Kent Caudle is one of the best people I know.…
Why I (sort of) hate Led Zeppelin
This entry will be about sort of hating Led Zeppelin, but I have to digress for a moment. For context. And so you don’t think I’m a bitch.
In another life, some years ago now, I managed 20 or so miscreants at a hair salon. I was a poor college student who needed the job.
Hairstylists, in general, are an interesting bunch. Societal misfits, artists, and amateur counselors for their clients, they live life on the fringe of moral acceptability and like it. Moody and dramatic, fascinating and frustrating, I loved working with them slightly more than I hated it. But I was young and I put up with a lot — too much.
And so, having no other outlet for my frustrations and needing employment badly, I used to burn CDs for my coworkers in a show of (passive-aggressive) “goodwill”, and in an attempt to get them to stop being such narcissistic assholes to me.
A couple of examples of their shenanigans:
Exhibit A: One female stylist I worked with was a robust woman in her late 40s who used meth (or something like it) to lose 150 lbs. — and not gracefully. In fact, I was once confronted by an irate (bigoted, piece of shit) customer who thought that we had hired a drag queen. “I know you hire those people in this industry,” she hissed, “but this is too much!” This particular stylist was often so strung out (“I’m hypoglycemic!”) that she would pass out in the middle of cutting hair, horrifying her clients and causing two or three of her fellow stylists to stop what they were doing to pick her up, drag her to a shampoo bowl and hose her off.
Like this, only a woman... and with more meth.
I made her a CD filled with songs about the dangers of doing drugs. She loved it.
EXHIBIT B: Then there was the guy whored himself around so much that, one sunny afternoon, he ran screaming out the front door of the salon when he discovered he had crab larvae wriggling around in his eyeball.
To cleanse you of that visual, here's a puppy.
I made him a CD about self-love, with euphemisms about the act written all over the disc. He thought it was hilarious.
See, none of them ever “got it”, and would just thank me profusely for such cool CDs. They’d be extra nice to me for a day or two before they’d be back to their old tricks. So, as the years went on I became more brazen, just to see what would happen and because, well, fuck them.
EXHIBIT C: Okay, so there was this stylist who was head-over-heels for Led Zeppelin. She was super cute, blonde and had lots of borderline-creepy male hangers-on.
No, she wasn't Robert Plant.
When her birthday rolled around I, naturally, made her a CD called I Love Jimmy Page, full of obvious, pointed examples of what a talentless group of thieving hacks Led Zeppelin were. The idea was that she’d put the CD on, thinking that it would be a bunch of Led Zeppelin “bootlegs”, but would instead get 80 minutes of all the original songs that her favorite band in the world had so shamelessly ripped off.
Now, before you convict me for crimes against rock for slagging on Zep so hard, hear me out.
Every single one of these hairdressers – remember, I was dealing with 20 of them – drove me a little crazy. A very typical day usually involved at least two of the following:
- – A fight in front of clients, leaving me to smooth things over.
- – Recreational drug use in the bathrooms.
- – Theft of each other’s commissions/tips, often using me as a scapegoat and feigning innocence.
- – Calling in “sick” when I knew — and they knew that I knew! — that they’d been out partying the night before, leaving me to call their angry clients.
The Zep-loving gal was one of the worst offenders of calling in “sick”, and her creepy clients would have meltdowns when told of her absence. I could spend a morning getting screamed at and/or talking dozens of her clients down from their bizarre metaphorical ledges. This bullshit happened at least once a week, which is why I decided I’d make my first brazenly passive-aggressive CD especially for her.
Problem: I had no idea how I was going to prove that Led Zeppelin sucked, since I was firmly of the mind that they didn’t suck. Not even a little bit.
And so, with the gusto of a cherry-picking cable news pundit, I went straight for the minor, seemingly insignificant details: I checked song credits.
Score!
(Keep in mind that all of these discoveries were made early in my music nerddom.)
Jimmy Page went far beyond ‘appreciating’ old blues numbers to downright ripping them off AND, in a staggering display of kicking one when they’re down further than he would ever be, he gave HIMSELF (and bandmates) songwriting credits! What a complete bastard.
True Fact: Jimmy Page invented the blues.
Howlin’ Wolf – “Killing Floor”
Howlin’ Wolf’s “Killing Floor” is one of the more obvious examples (right up there with “Sweet Little Sixteen”/”Surfin’ USA”) of outright theft perpetrated against black musicians by white musicians; if nothing else, Howlin’ Wolf should have at least throat-punched Led Zep for “The Lemon Song”.
Just like that, I had my first track.
And then there’s the case of Robert Plant. Who can deny that his vocal range is at the very least iconic? Turns out that even he stole his chops from another British bluesman, only this guy had more talent in his pinky than Robert Plant has dreamed about while dressed up as a knight atop his steed. Don’t believe me? Watch and learn from Steve Marriott.
Trouser snake unaccounted for.
The Small Faces – “You Need Loving”
At least The Small Faces had the class not to claim they wrote “You Need Love”, nor to change it up “Surfin’ USA”-style and cause legions of fans to try to convince the world that the Small Faces were NOT a bunch of disrespectful, thieving bastards.
But the thievery didn’t stop there, of course: Jimmy Page even stole his whole cello-bow-on-electric-guitar move!
Christ, what an asshole!
(Yeah, it’s mimed, but he’s drawing the bow on the recording and that’s what counts.)
I was able to dig up half a dozen or so more examples of questionable song credits to round out the first half of the CD. And then something very unexpected changed my trajectory:
It turns out that Jimmy Page, session musician, gave more than a few British rock bands a lift!
Including the Kinks:
The somewhat less-well-known pysch rockers Les Fleur de Lys:
And, perhaps the most disputed of all his credits, The Who:
But even if he didn’t play on ‘I Can’t Explain’, Jimmy Page found time to record with at least one of the guys in The Who:
Jeff Beck Group – “Beck’s Bolero”
In the end, the CD wasn’t all passive aggression. It couldn’t be. The girl, of course, loved it and I learned a lot, which is the goal of any good music nerd, right? While I was severely annoyed at all the outright thieving bastardry I uncovered in my passive-aggressive quest, I couldn’t fully turn Jimmy Page into a villain.
TL;DR: The reason why I only sort of hate Led Zeppelin is simple: Like his rock ‘n’ roll heir apparent, Jack White, Jimmy Page has the ability to take what’s been done before and make it sound like something you’re hearing for the first time. I don’t know what you’d call that, exactly, but I’m glad a little bit of it still exists.
On a probably unrelated note, I haven’t had a decent hair cut since I left the salon. True story.
I can’t stop laughing. I wish I’d had the opportunity to read this when I worked with a bunch of shit heads at, well, several of my previous jobs and could stick it to them with music. 😉
This is the biggest compliment I could have gotten on my writing — thank you!
If you need any passive-aggressive music tips in the future, please let me know. 😉
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