Led Zeppelin, you can’t find a better band to pay homage to.
That’s really the thing that got me into playing a lot – getting excited about playing along with my favorite bands like Zeppelin and Black Sabbath.
I have two sons, and at 16, they were into Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, David Bowie, and a lot of British rock.
So many things for me are unfortunate in the commercialization of something that is special. It’s like when Led Zeppelin appears in Cadillac commercials. There’s something that is taken away from your love of this thing and your connection to it.
Imagine a music business where all the music press talked about, all day long, was cover bands of old rock and pop groups. Beatles cover bands, Rolling Stones cover bands, The Who cover bands, Led Zeppelin cover bands. Cover bands, cover bands, everywhere you go.
I love rock and roll. Sometimes I feel like I was born in the wrong decade because I love Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix and… those are my bands.
The next Led Zeppelin is playing somewhere, and they’ll likely never make it because there’s no infrastructure for it. They’ll never get a chance.
The only advice I can give is to absorb as much as you can from as wide a spectrum as you can. If you’re in a rock band and only soak up Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, and Deep Purple kind of beginnings, then you’re not going to have much leeway.
I played guitar all my life, all the way through the Yardbirds, but I knew that for me, this was going to be a guitar vehicle, because that’s what I wanted it to be. There is no way I would play guitar like a tour de force like I did in Led Zeppelin.
Led Zeppelin was Led Zeppelin when John Bonham was on drums. It’s timeless.
I wanted to be a composer before anything else. And my sister was listening to Led Zeppelin in the other room! When I heard that, it was a game-changer.
Music was so important to the culture when I was growing up in the Sixties and Seventies. We just expected that Bob Dylan was going to make a great record, and it was normal. It was like, ‘Okay, here’s another great record by Bob Dylan; here’s another great record by Led Zeppelin.’
You’re always frustrated, you don’t have the chance to do a song on the album, like the Beatles did with Ringo and George, or like Led Zeppelin, where everybody was given a chance to contribute. There never is a chance with the Stones.
Every day, I hear a song and I think, ‘This would be great to cover on Glee.’ I like Led Zeppelin, of course, and Pink Floyd, Alice in Chains.
