stairway, which is far more ambiguous, is basically to flush a good portion of the rock/blues canon down the toilet at the expense of not understanding the sense of liberation and revolution this music provided at the time it was created.

    Yeah, as we finally wake up to the issues of catcalls and objectification of women, some of this stuff can be seen in a different light. But it wasn't taken that way at the time, and a truly critically thinking modern listener should be able to appreciate the exuberance of all this stuff, and not just Zeppelin, while minding that this is not how one would actually act toward women today.

    Bill

  7. #82
    And if the sun refuse to shine...another Plant misogynist anthem from II.

  8. #83
    Quote Originally Posted by Mythos View Post
    I think a lot of music is about timing, for the most part Led Zep sounds dated, I liked them as a kid, when I was first getting into music, but even then I did not like all of their material and agree that Plants high-pitched whiney voice can be annoying.

    Stairway to Heaven (followed closely by Won't Get Fooled Again) might be the greatest rock song not only of the 70's but EVER made! It came out when I was 13 and I loved it and was very much into hard rock (Hendrix, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, The Who, Wishbone Ash, Yes, Tull, etc) so after waiting for over 2 years for their next release, this 15 year old peddled his sting ray over 12 miles round-trip to buy Houses of the Holy, I recall thinking the cover was kinda weird looked like a little naked boy, with wig, Ok, whatever, can't wait to hear what they have created to top Stairway to Heaven, I put it on my PL-12D Pioneer and what I hear was worse than a hammer to the face, instead of hard driving blues rock, I'm hearing mellotron driven bather, wears the guitar solos, I look to see if Page is still in the band, and then Dyer Maker starts and halfway through, after throwing up, I take the record off and got rid of it.

    Led Zep was dead to me, never bought another of their records or CD's to this day.

    Although I would like to compliment them of a very appropriate album title: "The Song Remains the Same" - YES, it does and that's the problem...
    Er, so because they were playing a different type of music you gave up on them but your complaint is that "the song remains the same"? Although D'yer Mak'er IS terrible right enough.

  9. #84
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zappathustra View Post
    And if the sun refuse to shine...another Plant misogynist anthem from II.
    One thing about Bobby Plant is that it's easy to misunderstand the words coming out of his mouth.

    I've always heard it:

    Living Loving Maide:
    With a purple operator and a fifty sent head.....

    Immigrant Song:
    All we see of threshing on, I wanna go where we can twist and shout....

  10. #85
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    Zep IV is one of my fav album covers of all time. I've always loved it, the rustic nature plus simplicity, genius.

  11. #86
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    The best album covers are from Zep1 to HOTH.

  12. #87
    Quote Originally Posted by Sputnik View Post
    The guy in Norwegian Wood gets laid. What he is struggling with is meeting a woman who is as powerful, independent, and liberated as he is. And he can't handle it.


    The song is about an affair he had (possibly with a prostitute) and an act of revenge that wasn't really clear. He left some room for interpretation.
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  13. #88
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    NP: The Rain Song.........brilliant. Just brilliant.

  14. #89
    Estimated Prophet notallwhowander's Avatar
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    The discussion of "Norwegian Wood" points out what I meant by the sing itself and the intention the listener assigns to the song. I never heard, "So, I lit a fire, isn't it good, Norwegian wood?" as somehow signifying an act of revenge. I don't think there is anything in the song itself to sustain that.

    As far as the sex, "I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me." is a strong indication that the couple had sex, especially in light of them being up all night. The whole song is cryptic, sure. As I heard Paul say, it cryptic is because it was about an extramarital affair.

    Even if the intention behind the lyrics are some sexually frustrated act of revenge, the lyrics themselves are rather innocuous, and fail to communicate it. There are other narratives that make sense of the lyrics that aren't so dark.

