(Credits: Andrew Smith)
Fri 6 March 2026 17:31, UK
When they emerged in 1969, they were like nothing the world had ever heard before, but at the same time, they borrowed so much from bygone blues musicians that on more than one occasion, they ended up in court on plagiarism charges. The same duality applies to their lore when you play it forward into the future, too.
“There’s no denying that the elements of what became known as heavy metal is definitely there with Led Zeppelin,” Jimmy Page once said. But he also pointed at a poster of Judas Priest looking like discount gimps in hybrid leather beachwear and said, “If I’m responsible for this in any way, then I am really, really embarrassed.” In essence, they are the godfathers of metal who hated their sons.
And therein lies the tricky tale of the group. They are undoubtedly some of the finest musicians ever brought together in the same band, and they used their skills to herald a future untold, turning the brutal heavy industry of their hometown into a sound that rattled the rafters of concert halls with a postmodernist dose of darkness and exultation.
But at the same time, even Robert Plant sometimes looks back and thinks that they were “pompous” and “overblown”, and with tracks like ‘D’yer Mak’er’, John Paul Jones thought they were also capable of losing sight of what they were good at.
But all the same, there were plenty of plaudits recognising their brilliance unconditionally. “Led Zeppelin is the greatest,” Freddie Mercury once said. “Robert Plant is one of the most original vocalists of our time. As a rock band, they deserve the kind of success they’re getting,” the toothy troubadour added.
And that is a sensationalist sentiment that has sustained beyond the band’s demise in 1980, proving that there will always be a place for their powerful ways in the world of classic rock. In fact, bands like Greta Van Fleet prove that their influence is still as potent as it has ever been, with Plant semi-jokingly complaining that the group owed him compensation for their career given how closely that they seem to have followed Led’s lead.
However, there are others who come down on the other side of the debate. From Pete Townshend to Keith Richards, plenty of classic rockers have condemned the juggernaut of the band as a little bit too powerful in a musical sense. These naysayers decry the Brummy band as a group lacking nuance beyond their blues distortion.
In some ways, they’re like the F1 of bands; for some, they are a rip-roaring, high-octane and supremely talented thrill ride that could knock the socks off of Gandhi, but for the five classic rock icons below, they’re just an overly loud racket that goes around and around for a little too long. Still, as the fourth best-selling band of all time, with over 200 million records sold around the world (and counting as their sound continues to find new fans), these scathing attacks might come from icons, but, nevertheless, they still represent a minority.
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