Book Review: Hammer of the Gods, The Led Zeppelin Story by Stephen Lewis

April 2000

The Led Zeppelin story begins, musically, in the early 1960s. At this time Jimmy Page became one of the hottest session guitar players in London. At the same time, John Paul Jones was in demand on the session scene as an arranger and bass player. Jimmy joined and then replaced long-time friend Jeff Beck in the latter days of the Yardbirds and played on the screaming Happenings Ten Years' Time Ago before Beck left leaving Page and new manager Peter Grant increasingly in control of the band. After a dismal tour of the US and the Little Games album where producer Mickie Most had attempted to turn the Yardbirds into a "commercial" outfit, only Page and Grant remained. Jimmy Page had started to develop ideas about what he should be doing in music. He recruited Jean Paul Jones who was looking to move out of sessions into a band. From the Midlands came former Band of Joy members Robert Plant and John Bonham. This was the New Yardbirds although they soon changed their name to one suggested by Keith Moon. "You'll go down like a lead Zeppelin," he is supposed to have said, or words to that effect.

After the tour that comprised Yardbirds and blues standards, the band went into the studio to work on some original and non-original material for the first album, the imaginatively-named Led Zeppelin. This was the start of one of the greatest careers in rock. The album meshed together the "old hands" Page and John Paul Jones with the two young chaps up from the sticks, Plant and Bonham.

What the book makes clear is that Led Zeppelin is about far more than great music. The group were pioneers in a number of areas, most notably the artist being in control of the music. The driving force of Page and Grant ensured this. But Led Zeppelin must have been one of the biggest cult band ever, if that is not a contradiction. They refused to release any singles and did not pander the whims of the press. Moreover, they were much bigger in the USA than at home. 

And the stories followed them around. What precisely was the role of the occult in the music or was it just a hobby of Jimmy Page's? Then there's the shark story.....

This book is recommended less for the Led Zeppelin fan who probably knows it all already but for fans of music in general. The group had numerous influences such as blues and R&B as well as folkies like the Incredible String Band and Roy Harper. Then they started to influence the later generation of "heavy metal" bands, the majority of which did not deserve to get drunk in the same bars. This is a book of excesses.

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Published in 1985 by William Morrow

Paperback version 1997 by Berkley Boulevard

ISBN: 1-57297-306-4

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