LINK: Stairway to heaven and hell - the rise and fall of Led Zeppelin

I am indebted to my brother-in-law, a stalwart fan of the sort of music that I write about (who else would give me a copy of the first Quatermass album for my birthday?) for sending me this article which appeared in The Guardian yesterday. As it features interviews with two Gonzo stalwarts - Michael Des Barres and Tony Palmer - I have every excuse to repost it...

'Zeppelin became a religion' ... Robert Plant (left) and Jimmy Page. Photograph: Ian Dickson/Redferns

"This social phenomenon – in no way was it ever in existence in the past and in no way will it ever exist again," the American rock promoter Bill Graham told filmmaker Tony Palmer in 1975. "I don't think we'll ever see this again – the adulation, the massness."

He was talking about the phenomenon of Led Zeppelin, then the biggest band in the world. Coming from a man who, two years later, would suffer a notorious run-in with Led Zeppelin in Oakland, California, these were prescient words. For rock music never has surpassed the "massness" Zeppelin then enjoyed, a story told in my new oral history of the group, Trampled Under Foot.

"The legions of disenfranchised young American warriors had no outlet whatsoever," says the singer Michael Des Barres, whom Zeppelin signed to their Swan Song label. "Led Zeppelin came along and gave them a hard-on like they'd never had before. Their lives became three chords and a stadium parking lot. There was no TMZ, no internet. There was just this incantation, this wailing to the gods."

Read on...