(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Fri 2 January 2026 14:28, UK
Orchestral, bluesy, and pioneering, Led Zeppelin was never a band keen on pigeonholing themselves into one specific genre.
While we now look back and call them a rock band, there was so much more than that going into their sound. They were making music at an exciting time when experimentation was welcomed, and as a result, they mixed multiple styles of music to get what became their signature sound.
There was a profound sexual edge to them, too. It wasn’t all Mordor and Viking battles. As Nancy Wilson said of her first time witnessing the Brummie rockers, “The singer, he’s so suggestive. He’s got his shirt wide open, he’s got his bare chest, and his jeans were really low riders. He was moving in this way that was super-suggestive and we were kind of shocked. We’re like, ‘Oh, my God’.”
The potent mixture that the band played wasn’t an accident. When they all turned up for their first jam session together, Jimmy Page clearly knew what he was keen on making, constructing a fresh force to take The Beatles’ mantle. After playing as a session musician for years and following a stint in the Yardbirds, he had enough ideas to run with.
“I had lots of ideas from my days with The Yardbirds. The Yardbirds allowed me to improvise a lot in live performance, and I started building a textbook of ideas that I eventually used in Zeppelin,” he said, “I wanted Zeppelin to be a marriage of blues, hard rock and acoustic music topped with heavy choruses – a combination that had never been done before… Lots of light and shade in the music.”
The Rolling Stones in the frame. (Credits: Far Out / Bent Rej)
As Page himself states, while a mixture of music went into Led Zeppelin, there is no denying that the blues had a huge impact. They did on many bands from that period, as it was artists such as Muddy Waters coming to the UK that initially inspired people like Mick Jagger to start bands and triggered the rise in popularity of rock.
Live performances tend to have an ability to inspire people. It’s one thing to hear music on the radio or a record, but with some artists, particularly rock artists, seeing them live is a completely different experience. There is an energy packed into those gigs that can’t be experienced anywhere else. This is why so many artists are initially inspired by the first gig they go to rather than the first record they hear. Robert Plant is no exception.
The Led Zeppelin lead singer was always a fan of music, but he became aware of its true power by going to gigs and seeing the majesty with which some artists performed. One of his stand-out memories is a blues night he went to when he was younger. A lot of the big artists at the time travelled through the Midlands via the Wolverhampton Gaumont, and this was where a lot of the shows Plant went to took place.
“In 1963 I saw a bill that had The Rattles, Mickie Most And The Most Men, Bo Diddley, Little Richard, The Every Brothers and The Rolling Stones. Now that’s an evening…” he recalled. One artist in particular that stood out for him among that star-studded line-up was Bo Diddley. Though he wouldn’t be the most successful, he was certainly the best artist performing in Plant’s eyes that night.
“Diddley was superb,” he said, “I was sweating with excitement! Although the Stones were great, they were really crap in comparison with Diddley – all his rhythms were so sexual, just oozing, even in a 20-minute spot.” The bluesman and his band could, in fairness, wipe the floor with pretty much every act, so the Stones can take solace in that.
As Plant put it years later, “His voice and relentless, glorious anthems echo down through my years. This royal shapeshifter continues to influence four generations of musicians on a daily basis.” And as if proof were needed, there are plenty of young artists who ratify that too.
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