MICHAEL DES BARRES: Writing about Led Zeppelin

Michael Des Barres writing about Led Zeppelin eh? That's a combination to thrill you. When Michael Des Barres writes like this, I am reminded (as if any reminder was necessary) why I hold the man in such esteem..

I looked out at the smiling, fun-filled faces at the Coachella festival -- the dry-cleaned, sun-kissed version of the Woodstock mud-covered congregation -- and I noticed something very culturally critical in the rock ’n’ roll universe.

Out of the tens of thousands of fervid fans in their Kings of Leon/Vampire Weekend outfits, 8,923 of them were wearing Led Zeppelin T-shirts.

Sporting de rigeurfacial hair and ironic shades, they had the world's most revered, magic band emblazoned on their chests.

Now, why would a 22-year-old AT&T technician who loves Skrillex or a teenage supermodel with three separate backstage passes who longs for John Mayer's gentle touch, be wearing the mythical naked, genitally challenged flying logo of four Viking, occultists on their sweet young bodies?

Is ecstasy a "stairway to heaven?" A "whole lotta love" in pill form?

Is allegiance to Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Bonham and John Paul Jones a must for every generation since their inception?

Yes.

An unequivocal, yes!

Read on...

http://www.desbarres.com/

If you have not done so already, check out Michael's Gonzo Artist Page

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...

WALLY MEET LED ZEPPELIN

Well, actually, it is Roy Webber meeting Robert Plant, and it was four years ago so it hardly counts as up-to-the-minute news. But for some reason Google News Alerts flagged it up as a new story (which as there are no words is also an oxymoron). But it is a very good picture (from Bob Harris' website) and deserves to be cross-linked to as I shamelessly promote the Gonzo artist pages for:

Wally
Jackson Webber

LED ZEPPELIN: The song doesn't always remain the same

It’s funny how certain bands develop quite a complex mythology despite having been quite well documented during their time in operation. One such band is Led Zeppelin.

Now, as regular readers will know, the other week my lovely wife and I drove up to the north of England to a wedding. On our way, I popped into a newsagent and bought the Uncut special edition bookazine (I hate the term, it’s almost as bad as the word ‘signage’ that is rapidly coming into the parlance of the publishing industry, and as I am an ever-so-tiny, but bona fide part of said industry, I have no real option but to grit my teeth and use terms like this although they make me cringe). This bookazine was about the history and mystery of Led Zeppelin. Then, upon my return to the Gonzo Daily nerve centre (actually a converted potato shed with a leaky roof in North Devon, where I and five tanks of tropical fish manage not only Gonzo Daily, but the Centre for Fortean Zoology, CFZ Press, and various other things) I unpacked the post and found that those jolly nice people at Omnibus Press had sent me a book about Led Zeppelin.

Ironically both of these publications were laid out in very similar styles and went through the band’s career, album by album with the bookazine fleshing it out with classic interviews and press items and the book adding a section where it went through each of the albums song by song. As I said at the beginning, you would expect that the band like Led Zeppelin whose every movement, action, and change of underwear had been written about, analysed, and generally documented, would have been pretty easy for both projects to write about. One would also have the imagined that both of these projects would have been essentially the same. Not on yer Nelly! There are some fundamental differences about people, places and songs which make you wonder whether at least one of the authors hadn’t done their homework properly. But I think it’s more fundamental than that. In my career as a Fortean zoologist I have documented how perfectly normal events can become myths; and how perfectly normal flesh and blood animals can become monsters. A good example of this is the various wild cat species which have been introduced surreptitiously into the United Kingdom. There are pumas/panthers living wild on many of the more remote areas of the country particularly in the South-West. If the only media coverage of such things had been an academic paper entitled ‘On an Incidence of Introduced Pantherine spp. on West Country Moorland’, then quite probably most of the general public would have neither known or cared, but it didn’t work out like that. Newspapers dubbed these creatures the 'Beast of Bodmin', or the 'Beast of Exmoor', and gave them the type of accolade given to a rapist, serial killer, or terrorist, and a new
media monster was born. I dubbed this process ‘the mythologisation process’ and wrote quite widely on the subject.

It wasn’t until the other day that I realised that the same process happens within popular music; a band like Led Zeppelin acquires a mythical status far greater than one would have imagined for four blokes recycling riffs first invented by black bluesmen in the southern states of the USA 30+ years before. Led Zeppelin became a cultural behemoth, and in the end the mythology overwhelmed them. I have a sneaking suspicion that this is why they have never properly reformed – whatever they did could never live up to the legend.

Weird huh?

So which of these products do I reccomend? The truth is that they are both good (although they are both slightly flawed), and neither are expensive. So buy them both. But put them on different shelves of your collection - they might argue.

MICHAEL DES BARRES - An exclusive sneak look at the next album

I have always liked Michael des Barres. Back in the mid 1980s when I was still a student and dating the girl who was to become my first wife, I heard a band called The Power Station. Alison (my first wife-to-be) was a massive fan of Duran Duran and so being as OCD as I am, I bought loads of Duran Duran rarities and spin-off records for her. One of them was the aforementioned debit LP from The Power Station. Its vocals were by Robert Palmer, a dude whom I always admired, and I was disappointed when I discovered that he didn't want to play live and so left the band after the first album but before they had started touring.

One day we were reading the music press and my future ex-wife said: "Oooh, they've replaced Robert Palmer with some bloke called Michael des Barres".

"Who the hell is he?" I grunted bad temperedly, but I checked him out and soon became a fan. Over the years I have got hold of stuff that he did with his previous bands, Silverhead and Detective. I also got mildly OCD about Led Zeppelin at around that time and as Detective had been signed to Swansong this was an added bonus. Over the years I have heard various bits and bobs that Lord des Barres (yes, he is a member of the British peerage) has done, and I have always been impressed.

This morning I woke up feeling dreadful. Bipolar and diabetes are not a good mix, and I have not been a well man for years, but this morning I was feeling particularly yucky. My sprits were lifted, however, by an email from the big cheese himslf. It contained an MP3 of a new song by des Barres, and a picture.

"This is jolly good" I typed back. "Tell me more".

"Well, its a sneak preview of a track from the forthcoming album 'Carnaby Street' which we are putting out in the late summer or fall" he replied.

I remonstrated him for not using the Queen's English. "It is autumn, dear boy", I wrote, but asked whether I could post the aforementioned sneak preview onto the blog.

"Go for it" he replied.

So I did.