Led Zeppelin: The Biography

Rock stars. Whatever those words conjure for you, it is highly probable they owe a significant debt to Led Zeppelin. No one before or since has truly lived the dream quite like Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham. In Led Zeppelin, Bob Spitz takes their full measure, for better and sometimes for worse, expertly separating the myth from the reality with his characteristic connoisseurship and storytelling panache.

From the opening notes of their debut album, the band declared itself as something distinct – a collision of grand artistic ambition and raw primal force, of delicate English folk music and hard-driving African-American blues. That record alone sold over 10 million copies, yet it was merely the beginning; Led Zeppelin's albums have since sold over 300 million certified copies globally, and their impact remains undiminished. Collectively, Led Zeppelin's discography has spent an almost incomprehensible ten-plus years on the album charts.

The band is famously guarded, and previous books have often generated more heat than light. However, Bob Spitz's authority is undeniable and compelling. His innate understanding of the atmosphere and context – the music, the business, the recording studios, the touring life, the radio stations, the fans, the entire ecosystem of popular music – is unparalleled. His account of how Page and Jones, the accomplished London sophisticates, melded with Plant and Bonham, the wild men from the Midlands, to form a band from the ashes of the Yardbirds, within a scene then dominated by The Beatles and The Stones but rapidly evolving, is in itself a revelation. Spitz treats the music with the seriousness it deserves, bringing the band's artistic journey to full and vivid life.

The music, however, is only one part of the legend. Led Zeppelin is also the story of the transition from the sixties to the seventies, of how playing in clubs escalated to performing in stadiums and flying private jets, of how innocence gave way to decadence. Led Zeppelin may not have invented the groupie, nor were they the first rock band to truly let loose on the road, but they elevated it to an entirely new level, as they did with everything else. Not all the legends are true, but in Bob Spitz's meticulous accounting, what is true is astonishing, and at times, disturbing. Led Zeppelin gave no quarter, and neither has Bob Spitz. Led Zeppelin is the comprehensive and honest reckoning the band has long awaited, and richly deserves.