Every team needs a dogsbody, someone less flamboyant, who is happy to hold things together—but Led Zeppelin seemed to defy that rule. In fact, the virtuosity of each respective member was proven in a comical fashion when a radio station held a national survey asking for fans to vote on the greatest vocalist, guitarist, drummer and bassist of all time: all four categories were won by Led Zeppelin members.
This expressive talent brought something new to rock ‘n’ roll. Of course, there had been virtuosos operating in the world of popular music long before Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Bonham, and John Paul Jones came to the fore. However, a degree of commercial confinement still dictated a lot of rock songwriting. Bob Dylan might have offered the revelation that there was more to youthful music than mere two-minute hand-holding sentiments in standard chords.
However, there was still a degree of expectation that progress and experimentation had to be at least close to radio-worthy. Even in their earliest days, Led Zeppelin helped shift the dial away from this thinking. With a blitzkrieg of drums far heavier than anything Ed Sullivan might happily share, wailing guitars, lengthened runtimes and a daring sense of expanding pop towards something more closely aligned with classical, the Birmingham band obliterated stilted old rules.
This inspired young kids like Geddy Lee no end. The would-be Rush rocker had a tough life with parents who had survived the horrors of the holocaust, and the endless drama and liberation of Led Zeppelin offered him unrivalled escape. There was a beautiful sense of virtuous abandon to the band that defied convention in the most elevated sense.
Alas, Led Zeppelin knew they needed a platform lofty enough to be able to showcase their new brand of rock ‘n’ roll. Jimmy Page, in particular, had been a prolific session musician and producer, and he knew that early hits were vital if something as heavy as Led Zeppelin would get off the ground. This line of thinking resulted in the blues-adjacent blast of ‘Rock and Roll’. While the song, from their fourth record, might have served as the belated entry point for many, Lee soon thought he had graduated beyond it.Led Zeppelin pioneered heavy rock with powerful riffs and mysticism.
“Then you’ve got what was probably the biggest hit on the record, ‘Rock And Roll’, and that might be my least favourite Zeppelin song,” he told Louder Sound. “It’s too simple for me, too commercial. I just never dug it.” As far as Lee was concerned, the song harked back to their early singles, which they had since transcended.
“I just never dug it,” he says. Something in the simplicity defied the band’s alluring fluidity. As Lee explains: “The phrase ‘heavy metal’ didn’t suit Zeppelin. It didn’t suit them because they were so much more than a heavy metal band. Yeah, they had a sound that constantly surprised. They used influences and they took chances that other heavy metal bands just would not conceive of, maybe sparked by Robert Plant’s lyrics.”
For Lee, that sense of adventure is lost on the more formulaic ‘Rock and Roll’. He concludes: “I love the imagery that he uses. And it is the combination of the way Jimmy’s acoustic guitar is used and the presence of that blues background. It gives their music much more depth than your average heavy metal band.”
Alas, there is an argument that ‘Rock and Roll’ is part of depth—an inverse retort to the growing musical hedonism of the bands they helped to inspire; a statement that said we can do simplicity better than anyone too.