Led Zeppelin, and the power of rock music, and subjectivity

270 Pages·2001·16.196 MB·English

by  Fast, Susan

IN THE HOUSES OFTHE HOLY
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IN THE
HOUSES
OF THE
HOLY
Led Zeppelin
and the
Power of
Rock Music
SUSAN FAST
OXPORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
2001
OXTORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
Oxford NewYork
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Copyright © 2001 by Oxford University Press
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication maybe reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fast, Susan.
In the houses of the holy: Led Zeppelin and the
power of rock music / Susan Fast.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-511756-5; ISBN 0-19-514723-5 (pbk.)
1. Led Zeppelin (Musical group). 2. Rockmusic—History and criticism.
3. Gender identity in music. 4. Subjectivity in music.
5. Sex in music. I. Title.
ML421.L4F37 2001
782.42166'092'2—dc21 00-048367
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Acknowledgments
Whenbegan this project about five years ago, I had no intention ofcon-
ducting a survey of Led Zeppelin fans and incorporating their observa-
tions into the book. It was Rob Walser's inclusion of a fan survey in Running
with the Devil that suggested to me the value of ethnography in the kind of
study of the band's music that I wanted to make. Without the fans' voices, this
book would be considerably poorer—in fact, several of the points I argue would
have been impossible to make without the evidence I gathered from fans—and
so I would first like to thank those who responded to my survey for their time
and effort in completing it and for their thoughtful comments, many of which
are found throughout the book. Their enthusiasm for this project has been
heartwarming: I received many offers from them to answer follow-up ques-
tions, and several fans offered me bootleg recordings and access to their collec-
tions of memorabilia; one fan sent an original watercolor painting of the band
on their 1980 tour. Rick Barrett, owner of Merit Adventures in Houston, which
specializes in Led Zeppelin memorabilia, sent me a package of magazines and
other collectibles. I am very thankful for all of these gestures. I would also like to
thank Hugh Jones for running the survey in an issue of his fanzine, Proximity,
and for putting me in touch with photographer Marty Perez, who generously
sent me his precious slides of Led Zeppelin in concert in Chicago in 1977; some
of these appear in this book, and I wish to thank Marty for allowing me to use
them. Jeremy Mixer graciously offered to post the fan survey on his Web site,
zoso.net, and I wish to express my thanks to him for that. Another fan (and
professional photographer), Wendy Annibell, offered me her photograph of
Robert Plant in concert at Madison Square Garden in 1973 and went to consid-
erable lengths to improve the quality of that photograph so that I could use it
here; thank you, Wendy.
Special thanks are due Matt Link, a committed fan of Led Zeppelin's music
and a good friend of mine, with whom I spent countless hours discussing the
band's music and this project. Matt's knowledge of popular music and his abil-
ity to articulate this knowledge without any formal training (he's an amateur
guitar player) has taught me a great deal about how deeply many in the fan
community think about the sounds of popular music and hence the impor-
tance of academic work that addresses sound in a manner that is accessible to
these fans.
I am grateful to John Paul Jones for engaging in a lengthy exchange of e-mails
with me in order to answer a plethora of questions I had for him; I also owe
thanks to his manager, Richard Chadwick, for facilitating the exchange.
Several of my colleagues read and commented on various parts of the manu-
script. For their valuable suggestions I wish to thank Bev Diamond, Rob Walser,
Teresa Magdanz, Rob Bowman, John Covach, Ellen Koskoff, Richard Leppert,
Susie O'Brien, and the anonymous readers for Oxford University Press and for
the journal American Music, in which a version of chapter 5 appears. I would
also like to thank those authors on whose work I draw throughout the book for
their insights, especially those who wrote on popular music. Although I some-
times take issue with what they have to say, at a fundamental level I appreciate
and value their work, which has allowed me to shape mine.
There are certainly advantages to working in a school of art, drama, and
music, where the various arts disciplines are constantly rubbing up against one
another, opening up opportunities for collaboration that are bound to make
one's work considerably richer. I would like to give special thanks to my col-
league in drama, Catherine Graham, for the countless hours she and I spent dis-
cussing my work on this project and for her extremely valuable perspective
on many difficult issues with which I grappled; if there are some good ideas in
this book, they are probably hers. Another colleague of mine in art, Judy Major-
Girardin, gave freely of her time and expertise to create the illustrations that
accompany this book, making it possible for me to discuss in some detail
important images for which photographs are difficult to come by. My thanks
to Judy.
Two of my students were especially helpful with this project. Jennifer De Boer
had the overwhelming task of sorting through more than four hundred fan
surveys, the statistical information of which she carefully tabulated. She also
sifted through all of the answers to other questions, grouping together those
that were similar, deleting extraneous material, and so forth, which made it easy
for me to make use of the information. Simon Wood collected, copied, and
organized a great deal of the journalistic literature for me, and out of this work
he wrote a paper on Led Zeppelin and the media, from which I borrow ideas in
chapter 2. Jen and Simon were both efficient and enthusiastic, and I thank them
for their help.
I wish to thank the editors at Oxford University Press for their help with this
project: Maribeth Payne, Jonathan Wiener, and Maureen Buja; thanks also to
vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Bill Johnson and Phil Hanrahan for their enthusiasm and Bob Milks for his
careful reading of the manuscript in the final stages of production. I am espe-
cially grateful to Soo Mee Kwon, who guided the book proposal through vari-
ous channels at OUP in a timely fashion and whose enthusiasm for this project
was encouraging.
In the spring of 1994, Susan McClary gave a series of lectures at McMaster
University, some of which have now been published in her book Conventional
Wisdom: The Content of Musical Form. At that time, I was, I thought, firmly
ensconced in the world of positivistic musicological scholarship, although my
interest in the social meanings of music (ill defined in my own mind) fit rather
uneasily into the old paradigms. Hearing Susan speak was a revelation to me,
and it radically altered what I wanted to accomplish in my own academic work.
I want to thank her for opening that door for me and for all her invaluable
scholarship over the last decade that has done so much to change the discipline
of musicology.
Thanks to my parents, Abe and Frieda, for their unflagging support, and to
my sister, Louise, for always listening and for her guidance in every aspect of my
life. Thanks also to my brother, Robert. I thank my cats for keeping me company
during long hours of writing, and to my friends Karen and Liam for dragging
me out to socialize once in a while. To Liam, who has been convinced for the
past two years that he has the perfect line with which to begin this book, here it
is: "It was a dark and stormy night— "
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii
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Contents
Introduction:
Led Zeppelin and the Carnivalesque 3
ONE Dazed and Confused:
Intertextuality, Ritual, Gender 17
Two Stairway to Heaven:
Myth, Epic, Ritual 49
TH R E E Over the Hills and Far Away:
Difference and Representation 85
Fo u R The Wanton Song:
The Riff and the Body 113
FIVE Whole Lotta Love:
Performing Gender 159
Appendix:
Fan Questionnaire 203
Notes 207
Bibliography 231
Discography/Videography 239
Index 241
Photo gallery follows page 98