Led Zeppelin

I scratch my head and scoff when I hear that Led Zeppelin ripped off the old Delta Blues masters.

Led Zeppelin sounds nothing like the Delta Blues!

Nothing in the first 6 Led Zeppelin albums sounds anything like anything else ever released outside Led Zeppelin's own catalog!

The closest would be the first part of 'Stairway to Heaven', which sounds like medieval Celtic fairy music mixed with Renaissance polyphony and certainly nothing like the blues!

When you take 'When the Levee Breaks', one of the few examples of anything more substantial than a riff being imported into a Led Zeppelin song- for which the original author Memphis Minnie was fully credited- and compare it to the Memphis Minnie original, you will see just how massively transformed it was by Led Zeppelin!

And 'When the Levee breaks' is one of the few pieces of lyrics or melody in the entire Led Zeppelin catalog that I could ever remotely imagine being done as a blues song at all!

Led Zeppelin did not steal their music from the delta blues!

Led Zeppelin sounds nothing like the delta blues!

Most of Led Zeppelin's stuff I could never imagine as a blues song at all!

For me, it's just about as believable as if you told me that half of all traditional Chinese music was stolen from old blues masters.

Come on, where is all this Delta Blues that sounds so much like Led Zeppelin? Cause I've never heard it!

Led Zeppelin stole from no one!

There is nothing out there that sounds even remotely like them!

The closest, outside some of the Celtic fairy-sounding stuff that is obviously inspired by medieval music, would be the original Jeff Beck Group, but even that has a very different sound- more classical orchestral sound (with rock instruments, like Cream) and less folk, and with a quite different lead singer and less heavy drums. Closer to Cream than to Zeppelin. No closer to Led Zeppelin than Mozart, say, is to Beethoven!

Thank you for the amazing music, Led Zeppelin!

God loves you!

Sincerely,

David S. Annderson