    This is true of Led Zeppelin as well. I've met meathead guys who love Zeppelin, and put a definite predatory spin behind a lot of the sexually explicit lyrics. I have met sensitive intelligent women that heard the same lyrics as describing one erotic encounter in a long-term romantic relationship. The songs are just the songs, and say no more than what they say.
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  15. #90
    Never owned one of their albums; didn't need to because all my friends had them and they were being played wherever you went. I know the entire catalog without having owned it. That said, I didn't care much for the first two and the stuff I like most is from HOTH and Physical Graffiti, i.e. the proggy stuff. Presence is a strange album that I liked one day and didn't like the next. It seems unlike any of their other albums, probably because of the production. I sort of liken it to what Vapor Trails is to the Rush catalog, maybe because Presence doesn't have keyboards and barely any acoustic guitar...
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  16. #91
    Member Sputnik's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ronmac View Post
    The song is about an affair he had (possibly with a prostitute) and an act of revenge that wasn't really clear. He left some room for interpretation.
    I understand, (from interviews, etc.) what his inspirations for Norwegian Wood were. But even if the inspiration was an affair, or a prostitute, there's nothing in the song itself that suggests that; it's basically irrelevant. What is in the song, however it got there, to me implies a guy who's used to picking up girls meeting one who gives him a very different experience than the one he's used to. He didn't "have her, she "had him." She has a job, and responsibilities, and she laughs that he doesn't. She doesn't have a chair... she's weird. Weirder than he is, because he's looking for a chair to sit when she tells him to sit. The whole experience is alienating for him, he's used to "being in charge." It leaves the dude in the morning, sitting alone, feeling belittled, and either contemplating an act of revenge, or committing one.

    Perhaps Lennon felt that way, perhaps he didn't, but the song captures and presents this clearly and to perfection, regardless of the original motivations. I also think the song presents a picture of a strong, independent, liberated woman who embodies a different side of this period of changing morality, and a guy who can't quite keep up. Whatever Lennon had in mind when he wrote it, I think this is the picture most have formulated from this song, because this is the material that is present in the song. So yes, there's room for interpretation, but in this case I don't think the original inspiration of the songwriter is all that illuminating. The song in some ways transcends that.

    Bill

  17. #92
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    Quote Originally Posted by Sputnik View Post
    So yes, there's room for interpretation, but in this case, I don't think the original inspiration of the songwriter is all that illuminating. The song in some ways transcends that. Bill
    Not only that, this is the hallmark of superb songwriting.

  18. #93
    Norwegian Wood is my song completely. It was about an affair I was having. I was very careful and paranoid because I didn't want my wife, Cyn, to know that there really was something going on outside of the household. I'd always had some kind of affairs going, so I was trying to be sophisticated in writing about an affair, but in such a smoke-screen way that you couldn't tell. But I can't remember any specific woman it had to do with.
    John Lennon

    All We Are Saying, David Sheff

    -----

    I came in and he had this first stanza, which was brilliant: 'I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me.' That was all he had, no title, no nothing. I said, 'Oh yes, well, ha, we're there.' And it wrote itself. Once you've got the great idea, they do tend to write themselves, providing you know how to write songs. So I picked it up at the second verse, it's a story. It's him trying to pull a bird, it was about an affair. John told Playboy that he hadn't the faintest idea where the title came from but I do. Peter Asher had his room done out in wood, a lot of people were decorating their places in wood. Norwegian wood. It was pine really, cheap pine. But it's not as good a title, Cheap Pine, baby...

    So she makes him sleep in the bath and then finally in the last verse I had this idea to set the Norwegian wood on fire as revenge, so we did it very tongue in cheek. She led him on, then said, 'You'd better sleep in the bath'. In our world the guy had to have some sort of revenge. It could have meant I lit a fire to keep myself warm, and wasn't the decor of her house wonderful? But it didn't, it meant I burned the fucking place down as an act of revenge, and then we left it there and went into the instrumental.


    Paul McCartney
    Many Years From Now, Barry Miles
    "The White Zone is for loading and unloading only. If you got to load or unload go to the White Zone!"

  19. #94
    Member Sputnik's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Koreabruce View Post
    Not only that, this is the hallmark of superb songwriting.
    That's what I think.

    Quote Originally Posted by ronmac View Post
    Norwegian Wood is my song completely. It was about an affair I was having. I was very careful and paranoid because I didn't want my wife, Cyn, to know that there really was something going on outside of the household. I'd always had some kind of affairs going, so I was trying to be sophisticated in writing about an affair, but in such a smoke-screen way that you couldn't tell. But I can't remember any specific woman it had to do with.
    John Lennon

    All We Are Saying, David Sheff

    -----

    I came in and he had this first stanza, which was brilliant: 'I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me.' That was all he had, no title, no nothing. I said, 'Oh yes, well, ha, we're there.' And it wrote itself. Once you've got the great idea, they do tend to write themselves, providing you know how to write songs. So I picked it up at the second verse, it's a story. It's him trying to pull a bird, it was about an affair. John told Playboy that he hadn't the faintest idea where the title came from but I do. Peter Asher had his room done out in wood, a lot of people were decorating their places in wood. Norwegian wood. It was pine really, cheap pine. But it's not as good a title, Cheap Pine, baby...

