One thing I am completely aware of.

Is that nobody wants to hear a middle aged man wax on about how much he loves Led Zeppelin.

So I will exercise restraint.

But I can’t write an honest review of this book without at least mentioning how important their music is to me.

Led Zeppelin, probably more than any other rock band, have been the soundtrack of my life.

Somehow, I never got tired of them.

I have very eclectic taste musically.

I’m always experimenting and searching for new sounds.

But I still listen to Zeppelin all the time.

They just fucking rock.

After all this time.

And after literally tens-of-thousands of listens.

They still just fucking rock.

I honestly don’t know how their music is so durable for me.

But it is.

FM radio in the 70’s and 80’s was like Zeppelin every other song.

Yet somehow, Zeppelin still sound alive.

They stayed relevant during my hardcore, thrash metal and hip hop phases, through my (extremely pretentious) jazz and folk college days, all the way through the 90’s, to the present.

I should be so over it.

Zeppelin have been so ubiquitous, for so long, we should all be so over it.

Yet, somehow, it’s still so fresh and vital.

It’s literally black magic.

They hit a vein.

Now that I’m in my 50’s, learning about how the music got made is almost as interesting as the actual music.

This book seriously scratched that itch.

Few other bands have been more shrouded in mystery, folklore, and urban legend than Led Zeppelin.

The book brought a lot of that down to earth.

The honest coverage of the INSANE drug use, the fucking AWFUL sexual abuse, the money, the CRAZY as fuck life style, the all around VILE misbehavior, the burnout, and the tragedy of Bonham’s untimely death, all of it was eye opening to say the least.

The book also humanized these mythic figures for me.

Which is a good thing.

After all, they’re just people like you and me right?

Well…

Part of me still regarded Page, Plant, Bonham and Jones as god like. Or at least super human. Particularly Bonham for some reason. His playing was so unique, and still unsurpassed, at least to my untrained ears.

Anyway.

Reading about how frankly awful their behavior was, particularly Bonham, even for the time, was quite grounding, for better or for worse.

Learning about the rivalry within the Beatles kind of ruined their music for me.

Not totally.

But I just can’t get over how much they hated each other, and how much they hated some of their own music.

Peter Jackson’s revelatory Get Back has helped me get over that a little. But the tarnish remains.

I’m not sure if this book will ultimately have a chilling effect for me with Led Zeppelin.

So far, not so much.

Quite the opposite actually.

But it has given me a lot to think about.

And I enjoyed it immensely.

Plus.

Learning the back story of each song and album, and dropping the book to listen to the music, going back and forth like that, it was really fun.

I caught COVID-19 right after I started this thing, and the experience of mixing this book and music with that awful experience was a (very grown up) psychedelic fever dream.

That being said.

I honestly can’t think of a better way to recover.

5/5 super stars and double necked guitars ⭐️