Page was a connoisseur of underage groupies: “Robert’s girlfriends weren’t as young as Jimmy’s many hovered around the age of consent,” Spitz writes. The book details two instances of attempted rape by Bonham, who drank himself to an early grave at the age of 32. But they did seem to push hedonism to unusually destructive lengths. Zeppelin obviously wasn’t the only band of its time and milieu to partake in ’70s rock ’n’ roll excess. More: 'Sopranos' actors write definitive look at HBO show: 'You’re getting it from two guys who were there' Zeppelin just wanted to be louder, and better, than anyone else. The band’s manager, Peter Grant, hadn’t yet become a coked-up bully. Their demands and expectations hadn’t yet become ridiculous. The mountains of cocaine, rivers of booze and piles of cash hadn’t yet curdled the quartet. Zeppelin had yet to become a collection of divas. There’s a relative innocence to these early, assemble-the-troops times. In the blue-collar Midlands pub scene he found wailing singer Robert Plant and ferocious drummer John Bonham. 'The Lyrics': Paul McCartney reveals crush on queen, how John Lennon 'gleefully' quit Beatlesįrom the London studio scene he plucked bassist John Paul Jones. The good, the bad and the ugly coexist in the Led Zeppelin story, and Spitz knows well enough to report and tell it all. He also knows said behavior doesn’t eliminate Led Zeppelin’s mighty musical triumphs as the most popular rock band of its generation (they routinely outsold The Rolling Stones). Spitz, whose previous subjects include The Beatles, Bob Dylan and Ronald Reagan, knows he needn’t exaggerate the band’s abhorrent behavior, from drummer John Bonham’s blind-drunk sexual assaults to guitarist Jimmy Page’s petulant entitlement. That’s how Bob Spitz approaches his sprawling account, “Led Zeppelin: The Biography” (Penguin Press, 688 pp., ★★★½ out of four, out now). You can stick to the music, the approach taken by the worshipful upcoming documentary “Becoming Led Zeppelin.” You can go salacious, as in Stephen Davis’ highly unauthorized 1985 book “Hammer of the Gods.” Or you can bite off the whole story, the glory and the mayhem, the train wreck and the true bliss. There are a few different approaches one can take in chronicling Led Zeppelin, the larger-than-life hard rock band that blazed through the 1970s like an out-of-control comet.
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