Review (1): Led Zeppelin, the re-grouped Yardbirds, made their Marquee debut last week. They are now very much a heavy music group, with singer Robert Plant leading and ably holding his own against a powerful backing trio of John Paul Jones (bass), John Bonham (drums), and Jimmy Page (guitar).

Amp troubles didn’t help them on this particular occasion but there seemed to be a tendency for too much volume which inevitably defeats musical definition.

One of the best numbers of the set was “Days of Confusion” (aka Dazed and Confused), featuring interesting inter-play of Plant’s voice and Page’s guitar on which he used a violin bow creating an unusual effect. Drummer Bonham is forceful, perhaps too much so, and generally there appears to be a need for Led Zeppelin to cut down on volume a bit. (T. Wilson, Melody Maker, Dec. 1968)

Press Review (2): Led Zeppelin may sound a pretty incongruous sort of name to Americans unfamiliar with the British sense of humor, but when Who drummer Keith Moon dreamed up the title for Jimmy Page’s new group he was recalling an ancient British saying. They say that when a joke falls flat, it “goes down like a lead Zeppelin” (named after the World War I airship), but Page’s new combo seems in little danger of flopping.

For their recent appearance at London’s Marquee Club, the ex-Yardbirds guitarist whipped his men into a commendable frenzy which was not without its moments of inspiration and extensive improvisation.

“Our music sort of resembles jazz, as far as the improvisation is concerned,” explained the leader. “All I can say is that we’re just sort of moving on and throwing ideas to each other.
“We usually have the beginning part worked out in advance and the ending, and we might have a couple of cues as to what the thing is going to go into, but we might go off into anything—who knows? We do have some numbers that are more or less the same from beginning to end but they’re mostly the shorter ones, and anyway, it’s more of a challenge to experiment.”

I thought they had a tendency to go on for too long and destroy effective climaxes by trying to top them with a further musical climax. Jimmy took this criticism kindly. “It’s funny you should say that, because when we played here at the Roundhouse, the reaction was so good that I asked people what they thought of the group. Nearly everyone I spoke to said ‘oh, it was great, but you could have done longer!’ It seems to be the scene now.”

His most impressive feat on the night I caught the group, was bowing his guitar strings in harmony with the vocal on a number called ‘Days of Confusion.’ (Dazed & Confused) Surprisingly, I discovered that he first tried out this feat more than three years ago. “With the voice we try to do a lot of answering phrases and so on and that usually builds up into quite a thing with the voice following behind,” Jimmy explained. [Valerie Wilmer,  12/68]