Led Zeppelin and the Curse of Human Imperfection
Musings on imperfect people, empathy, life lessons, and a theory about "Since I've Been Loving You" and "Hey, Hey, What Can I Do"
I have always been drawn to the idea of imperfection: in art, in life, and especially in human beings. This fascination and love of the imperfect has only grown as the world has inexplicably begun to expect – and often demand – perfection from its citizens, primarily those who create art or exist in the public eye, while simultaneously desiring raw, confessional honesty and un-airbrushed vulnerability from those in our social media feeds. I observe with with curious wonder as we collectively attempt to answer questions like, “How should a person re-enter the world after their transgressions have come to light?” and, “Are some things excusable because they happened decades ago in a vastly different time?” and, “Who gets to decide what is capital-B Bad Behavior, anyway?” or, on more than a few occasions in my own life, “Would I still enjoy listening to 808s and Heartbreak on vinyl since technically it doesn’t involve giving Kanye any more of my money? Do I even want to anymore?”
Make no mistake: I am in no way saying people shouldn’t be taken to task over their missteps, particularly if they involve actively harming or oppressing others – and I have certainly participated in my share of public disappointment over musicians’ behavior over the years. I’m also not saying I have any of the answers. I am saying, though, that I find the subject matter fascinating, and I also find a strange comfort in the great, equalizing fact that almost everyone on Earth is a big, dumb idiot. I know I am.
Luckily, being a rock ‘n’ roll fan is the perfect hobby for someone who is both fascinated by the imperfect and deeply aware of their own fallibility, as the genre has long since been a place where imperfect people can explore their imperfections through art – and in turn, make fans feel less alone in their foibles as well. In my case, a lifelong love of rock ‘n’ roll has also made me deeply curious about the reasons that lead otherwise good people to bad things. Forget separating the art from the artist; I want to dive further into the artist. I want to paint the fullest picture possible, to know how they came to be the way that they are. Even if I disagree, or in some cases no longer want to listen to an artist’s music, I want to understand.
Forget separating the art from the artist; I want to dive further into the artist. I want to paint the fullest picture possible, to know how they came to be the way that they are. Even if I disagree, or in some cases no longer want to listen to an artist’s music, I want to understand.
There are few rock ‘n’ roll bands who embody this more than Led Zeppelin, four men from England who helped define the very idea of heavy music and also the image one conjures when they think of the hard-partying rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle. Vocalist Robert Plant, guitarist Jimmy Page, bassist John Paul Jones, and drummer John Bonham were famously imperfect, not only as human beings, but also in the way their young career was abruptly cut short as a direct result of their own imperfect decisions. I wouldn’t say they’re my favorite band, but for whatever reason, all roads in my life have always seemed to lead to them. From my first wide-eyed musical curiosity in childhood through my eventual career in rock ‘n’ roll journalism, throughout countless musical phases, relationships, and all eight cities I’ve lived in, they have continuously reemerged to punctuate each era of my life – sometimes as a backdrop behind young, hedonistic joy, other times providing catharsis during existential crises, and occasionally injecting me with a boost of smirking self-assuredness when I need it most. There’s no sense in putting it any other way: I’m a fan.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve heard many arguments against Led Zeppelin, and on more than a few occasions even been told that my love for their music is at odds with my feminism. “They’re bad people,” their opposers (and The New Yorker) tell me. Don’t I realize that many of their lyrics are misogynistic, that they were violent drunks, that they slept with underage groupies, that they stole music from Black and female artists, that they were abusers in every sense of the word? And the simple answer, though I could easily write a whole other essay on the subject, is yes. I am aware. And I’ll agree with some of the charges – particularly the more indefensible ones like Page’s relationship with a 14-year-old “baby groupie” Lori Maddox when he was 29 (which she speaks openly about to this day, but as far as I know he has never addressed).
But for many things, there is nuance: For every story about a groupie and a mud shark, there’s an article saying it’s a highly embellished rumor. For every reductive argument that they stole all of their music from other artists, there are examples of them publicly giving credit and reverence to those they’ve covered – entire chapters in biographies, even – not to mention aggregated lists of their song credits showing both their originality and empirical looks at the handful of early songs in question. And for everyone who insists the way they sang about women was misogynist and objectifying, there are people like me who wonder: Since when did sexual desire and the anger of scorned lovers become gendered concepts?
Either way, I believe that it is possible to look at these things with a critical yet sensible eye, and – more crucially here – you can have a lifelong love of a rock band (or any human beings, for that matter) while simultaneously recognizing – even condemning – their wrongdoing.
Through years of overanalyzing music, books, interviews, movies, and anything else I could experience, short of having been there or meeting any of them myself, I have learned a few things that have shaped my understanding of Led Zeppelin. First and foremost, for context, they were relatively sheltered young men (between the ages of 19 and 24 when the band started out) who skyrocketed to world fame and riches too soon and too fast, admittedly benefitted from an inherently patriarchal and racist system, and went down a wild and dark rabbit hole in the process. Page was the oldest and most experienced, having been in The Yardbirds previously (RIP Jeff Beck), but the others were relatively naive and untraveled, and certainly had no idea how to control their excesses or manage their money. (Arguably with the exception of the more reserved Jones, who opted to spend most of his time on tour exploring cities on foot, avoiding trouble, and doing the same amount of drugs as the others — just more “quietly.” My man.) With the success of Led Zeppelin’s first album in 1969, the four of them entered a world of ubiquitous drugs, alcohol, and women – and a team of people who relentlessly stroked their egos, dangled expensive carrots, and enabled all of the above so the checks would keep rolling in.
It wasn’t all fun and parties, though, and a handful of years into their adventuring around the world, things started to go awry. In 1975, while Plant was vacationing in Rhodes, Greece, he and his then-wife Maureen Wilson were badly injured in a car accident, forcing the band to delay the production of their seventh album Presence and cancel their tour plans. Then, after getting back on track two years later in 1975, Led Zeppelin went on tour in America, where Plant received a call that his 5-year-old son Karac had died of a stomach infection. Obviously he returned home and took some time off to grieve — and in doing so, seriously pondered whether or not he wanted to return.
In the late 1970s, things continued to unravel, mainly for Led Zeppelin’s most imperfect – and also arguably most talented – member: their masterful-beyond-all-imagination drummer, John Bonham. I tend to call him the most imperfect of the four not because he was a worse person than the others, but rather because he was the most deeply conflicted about his stardom, and continued to make the wrong decisions despite his mounting depression and deadly dependence on vices to cope. He was reportedly hesitant to join Led Zeppelin in the first place, and quickly grew to hate touring when they became successful.
According to an interview with Deep Purple’s Ritchie Blackmore, Bonham never really cared much for fame, and would have preferred to put his inhuman drumming talents to use in a local band so he could just play around his hometown. When Led Zeppelin got much bigger than he anticipated, he grew resentful of being away from home for longer and more frequent stints – often becoming tearfully homesick for his wife, kids, and country while on the road. He repeatedly told the band he didn’t want to do it anymore, often explicitly stating, “I’m leaving the band. I can’t go back to America again.” But whenever he voiced his feelings or threatened to quit, their manager would think up new and creative bribes to convince him, including at least one instance where he hid a brand new Lamborghini in Bonham’s garage and told him he could keep it — under the condition that he stay in the band and go to America. Inevitably, he’d cave, go back on tour against his better judgment, and end up miserable all over again.
As a result of his prolonged unhappiness, Bonham began to self-medicate with alcohol and drugs, which only amplified his misery and turned him into an unruly, unmanageable person with a horrible temper — aptly earning him the nickname “The Beast.” Some of the stories from this time period are sort of funny, like one from his 25th birthday in 1973, where he and The Beatles’ George Harrison got into a “cake fight” and Bonham ended up throwing everyone at the party — including Harrison and his wife Pattie Boyd — into the pool. Others weren’t quite as funny: He’d get wasted and “growl like some dangerous and wounded pit bull” (according to the biography Hammer of the Gods), and occasionally do things like, say, pull a gun out in the middle of a mafia-filled nightclub, or get arrested in Oakland for beating up some show promoters. At one point, Led Zeppelin grew distrustful of the press (fair) and decided to write up a set of rules for reporters to follow when interacting with them. Famously, the list included, “Do not make any sort of eye contact with John Bonham. This is for your own safety.”
Unfortunately, though, the problem didn’t stop at quirky rock ‘n’ roll tales. At one point his self-medication led him to a heroin addiction, which he finally kicked and went on prescription depression and anxiety medications to stave off his misery. But the catastrophic drinking problem remained, eventually leading to a harrowing period of time in 1980 when it became impossible to ignore and started to affect the band’s performance. This came to a head when Bonham collapsed onstage in Nuremberg, Germany (which the band apparently tried to pass off as an issue from eating too many bananas??) and the show was canceled just a few songs into their set. Three months later, the band went back to Page’s house in England after a late-night rehearsal, where Bonham passed out in one of the bedrooms and choked to death on his own vomit. In total, they figure he had ingested about 40 shots of vodka that day. He was only 32 years old.
Bonham’s death also signaled the immediate end of Led Zeppelin, which was announced in a stark, solemn press release from the remaining members. It read simply, “We wish it to be known that the loss of our dear friend and the deep respect we have for his family, together with the sense of undivided harmony felt by ourselves and our manager, have led us to decide that we could not continue as we were.”
As a goodbye gesture, Led Zeppelin released Coda, a compilation of unreleased tracks including a mesmerizing instrumental percussion piece called “Bonzo’s Montreux” showcasing Bonham (whom the band lovingly referred to as Bonzo) going ham in the studio and playing things he usually saved for his infamous 15-minute “Moby Dick” drum solos during their live set. The word “coda” means “tail” – or, in musician speak, refers to a section or movement of a song that signals the ending and draws everything to a close. It has always struck me as one of the most thoughtful, straightforward titles in rock ‘n’ roll history. But it’s also an excruciating reminder of why Led Zeppelin’s people would stop at nothing to keep Bonham in the band and on the road, despite his obvious misery and ultimately fatal addiction:
He was irreplaceable, and without him, the band would not exist.
To many, Bonham’s story is just another tale of rock ‘n’ roll excess gone wrong. “What a waste,” you might hear someone say in passing, before asking you to pass the salt at dinner. Others look at him in disgust, pointing out that his mental health and addiction were no reason to engage in his Bad Behavior over the years. But, again, I am drawn to imperfection: I believe his story — or any of the band members’ stories for that matter — could happen to any of us, given the right recipe of timing, drugs, fame, money, depression, and peer pressure. I’m 34 – two years older than Bonham was when he died – and I wonder every day what could have been different if any of the circumstances of my life had been altered. To me, he is a cautionary tale to be approached with empathy; a beacon of the imperfection that lies in the heart of all people.
I can’t say for certain, but I can only imagine that the death of their beloved bandmate, the extremely public demise of the band, and the other tragedies they experienced along the way, rattled the other four men to their core, likely changing them as people forever.
I bet it made them grow up, too.
Musically speaking, I’ve spent years overanalyzing why I think Led Zeppelin is so special, as there were plenty of other pioneering heavy bands who came out of England at the same time that often get lumped together like The Who, Cream, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, etc. (Not that I can blame anyone for throwing them all into the same category: They were all white, all dudes, all very loud, and all thought they were very hot shit.) Sure, Led Zeppelin was known for their tinnitus-inducing amplification, as well as Page’s swaggering riffs, Jones’ freight-train bass lines, Bonham’s monstrously tight percussion, and Plant’s high-pitched, orgasmic wails that pranced high above it all. But the proverbial x-factor Led Zeppelin possessed that the other longhaired, bell-bottom dorks at the time did not was a delicate, intricate sense of melancholy – a quality that lands their songs in a deeper place in my heart because it speaks to the honesty of the human condition.
And the human condition is, as we all know, profoundly imperfect.
There are a few ways the melancholic quality I’m referring to shows up in Led Zeppelin’s music. In the compositional sense, they deeply understood the power and intensity of dynamics, and often employed the use of quieter instruments like mandolins, pedal steel, keys, and acoustic guitars to great emotional effect. At times, this was in the form of an entire quiet track, nestled in the middle of albums that were otherwise thunderously amplified, like in the case of III’s “Friends,” IV’s “Going to California,” and the debut album’s choral, reap-what-you-sow tale, “Your Time Is Gonna Come.”
Other times, they placed the quiet intricacy alongside their more raucous, full-volumed parts in the same song, resulting in powerful, goosebump-inducing buildups (most famously displayed on “Stairway to Heaven,” but also on songs like “In the Light,” “Tangerine,” and “Over The Hills and Far Away”) and emotional, back-and-forth sonic indecision providing a perfect backdrop for songs of profound mixed emotion like their rendition of Anne Bredon’s breakup anthem “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” or the somewhat goofy ode to The Hobbit, “Ramble On.” (I say “goofy” not because it isn’t a fantastic song, but because everyone knows Gollum would never have any interest in stealing “a girl so fair” from Plant – he only cares about the One Ring, duh. But, again – imperfection. I love it.)
Vocally and lyrically, too, they embraced vulnerability, pain, and heartache as much as they did sex, partying, and The Lord of the Rings, opting to own their feelings and spin them into songs as main characters rather than hiding them behind layers of irony and metaphor like many other dude bands of the era. This is something they potentially learned from the female singers at the time, given their very public adoration for women like Joni Mitchell — to whom they even paid homage on “Going To California” with the line, “To find a queen without a king / They say she plays guitar and cries and sings.”
One of the most powerful instances of this is on “Since I’ve Been Loving You,” the heart-wrenchingly mournful blues track on Led Zeppelin III, co-written by Page, Plant, and Bonham. The song is about the unbearable anxiety of being in love with someone who either betrayed you or simply isn’t giving you what you want. We’ve all been there: You’re usually a perfectly rational person, but you date someone who stresses you out and suddenly you’re a preoccupied mess, unable to relax, and one more unreturned text away from falling apart entirely. “Baby, since I’ve been loving you,” Plant sings in sorrow, “I’m about to lose my worried mind.” But it’s not just the words or relatable story that give power to the song, but rather the palpable agony delivered through Plant’s vocals themselves, and the way Page’s anguished guitar tone converses with the words like a second vocal track. In the background, understated support is provided by Bonham’s classic blues drumming and Jones’ solemn doodling on a Hammond organ, which sway in a sultry eroticism that suggests lingering desire in spite of the pain. The final product is a devastating arrow to the heart, and likely sounds a lot like the crying they’ve done over the woman in question.
Now, I have a wild fan theory that another Led Zeppelin song, “Hey, Hey, What Can I Do” (my personal favorite song of theirs, for which I named this newsletter) was written about the same woman, later in the breakup after some reflection and growth. It would make sense: Like “Since I’ve Been Loving You,” “Hey, Hey, What Can I Do” was recorded for Led Zeppelin III, but for reasons I will never understand, it was left on the cutting room floor, released instead as a B-Side to “Immigrant Song,” and mostly forgotten about until the band included it in a box set 20 years later in 1990. The song has the exact same storyline — and even uses the same “worried mind” lyric to describe his mental state. But in this version of the story, Plant sets aside his wallowing and steps into the role of raconteur, inviting you to sit down so he can spin you a tale. “Want to tell you about a girl I love,” he sings with confidence, before jauntily confessing that he’s head over heels for a woman who won’t commit to him because her heart belongs to the rock ‘n’ roll life.
A far more verbose song than “Since I’ve Been Loving You,” “Hey, Hey, What Can I Do” includes quite a few more details, like the fact that the woman might might share his feelings, but the issue is that she simply doesn’t want to give up her freedom to sing, drink, and dance with wild abandon “in the bars with the men who play guitars.” (Understandable.) So he realizes, as much as it hurts, that he needs to pack up and move on. His tone is no longer that of misery, but rather one of acceptance and self-deprecation; He’s wistfully shaking his head at her antics, hoping she’ll change her mind one day but also respecting the fact that she’s gotta do what she’s gotta do – and maybe a little turned on by her refusal to change her ways, too.
In one particular lyric, which is met with mixed reactions whenever I play the song for friends, he sings, “In the evening when the sun is sinkin' low / Everybody's with the one they love / I walk the town, keep a-searchin' all around / Lookin' for my street corner girl.” Even though the “street corner girl” line is obviously a dig, essentially calling her a ho, his tone remains playful and adoring. Like, “Dammit, I wish it could’ve been me, but her free spirit is why I love her, so I really brought this upon myself.” The whole effect of the song is similar to Alanis Morissette’s “Hand In My Pocket” in that it feels calmly celebratory, like a person walking away and finally turning a corner after heartbreak. The feelings are still there, but he knows he’s going to be just fine – and so is she.
The question, “Hey, hey, what can I do?” is rhetorical, but he answers it anyway:
“Gonna leave her where the guitars play.”
Acceptance. C’est la vie. Cue the Jessica Walter “good for her” memes. Hey, hey, what can I do.
This song, and its theme of celebrating one’s growth and resilience, has spoken to me on many levels throughout the years, inspiring empathy for different characters in the story at different times. Sometimes I relate to the narrator – I have definitely fallen for a few men who loved bars and guitars more than they loved me – but more often I connect with the lost lover, reveling in the magic and freedom of rock ‘n’ roll and actively choosing her happiness over a confining relationship.
The song has also provided the soundtrack to some of my life’s most unforgettable moments, like once in the summer of 2018 when my dear Australian friend Sally came to visit me in Portland. Her visit happened to land in a weird sliver of time for me: A few weeks prior, I had finally dug myself out of a particularly awful relationship, and shortly thereafter, I was about to pack up all of my shit and move across the country to New York City. We did not plan it this way, as neither of those things were in the works when she plotted her American adventure, but she ended up in Portland right as my post-breakup euphoria was overlapping with my “gotta have as much fun as possible before I move” mania. It was also the best time of the year in the Pacific Northwest when it’s gloriously warm, the sun goes down at 10pm, and everyone goes buck-wild.
One night, Sally and I ran into a few male friends at a bar and decided our night should continue by way of the strip club (as is the Portland way, especially when you have guests), so all five of us piled into my car and drove across town. When we were almost there, “Hey, Hey, What Can I Do” came up on shuffle. I immediately cranked up the volume and put all the windows down – a move that was etched into my genetics the second I emerged from my mother’s womb as a Northern Californian. Sally, too, was excited, and began singing along with me. The men in the car, however, seemed rather affronted – or maybe just confused – about their conversation being usurped by Led Zeppelin, and sat somewhat rigidly, throwing out occasional commentary. (“She wants to ball all day? OK…”) I couldn’t help but laugh, because it was such a brilliant representation of the song: Sally and I glowing with carefree joy, swaying our heads back and forth and singing Led Zeppelin into the Portland summer night, as three men looked on in awkward confusion.
But for as my times that blasting “Hey, Hey, What Can I Do” has amplified the fun times in my life, there have been just as many instances where I’ve leaned on it as a reminder of resilience when things have gotten dark and difficult; a tool to help locate the light at the end of the tunnel where I can find humor in the imperfection and revel in wild, rock ‘n’ roll abandon once more. And if I’m being honest, for the last few years it’s been the latter: A 2019 layoff from a job I loved in NYC, and experiencing the extreme isolation and fear of early-pandemic times there just a few months later, marked the beginning of a period of lonely, foundationless chaos in my life – mostly as a result of shit luck and the general state of the world, and likely a bit of my own poor decision-making, too.
This culminated in a yearlong period from late 2021 through 2022 where it felt like everything went wrong: I moved to Los Angeles for a job that was supposedly going to be in person, but the company decided to remain remote the day I moved, so I lived there for a year for no reason, paying insane LA rent just to work from home and live in isolation, hundreds of miles from my friends and family. (This was exacerbated by the fact that COVID was still canceling most social events.) Then, a close family member was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a double mastectomy, a handful of other life-threatening health scares happened to loved ones, and a couple of deaths happened in my inner circle. The waterfall of negative events, prolonged isolation, and the pandemic in the middle of it all caused me to develop severe agoraphobia (not that I was leaving the house much anyway), and I found myself in such a deep hole of depression that I stopped reaching out to most of my friends, disengaged entirely from all creative projects, and basically just went to bed early every night, hoping the next day would be better. My mental and physical health plummeted to the point where even the simplest work meetings over Zoom started giving me unbearable anxiety, and a routine common cold became so severe I broke my own rib from coughing. It was – and I was – a complete mess.
I’m not sure what finally lit a fire under my ass to pull the e-brake on my Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Year, but I finally mustered enough clarity and confidence to at least put an end to the things that were under my control. I quit my job, enrolled in school full time to try and point my life in a different direction, ended the lukewarm long-distance relationship I had been attempting to maintain throughout it all, and — with the help some extraordinarily good friends — moved the hell out of LA the second my lease was up.
In an effort to inject my life with an emergency dose of joy, fulfilling hard work, and reasons to leave the house, I also visited a local dog rescue and adopted a tiny, 8-week-old puppy. When I brought him home, I nestled his wiggly little body close to my neck and felt my heart slowly begin to occupy its allotted space in my chest for the first time in months. Reflecting on the scorched-earth policy I had enacted on my life, I remembered the line in “Hey, Hey, What Can I Do” where Plant confidently sings, “I guess there's just one thing a-left for me to do / Gonna pack my bags and move on my way.” It was a highly imperfect time to adopt a puppy, in the middle of the most imperfect time of my entire life, and I knew he and I would have a deeply imperfect life together. But we would figure it out. Hey, hey, what can I do.
I named him Bonham.
Imperfection is perhaps the most unavoidable aspect in every corner of life, and the greatest unifier of all seven billion completely fallible humans on this earth, each and every one of us damned to endlessly fumble through mistakes and missteps until the hour of our death. The best scenario we can hope for is to discover patterns in our blunders, learn to be accountable for the harm caused with our natural idiocy, reach a place of acceptance in ourselves and others, and stitch it all together into life lessons that guard us from further shame, failure, or worse: loneliness. That’s been a struggle for me a few times, as I’m sure it has been for most of us, especially given the hand we were all dealt over the last few years.
Some people, however, are also lucky enough to weave it into art. Led Zeppelin did this by hiding frank, emotional vulnerability, self-reflection, and well-placed melancholic qualities within the raucous, primal, balls-out rock side for which they are widely known. (I made the sound from the beginning of “Immigrant Song” when I typed that.) This creates a feeling of tension bubbling under the musical surface; an ever-present inner conflict between diametrically opposed ideals, forced to coexist in the same space. Masculinity vs. femininity. Selfishness vs. altruism. Carnal desire vs. emotional connection. Partying vs. responsibilities. To me, the back and forth feels a lot like the dialogue in one’s conscience during moments when you know you should do the right thing, but you want to do the wrong thing, and it’s taking everything you’ve got not to throw caution to the wind and make a big – but potentially very fun – mistake. Or, say, you pick the wrong path and end up taking a long, terrible year to climb out of a dark cave. It is the curse of imperfection, but it is also magnificently human and relatable. And Led Zeppelin, being highly imperfect beings, presented us with not only great music, but also a mirror to hold up and see our own human ways reflected back to us.
I can’t speak for the men themselves or the intention they had when they wrote these songs, but I do know that their music, and their imperfections that inspired them, have profoundly moved me in my life. I hope they do the same for you, too — imperfections and all.
Hey, hey, what can I do?
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