    So she makes him sleep in the bath and then finally in the last verse I had this idea to set the Norwegian wood on fire as revenge, so we did it very tongue in cheek. She led him on, then said, 'You'd better sleep in the bath'. In our world the guy had to have some sort of revenge. It could have meant I lit a fire to keep myself warm, and wasn't the decor of her house wonderful? But it didn't, it meant I burned the fucking place down as an act of revenge, and then we left it there and went into the instrumental.


    Paul McCartney
    Many Years From Now, Barry Miles
    Yeah, I'm sure all that was probably flying around in their minds. But what got committed to music and lyrics was... different. It goes it's own way and becomes something greater in the process, the hallmark of transcendent songwriting. Plus they can't even remember if they wrote it together or if it's Lennon alone. So who cares? Just deal with what's in the song, all you need to know about it is right there.

    Bill

  20. #95
    Estimated Prophet notallwhowander's Avatar
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    That's interesting. I wouldn't have assumed that backstory from lyrics.
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  21. #96
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    For me Led Zeppelin were like the Oasis to *Jethro Tull's Blur. All front and volume with a tried and tested (boring) blues formula, while Jethro Tull/Blur continued to be inovative with each new album. Apart from LZ III and IV, I've never been a fan either. Didn't like I and II and didn't like anything after IV either.

    * Jethro Tull can be replaced by Deep Purple or Black Sabbath for the same effect.

  22. #97
    Quote Originally Posted by notallwhowander View Post
    That's interesting. I wouldn't have assumed that backstory from lyrics.
    So, to further hijack this thread:

    I always read into it that it could have been a prostitute. But, John said it was an affair. Maybe an affair with a prostitute?

    She showed me her room.

    He noticed there wasn't a chair. Seemingly only a bed.

    We talked until 2:00 (am?)
    And then she said, "It's time for bed."
    She told me she work in the morning and started to laugh.


    I told her I didn't and crawled off to sleep in the bath.

    Was it his disgust in her, or the fact that he thought she was dirty that made him need a bath. Who knows?

    And when I awoke I was alone
    This bird had flown

    Could this be where he realizes he was had? "Or should I say, she once had me." Maybe he was the one who felt like an object for once.

    So I lit a fire
    Isn't it good Norwegian wood?


    It certainly reads like he torched the place in spite or revenge.


    I never ever considered that could be about John feeling threatened or alienated by a successful woman. That's not an interpretation I've heard. But, that does show how such a well-crafted song can leave just enough room for interpretation.

    That doesn't mean he's not showing his own weakness for his part and perhaps a reflection of the self-doubt that he was struggling with at the time.


    Anyhoo, back to your regular programming. Zeppelin, right?
    "The White Zone is for loading and unloading only. If you got to load or unload go to the White Zone!"

  23. #98
    Member Jerjo's Avatar
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    Here's a good segue. Upon the release of Physical Graffiti a reviewer in Rolling Stone thought the guitar texture was similar to Dear Prudence. Definitely not just a blues-rock pastiche.

    I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down.'- Bob Newhart

  24. #99
    Quote Originally Posted by Jerjo View Post
    Here's a good segue. Upon the release of Physical Graffiti a reviewer in Rolling Stone thought the guitar texture was similar to Dear Prudence. Definitely not just a blues-rock pastiche.

    Good call. A great song, and a beautiful guitar solo by Jimmy, building and building, I believe I can hear at some point 3 or 4 guitars simultaneously.

  25. #100
    Estimated Prophet notallwhowander's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ronmac View Post
    So, to further hijack this thread:
    I get it now, it just isn't how I put the story together before. But then, I didn't spend a much time thinking about it either, even though through sheer repetitive listens I had the lyrics memorized virtually verbatim. What gets me is that there is little signalling of spite in the song until the end. Am I supposed to assume falling to get your rocks off automatically induces the rage of an arsonist? Funny enough, I don't, the music doesn't convey any kind of simmering rage either, so the twist at the end never landed with me. It thought it was about a kind of lonely introspection.

    Anything written leaves itself open for interpretation. The meaning is made in the head of the person who hears the song. Sure the creator attempts to encode meaning into the song, or whatever, but the actual decoding is a creative act of the person hearing it.
    Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world.

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