When Giants Walked the Earth: A Biography of Led Zeppelin [Hardcover]

Mick Wall (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 10, 2009

Veteran rock journalist Mick Wall unflinchingly tells the story of the band that pushed the envelope on both creativity and excess, even by rock ‘n’ roll standards. Led Zeppelin was the last great band of the 1960s and the first great band of the 1970s—and When Giants Walked the Earth is the full, enthralling story of Zep from the inside, written by a former associate of both Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. Rich and revealing, it bores into not only the disaster, addiction and death that haunted the band but also into the real relationship between Page and Plant, including how it was influenced by Page’s interest in the occult. Comprehensive and yet intimately detailed, When Giants Walked the Earth literally gets into the principals’ heads to bring to life both an unforgettable band and an unrepeatable slice of rock history.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this ambitious biography, Wall narrates the history of a band that became one of the biggest musical and cultural phenomena of the 1970s. The brainchild of studio wizard Jimmy Page, Led Zeppelin marked the transition from flower-power good vibrations to the rough sounds of a disillusioned era. More than just another hard-rock band, however, Zeppelin drew on elements from reggae, soul, blues and R&B, as well as more exotic sounds from India and the Middle East. The trashed hotel rooms and violated groupies Zeppelin left in its wake helped to create an enduring rock and roll road archetype. Wall painstakingly traces Zeppelin's development and musical pedigree. His access and attention to detail make this a definitive work. However, he falls short in substance and style when he tries to move beyond the music. Flashback segments written from the perspective of the various principals are confusing, and his forays into nonmusical subjects—such as Page's interest in the occult—are often portentous. Nevertheless, this volume is an essential source for anyone eager to learn about the era when rock stars ruled the world. (Nov.)
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Review

"Led Zeppelin still thunders over the kingdom of rock, decades after the quartet split up. Veteran U.K. music scribe Wall takes on the mammoth task of humanizing the band through a detailed but colorful biography that benefits from his unusual amount of access to Robert Plant and Jimmy Page. Wall does well to shine light on the myths and the music magic of Led Zep—rendering what could have been cartoonish real and sincere."--Time Out Chicago

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 512 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; First Edition edition (November 10, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312590008
• ISBN-13: 978-0312590000
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.1 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #249,061 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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57 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars by far the best, February 4, 2009

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M. Bauer "M." (Colorado) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: When Giants Walked the Earth (Hardcover)

"When Giants Walked The Earth" is without question the best-researched and "insiders" biography of Led Zeppelin.

Author Nick Wall traces the band's history chronologically, with the use of italic second person (author talking to the band member within the text) narrative text to flesh out historical and personal information. This device is interesting at first, but does become tiresome.

Unlike "Hammer of the Gods" and Richard Cole's book, author Nick Wall does not glamorize the (at times) gross excess of the band's offstage behavior. He also doesn't sweep it under the table. Instead, he places it in the proper context: hugely successful bands in the late 60s and early 70s, including the Beatles, Stones, and The Who, indulged in horrendous excess, but it doesn't erase the amazing music they made.

Wall has spent considerable time interviewing Jimmy Page, and he addresses Page's interest in Crowley and "the occult" in an objective way. Page studied and had an interest in these matters, but was not sacrificing children or virgins and was far less "evil" in his exploits than the drunken, depraved antics and brutality that John Bohnam and Richard Cole particpated in when homesick or bored. Wall now depicts Page as a straight, lucid, exceedingly talented, and gentle man who would like to have the grand body of work he masterminded in the 1970s stay alive.

Wall depicts Plant in a simlarly objective manner. Bonham and Plant were not the industry insider London muscians that Page and Jones were. However, their talents were undeniable, and one is impressed with how quickly all four of these musicians were making true magic together. Plant rises in esteem and fame throughout the story, while Bonham sadly has a much harder time dealing with being away from his family and maintaining a sane existence. Wall presents Bonham as an immensely talented individual who could shift from loving family man to sick maniac in a matter of a few (copious) drinks.

The book essentially ends with Bonham's death, although Wall briefly addresses the Plant/Page tours and Jone's solo/production work.

He addresses the December 2007 reunion, one of the few areas where I'd have to disagree with his assessement. Wall attended, noted the yuppie conveniences of the 08 arena in London and star power of the crowd, and dismisses the experience as something he liked but wouldn't probably go to again if he had a chance. He describes Jimmy Page as an older man playing at a younger man's game, and lauds Robert Plant for his new life/career playing bluegrass/folk/country with Alison Krauss. Wall seems to feel this is a much better place for Plant than playing with his former bandmates.

I beg to differ. Page sounds much better than he did during the 1977 Zeppelin tour, and other lower points in their journey. I've seen videos of Plant/Krauss and the entire 2007 02 Reunion. In my opinion, Plant sounds/looks/acts in his element with the 2007Led Zeppelin, and seems pretty weak to me in his Alison Krauss co-star role.

That aside, don't miss this book. Simply the finest Zeppelin biography to date, and impossible to top unless Page, Plant, or Jones choose to pick up the pen.

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars From www.LedZeppelinNews.com, December 17, 2009

By 

Stephen P. Sauer "www.LedZeppelinNews.com" - See all my reviews
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This review is from: When Giants Walked the Earth: A Biography of Led Zeppelin (Hardcover)

When Mick Wall's "When Giants Walked the Earth" was published in a hardcover edition last year for the U.K. market, it contained some timely commentary about their highly successful one-night show staged at the end of 2007. The author notes that Plant, who had been interested enough in the making of a re-released The Song Remains the Same movie and soundtrack that year to actually sit in, thought the Led Zeppelin reunion show ought to be a proper farewell from the band. Wall says Plant had a bigger say in what songs would and would not be included; gone were songs that were "too heavy metal," and he would do "Stairway to Heaven" but only buried in the middle of their two-hour set, not as a finale or an encore.

Of course, the others had learned by then to cater to his wishes; after all, the last time a Zeppelin reunion had been seriously considered with Plant going along with it had been back about 16 years earlier. He even cites a remark made in 1993 by Peter Grant to Dave Lewis: "You've got to realize Robert always wanted to be the boss of the band anyway. He finally got his own way." This appears to be Wall's thesis, that the band was, in essence, hijacked over the course of time by Robert Plant, stolen from the reins of founder Jimmy Page. To illustrate this concept, Wall starts by going to the very beginning of the story: Page as a child learning from the earliest rock 'n' roll in existence and wanting to be a part of it, and eventually wanting to do certain things with a band of his own. Wall, leaving no part of the story unturned, lists it all.

"When Giants Walked the Earth," now available in paperback and hardcover editions in the United States, is quite perhaps the most detailed a book has been in attempting to uncover the mindsets of the men behind Led Zeppelin. The most unique part of this book is one very irregular style of writing that helps the reader understand the bigger pictures as presented. Wall writes long odes to the characters of the story, as if somebody were speaking to them at a certain period of time but with knowledge of the future. This style of writing is definitely jarring at first, but once accustomed, the reader can learn the larger context of the story.

Wall, who was editor-in-chief of Classic Rock magazine, has been somewhat criticized for questionable sourcing of information in the book, but to his credit he has logged many hours with the Zeppelin members over the years. Further, he notes there are some sources who "for reasons of privacy do not wish to be named." Still, he says he has taken heat for the book; he wrote in August 2008: "I appear to have lost the 20-year friendship of Jimmy Page (how dare I try and write a better book than the bog-awful Hammer Of The Gods), Robert Plant (he'll change his mind when he sees it) and related friends like - apparently."

While some biographies of Led Zeppelin delve briefly into the topic of Jimmy Page's alleged interest in the occult and the works of Aleister Crowley, Wall devotes 28 entire pages to unravelling that mystery. In a manner that probably no other author has attempted, Wall goes long into details about precisely what teachings of Crowley's might have most appealed to Page. Here, Wall attempts to represent Crowley's teachings in a manner that separates the original intentions from the way they have been conveyed popularly. It's a lot of information, more than this particular reader enjoyed although other opinions and levels of interest may vary considerably. The author discusses the possibility of a curse alleged to have been placed on Page by filmmaker Kenneth Anger. Wall notes that the hardships Led Zeppelin experienced in the second half of the 1970s began around the time Anger was supposed to have made this curse.

One bias of Wall's appears to be that the second half of Led Zeppelin's existence contained nothing but bad experiences, in sharp contrast to the mostly good experiences of the first half. He does go too far in dismissing the efforts on the albums Presence and In Through the Out Door, and his opinions of the judgment that guided Led Zeppelin in the later years are not high either. Taking these biases into consideration, the biography still does much to demystify the personalities behind Led Zeppelin as the years progressed. This is one biography that should not be overlooked.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The best biography of the band, but..., August 4, 2010

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334 "334" (New York, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: When Giants Walked the Earth: A Biography of Led Zeppelin (Hardcover)

