AP
- Led Zeppelin was the biggest rock band of the 1970s.
- The only band to come along after with such swagger and ambition was Manchester's Oasis.
- The group was controversial, but in retrospect, undeniably great.
I grew up in the 1970s, when Led Zeppelin was nearly ubiquitous on the radio. It was rare for an hour to go by without "Stairway to Heaven" or "Whole Lotta Love" getting a spin.
I put Zep behind me when I got older and discovered punk, but two winters ago, I took a deep, deep dive into all things Robert-Jimmy-John Paul-and-Bonzo and refreshed my point of view from the perspective of age.
Zep was at one time extremely outré in my world - bands like The Smiths, New Order, the Replacements, and the Violent Femmes offered a different take on rock n' roll. It probably goes without saying that I was a big Elvis Costello fan at one juncture, and he was not exactly what you'd call a Zep fan.
But time heals all youthful transgressions, and in the 2010s, Zep was ripe to revisit. There's really no way around it: In terms of scope and ambition, musical skill and adventurism, Zep was untouchable during its prime, from 1970 until about 1975, the period of the band's first four albums: I, II, II, IV.
Yes, the Rolling Stones and the Who were also doing their best work at this time, but Zep rose above. (It was truly a band, whereas The Who, for example, was turning into a vehicle for Pete Townshend's grand and influential ideas.)
Obviously, rock became quite fragmented after Zep folded in 1980, following the untimely death of drummer John Bonham. The alternatives gave way to new stuff. Punk to post-punk to New Wave to pop punk to emo, classic rock to metal, R&B to rap and hip-hop. It was quite difficult to find a Really Big Band À la Zep to assume that mantle. U2 came the closest, but the group's monumental seriousness made it less a fun act than a quasi-religious experience, culminating in the deeply spiritual 1987 album "The Joshua Tree."
And then, against all odds, came Oasis. I completely missed Oasis the first time around. The Gallagher brothers of Manchester, Noel and Liam, along with the rest of the band, got too big too fast. It was Oasis-Oasis-Oasis all the time, typically presented sort of grotesquely in the context of some pitched Britpop battle with other groups, like Blur and Suede and the other ones with one-word names.
The overall vibe of the whole lad-rock thing was, to my eyes and ears, even stupider than the many, many swaggering post-Zep experiments that completely missed the dynamic nature of Zep's music.
The problem with this particular line of rock is that the lineage isn't always going to be comfortable. Zep was a departure from the Stones and The Beatles, and the relationship between the four members was much more productive, if less dazzling, than what one witnessed in more volatile bands, such as Cream.
Oasis is going through a bit of a revival at the moment, with both Liam and Noel releasing new individual albums and Liam really bringing it at the "One Love Manchester" concert to mourn the victims of the terrorist attack at an Arianna Grande concert. Noel skipped that event, and the viciously entertaining rivalry between the brothers began anew. Just like the mid-1990s. Prior to all this, I'd decided to give the entire Oasis catalog a re-listen.
This was one heck of a band. Here's why: