Led Zeppelin is supposed to be the greatest rock n’ roll band ever, or so I’ve been told by so many people in my life through the years. Why don’t I feel the same way? What is wrong with me? Why is it that every time I hear a Led Zeppelin song I like, I think of one I don’t? Why can’t I just go with the flow on this? Why do I stay up late at night contemplating my feelings for this band, constantly vaccilating between love and contempt? Why can’t I just be normal?

I don’t know the answers to these questions. I’ve never really been able to accept the entire catalogue of anyone’s work and consider it untouchable. I love Bob Dylan, but have you ever listened to Empire Burlesque? Other than ‘Dark Eyes,’ it’s absolute shit. I mean, the Beatles assembled one hell of a catalogue, but how often can you listen to ‘Fixing a Hole’ without wanting to gouge your eyes out? I’m no big Grateful Dead fan, but I love Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty. So what if I don’t like Aoxomoxoa or 30 minute jams to nowhere? Doesn’t mean I can’t really love some of their work. I feel the same about Led Zeppelin. Some of their catalogue really cooks, but I can’t really say that I love, or even like everything they do.

I mean, really, I think Led Zeppelin hit their peak with their first record. It all went downhill. While I was brilliant, II was really damn good. III was pretty good, IV actually was pretty damn good, Houses of the Holy was good, Physical Graffitti was overdone, Presence was ok, and In Through the Out Door probably shouldn’t exist. That certainly doesn’t mean that there aren’t positives to be taken from any of these records. With those positives come the negatives. Will I ever stop?

II starts with a Jimmy Page riff that’ll forever eat your heart. “Cock rock!” you may scream, but you don’t even know the half of it. When Robert Plant says he’s gonna give you every inch of his love, he means it, and he’s not talking about his undying devotion (that’s for later). Right now, it’s all about lust which is really what most great rock n’ roll boils down to. Yeah, “Whole Lotta Love” is a Willie Dixon re-write. We all know that story. That certainly doesn’t mean it’s not a solid first track. It’s the kind of song that will perk your ears up and ask, “What the fuck is that?” if you’ve never heard it before.

The WTF is from Jimmy Page’s ecclectic and fresh production values. Jimmy Page is known for a lot of things. Most notably being a first class guitar wizard, having a healthy appetite for 14 year old groupies and heroin, and dabbling in the occult. What he really doesn’t get a lot of credit for is possibly being one of the greatest producers in rock n’ roll history. In the late 60’s, there were a shit load of British bands playing the blues and hard rock. Zep stands out, why? Because they have the best musicians? Overall they do, but Jeff Beck is a pretty fucking amazing guitar player and so is Clapton. Was it because they were so powerful live? They were, but if you never heard them live, you could’ve missed that power. Under Page’s control, those records lifted off the turntable and grabbed your attention whether you were ready or not. Without Zoso’s magic in the control panel, Zep could’ve been relegated to a footnote in rock n’ roll history for other generations to discover a la the Jeff Beck Group.

“And if I say to you tomorrow…” starts off the next track. “What Is and What Should Never Be,” is one of those tracks where Jimmy Page and the boys try to cram all of their virtuosity into a single track. You’ve got Robert Plant wailing during the chorus, evoking some sort of mythic Viking god, some tasty Jimmy Page guitar work, John Paul Jones impeccable bass lines, and John Bonham knocking some drum fills out of the park. We even have some slide work by Mr. Page. Jimmy was no Duane Allman when it came to slide, it very rarely appears in Led Zep’s body of work. The only notable track I can think of is “Travelling Riverside Blues.” It’s also one of the rare Page solo’s that is truly tasteful. Often times, I get the impression that Jimmy Page is trying to show off when he takes a solo, but here, every note means something. It’s a piece of art.

Now we come to “The Lemon Song.” Oh the sexual innuendo! Where did they come up with this stuff? This song is basically a patch work of several blues tunes, most notibly, “Killing Floor,” by Howlin’ Wolf. Unfortunately, the songwriting credits go to the four members of Zeppelin on the original album, and not to Chester Burnett (Howlin’ Wolf). I don’t want to be too hard on the Zep here, it’s a common theme in music. People take things and use them for their own purposes. George Harrison did it, Bob Dylan does it, many other artists have and continue to. Howlin’ Wolf eventually got some of the money owed to him, and now gets the songwriting credit, so good for him. It’s really part of the tradition of blues and folk music. While this tune was essentially “stolen,” John Paul Jones bass work really stands out here.

