There are essentially two halves to Dusty Springfield’s career, standing either side of Dusty in Memphis. It was a gamble. Across the 1960s, Springfield had emerged as the leading female face of the British invasion by the decade’s end, but it took a while. She’d stormed the UK charts, reeling off big, string-laden pop numbers […]
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Artistic inspiration often comes from the most unlikely surroundings, and although it is easy to envision every one of Led Zeppelin’s hard rock riffs and expansive long-playing masterpieces being dragged from the endearingly dirty gutters of rock and roll, where all guitar-based abrasion surely resides, Jimmy Page and the gang often took their core inspiration […]
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Robert Plant joined Led Zeppelin just as they sprang from the ashes of The Yardbirds. The 20-year-old singer had been the frontman of his West Bromwich-based group Band of Joy when he was approached by guitarist Jimmy Page, who was in search of a new vocalist for his new incarnation of The Yardbirds. As Plant […]
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A decade into Led Zeppelin’s existence, they could still make a rational argument for being the biggest rock ‘n’ roll band on earth, but the days of appearing cutting edge or ‘dangerous’ were long gone, as the louder voices in the emerging punk scene had reframed them as unhip dad rock, or yesterday’s news. Jimmy […]
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The rock world had erupted and solidified like an angry volcano during the 1950s and ’60s. It had welcomed a brand new ream of artists who all seemed intent on making rebellion the forefront of their message. Many bands had come and gone, and the new decade of the 1970s seemed to offer up yet […]
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The 20th century was when classic rock was invented, when it evolved, and when it was perfected. As a result, there are a lot of great albums within the genre from this time period. Five seems like a silly number, reading it now, for the amount that the genre evolved throughout the 20th century is […]
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Oh, to have been in the 1960s – the decade where pop music truly came into its own and everyone was feeling wildly inspired by all of the activity. For a young Jimmy Page, who was primarily working as a session musician in the early part of the decade before going on to join The […]
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There’s not a day that goes by that Jimmy Page hasn’t been a student of the guitar. There are many aspects of the instrument that he has mastered both onstage and in the studio, but he was always willing to learn something new from whatever guitar hero was setting the world on fire at any […]
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If there is a single night when Led Zeppelin stopped being merely successful and became unstoppable, it was January 9, 1970, inside the sacred walls of Royal Albert Hall in London. This was not just another concert. This was a declaration of dominance, delivered with volume, confidence, and an almost frightening sense of certainty. In […]
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Long before their name became synonymous with thunderous drums, towering guitars, and a sound that redefined rock music, Led Zeppelin almost came apart before it ever truly existed. What many fans never hear about is that the band’s very first song was born not from harmony, but from disagreement, frustration, and creative tension—inside a cramped […]
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