Think you will agree Led Zeppelin's version owes more, in fact just about everything, to the Small Faces version. Willie Dixon and Muddy Waters, 2 greats who are not well known enough by younger folk.[video=youtube;pM8_HuQ0b34]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pM8_HuQ0b34[/video]
Bloated, self-important drone rock loved by the mainstream masses, which tells you everything. Zeppelin, Clapton and the rest of that rock mob. Boring pastiche of music, stolen from the people they were trying to emulate. Now runked over by a generation who weren't alive the first time round, re-writing the history books. ESSEX GULL
I was alive the first time around. Many black performers were very happy when the royalties from bands like the Stones then others gave them more money than they had previously seen. I started to look up the originals, who to be fair, I wouldn't have heard of if it wasn't for the cover versions, Elmore James, Howlin' Wolf, Jimmy Reed, willie Dixon, Muddy Waters etc. Needless to say in almost all cases the originals were better. About 1963/4 a number of black artists were asked over due to the bands covering them for amounts of money they couldn't believe and were amazed to see packed venues full of white people who knew their songs better than blacks back home. Some great TV programmes then, Sonny Boy Williamson with the Yardbirds, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and a programme shot on a rainy, disused railway station featuring Sister Roosetta Tharpe watched by an amazing 8 million people. Though Sonny Boy Williamson said after his visit "Those white boys in England want to play the blues so badly. And they do.". The British band that nailed it best were Fleetwood Mac with Peter Green who B BKing said was the only guitarist who gave him the sweats. Chicken Shack were pretty good too. A shame to see what Mac with Christine Perfect/ McVie turned into.
Total agree Castro. Not why I'd over looked it. They're only 12 notes in music. Poets don't reinvent words, it's the same in music. Don't you think you the blues guys of 1950's where stealing/borrowing from the likes of Robert Johnson and T-Bone Walker?
If part of the Zeppelin contract was having to promote and fly on Branson's Sputnik 2 there's little wonder Plant pulled out. What good is a load of money if you end up on Pluto?
As usual, the figure quoted - £500M - is massively over-the-top. There is no way in the current music industry to make that much money. It's impossible.
T-Bone Walker, there was a guy ahead of his time. A lot altered of course with the coming of amplification, the electric guitar and then the solid bodied electric guitar meaning you could play a completely different way, so Chicago blues players came to the fore.
Just over £10 million a concert. The majority of money won't come from ordinary concert ticket sales but from the TV and DVD rights. Then there's advertising, corporate ticketing and how much Branson is prepared to pay just to relive his past and watch Led Zeppelin.
Bon Jovi had the most successful tour in 2013 - playing 90 gigs (all sold out) to over 2 million people, they managed to gross $200M (no net figures are available, but costs are usually about a third so let's say they cleared $120M). There is no way LZ can make 8 times as much playing half as many gigs.
I thought well done to him at first but am thinking now that he could have done it and if he didn't need the money then it could have gone to any number of good causes. I hate seeing Rolling Stones and bands like that nowadays, they are an embarrasment and a travesty performing live, don't care if that's seen as ageist to be honest as their music is from another era
If you like music from that era go and see the tribute band rather than the origional. They just can't do today what they did in their hayday. Controversial i know but thats how i see it.
Went to see Hugh Laurie and the Copper Bottom Band a couple of months ago, playing some really old deep south blues. Not someone i would of thought of going to see but was suprised nay shocked at how good it was. Nothings new in music.
If he is round your way go see Paul Jones of Manfred Mann. Still sounds good. If Brian Jones had got his way he would have been the Stones lead singer but told Jones that nobody could make a living playing blues and carried on with his studies at Ocford for a while. Saw Hugh Laurie on a programme about blues. He does have a good knowledge of and interest in it.
Nothing wrong with music from another era. Old blues players still sound good and so do some other bands and singers. The problem comes when they can't do it anymore and become a pastiche of themselves. All of us who bought into the Stones and the whole anti establishment rebellion they supposedly represented couldn't help but become disillusioned at the money grabbing members of the establishment they became. As did so many other figures from the sixties, Frost and the other satirists. Prefer honesty like Roger Daltrey who said that he set out to become rich and famous and makes no apologies about it.
Spot on, cascof! Agree with all of it. (I think the gull has soiled his nest....) (Or not yet flown it?)
Don't shoot the messenger. So it was a load of rubbish after all... http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/nov/10/robert-plant-turned-down-500m-led-zeppelin-reformation
Branson's take on the planned reunion that never was... http://edition.cnn.com/2014/11/12/showbiz/music/robert-plant-led-zeppelin-richard-branson/index.html
Well, its only Rock n Roll. I bet he wants to go on a Misty Mountain Hop with his Black Dog before Going to California.