The first song that Robert Plant wrote all the lyrics for. “Thank You,” is a love song of epic proportions. It’s easy to see why this track gets played at quite a few weddings. Like most everything else in the Zep repetoir, this song is BIG. Real fucking big. The lyrics are big, the arrangement is big, everything is big. It’s grandiose nature serves it well, and John Paul Jones may be best represented as a keyboard player here. Lyrically, it’s big but simple. It’s statements are grand. “Your hand in mine we walk the miles,” and so on. It’s also one of the few tracks we hear someone else’s voice in the chorus. The riff echoes off the twelve string like a mutant Byrds song, and JPJ’s mandolin softens the mood. From a band known mostly for brute force, this is a relatively quiet and tasteful.

“Heartbreaker,” “Living Loving Maid(She’s Just a Woman),” and “Ramble On,” are three of the most played Zep songs on the radio. They rock, surely. “Heartbreaker,” became a live standard. That crunching guitar riff surely got the crowd in an uproar, and “Living Loving Maid(She’s Just a Woman)” is another rocker. I mean, yeah, they’re a bit generic, but boy if you want to get a party started, slap that on your turntable. They boil over with aggression. This was Led Zeppelin’s warning shot into the air, notifying all the other bands at the time that liked to play fast and hard that there was a new kid on the block with chops that you just would not believe.

“Ramble On,” aside from “Whole Lotta Love,” is probably the most famous tune on this album. The most interesting thing about it is, despite its large radio play, it was never played live in full until the 2007 reunion. Here we get the first glimpse of Plant’s Tolkien fetish, as the lyrics draw heavily from Lord of the Rings. You know, being literary is a good thing. Dylan, Zevon, Springsteen, and many other great lyricists draw heavily from their own literary influences. It’s funny though, to think about how hard a song rocks, and then to think it’s about elves. Hey, man, those movies were huge, and those books are generally considered great works of literary genius, so what the fuck do I know? More power to Plant for having enough balls to write about that stuff and pull it off.

Led Zeppelin were not only innovators as far as heavy metal music, but they were (with the help of Iron Butterfly), innovators in the ridiculously long drum solo. On “Moby Dick,” John Bonham’s signature track, the drum kit is at the front and center. Whether you like drum solos or not, you always have to admire the drummer at hand, and there was no better than Bonham. The drum is the tie that really binds rock n’ roll back to its roots. Africa. Rock n’ roll came from Africa. The slaves brought their own music, field chants and so on. That eventually mutated into jazz, folk, blues, and then to rock n’ roll. And fuck all you naysayers out there, I could give a fuck less about Neil Peart. Yeah, he plays fast and long but the fucker doesn’t have an ounce of the soul that John Bonham had. Fuck Rush. I must say, though, I don’t give a good damn about drum solos and this track is masterbatory.

“Bring It On Home,” rounds out this collection, another “homage” to the great bluesmen of the south. Willie Dixon gets another credit on this track, it’s another reworked blues tune, and that is that. Nothing new, nothing original, but really it doesn’t matter.

Led Zeppelin II provides us with a few hints as to what Zeppelin would become. This was still before the mysticism, the darkness, fan worship and all that non sense. Led Zeppelin always took themselves way too seriously, well, except for Bonham. There is very little fun to be had in their work. It’s heavy, yes, it’s so fucking heavy, but isn’t rock n’ roll supposed to be fun, too?  You can try to pour on the pretenses and all that other shit, but it all comes down to a simple question: Can you shake your ass to it? With most of Zep, there is an extreme lack of joy and exhuberence, only poking out like the sun behind dark storm clouds on the first couple of records, and most of those moments are on I and II.

These two records, love or hate Zep, are straight ahead blues rooted rock n’ roll records that have taken on a life of their own. They rewrote the blueprint for what it was to play this kind of music and set the blues on fire. Unfortunately it wouldn’t last as Zeppelin crashed under their own weight by forgetting a simple axiom laid down by one of their not so distant forefathers: It’s only rock n’ roll.