To say that "When Giants Walked the Earth" is the best available biography of Led Zeppelin actually is not saying much. The book's only real competition, not including lavish illustration-based books, is Stephen Davis' "Hammer of the Gods," and that book, though well written, is flawed by its obsession with the band's violent excesses during tours and its overreliance on oral testimony from people like Richard Cole and aggrieved groupies and journalists, who were all too willing to feed that obsession. In many instances, "Giants" beats "Hammer" in terms of detail and breadth of research (the number of people interviewed is very impressive). In other instances, "Hammer" is the winner. For instance, if you want to get a traditional narrative sense of the build-up of the band from Page and Jones' time as session musicians, Page's Yardbird days, and Plant and Bonham's days in Birmingham-based bands, "Hammer" is the book that provides it. "Giants" author Mick Wall, on the other hand, decided to intersperse most of this history throughout the book in the form of italicized "flashback" sequences written directly to the protagonists in the second person ("It all changed for you the night you went out after a Bo Diddley shown in Newcastle..."). I found these passages not only boring to read, but irritating because they interrupted the flow of the book, and often you have to read through half a page of one before figuring out which person is being referred to. Be warned that nearly all of the pre-Zeppelin history of the band members is imparted in these "flashback" passages, so that if you want to learn about the protagonists' childhoods, teenaged years, and early bands, the only way to do so is to force your way through them. I tried at first, but decided it wasn't worth it and gave up.

Otherwise, the book has many good points. Wall really did his homework as far as the research goes. He tracked down and interviewed all kinds of people, including not only the band members themselves and their musical colleagues and confidants, but also more obscure people like festival promoters, studio engineers, album-cover artists, and even Jimmy Page's rare-book dealer. I was particularly excited to read the lengthy testimony of Jake Holmes, the largely unsung original composer of "Dazed and Confused." It is gratifying that, in a book about such great megastars, Wall devoted so much time and space to honoring the enthusiasm, creativity and hard work of dozens upon dozens of ordinary people.

That said, I feel Wall was too eager to use every bit of information and testimony that he gathered. His quotations are too long and often include platitudes that needn't have been repeated (how great a particular concert was, how hard Jimmy Page worked in the studio, how crazy the guys got in a hotel room one night, and so on). Sometimes the quotations include information that is just irrelevant. A quotation from Robert Plant about John Bonham's declining health in 1980 (p. 409) includes Plant's revelation that he now takes Omega 3 oil to improve his tennis game. When the subject of Jimmy Page's occult interests comes up, Wall gives several turgid pages of background on occultism throughout Rock `n' Roll history (pp. 208-214). Then comes eleven pages of thorough, but unnecessary, biography of Aleister Crowley (pp. 217-228), which a writer with better judgment would have condensed and left it to the reader to find more on his or her own. (That is what bibliographies are for.) The description of the famous theft of $200,000 during one of the band's U.S. tours includes a long paragraph discussing whether Richard Cole might have been the culprit (p. 296); but as Cole passed a lie-detector test and the band never pressed charges, it's hard to see the point of lingering on the question. The amount of space given to accusations of Satan-worship leveled at the band, is far more than the accusers deserve; Wall should not have given them the satisfaction.

The result of such unwillingness to sacrifice information is that the book lacks a sense of smooth narrative movement. I really started to enjoy the book only once I decided to allow myself to skim major passages. Unfortunately, this ended up including the disappointing ending: The last chapter is an "epilogue" consisting of seventeen mind-numbing pages cataloging every hint dropped since 2008 about whether Zeppelin might or might not reform. Cutting this epilogue (which the editor of a more serious book would have insisted upon) would have ended the book on a climactic note and given it a tighter narrative structure. Instead, it just fizzles out. (Come to think of it, not unlike the career of Led Zeppelin.)

Many moments in the book, though, are brilliant and make great reading. Wall's critique of several of the albums, such as "Physical Graffiti" and "In Through the Out Door," is spot on, as is his recounting of the O2 concert in 2007. In general, he did a great job by beginning the book focusing on Page, but ending it with the spotlight on Plant, which is suggestive of how the two men's roles reversed over the course of the story.

Finally, the title is a great choice. Taken from Genesis 6:4 ("In those days the Nephilim [giants] walked the earth"), it suggests a time that was profoundly different from our own and is unlikely to come back. The 50's, 60's and 70's of rock was an age that supported giant figures and great cultural ambitions. Our time, though, is an age of niche artists who pursue individualized and obsessional work, and have narrow, frenetic followings. It's a more confusing, complex and lonelier time. Figures of massive, lasting appeal and significance like Elvis, the Beatles and Led Zeppelin simply are not born, and cannot thrive, in it. Even when the survivors of that time continue to work today, we listeners feel lucky if we can consider the resulting material satisfying; we don't even hope for it to be monumental or ground breaking. In a way, Wall's book is a paean not just to a band but to a lost era.