One of the most common questions that fans of rock music ask is who is the best in their field. In other words, who is the best drummer of all time? Who is the best guitarist or singer? And 99% of the time, when rock fans have these discussions, the members of Led Zeppelin come up. This begs the question, who was the best member of the group?
There is no definitive answer; each member brought something unique and unequivocally essential to the band. Every band member knew just how important the others were and how if you removed one component, the whole thing fell apart. For that reason, they called it a day when drummer John Bonham passed away.
“When we lost John, we agreed unanimously that that was that,” said Robert Plant, “I had to go and find out if I really want to do it. Did I want to do it, or did I just want to sit back there like a croupier at a gambling thing, and just kind of rake [the money] in. Or, did I want to actually continue this kind of gig of finding out where I’m going. I wanted to take all the trappings away, because I’d lost my best mate.”
While the band decided Led Zeppelin couldn’t continue without Bonham, they did continue to make music individually. Jimmy Page and Robert Plant even teamed up to record their own studio album, Walking into Clarksdale. While it was nice to see them both working together, the record wasn’t as well-received or commercially successful as their work with Led Zeppelin.
Going back to the conversation about who the best member of Led Zeppelin was, it remains that each person was a huge contributing factor, as they all equally relied on one another to bring as much out of their performance as possible. The four combined to give something that was both eccentric and grounded, something that people had never heard before and yet could easily get on board with. With two members of the band missing, the album Walking into Clarksdale struggled to find its feet.
John Paul Jones picked up on this critique as well. While he didn’t hate the album, he felt Jimmy Page was holding back on it, and this was due to not working with the whole band that he had grown so comfortable with.
“I heard Page and Plant’s Walking Into Clarksdale,” said Jones when discussing the record, “And was disappointed that there wasn’t more of Page on it. I like to hear lots of Page. But they’re doing what they’re doing. They ain’t bothering me.”
Following Led Zeppelin’s split, there was an adjustment period during which each member had to decide whether they wanted to continue making music and how that would work. This led to some albums where the lack of definitive direction shows.
