The iconic band who Pete Townshend and Keith Richards agreed were awful
Rock and roll is a cut-throat business, most often noted for its endless array of intra-band feuds and longstanding musical rivalries rather than any phoney sense of camaraderie between rock revolutionaries, and even a seemingly universally-beloved band is never totally free from criticism.
London was a haven for that rock and roll rebellion throughout the 1960s, and there is no doubt that guitarists ruled the airwaves during that famously swinging era. Keith Richards, for instance, became the poster boy of the British Invasion, reflecting the rebel tendencies of Britain’s post-war youth and striking upon some of the most iconic, trailblazing riffs ever put to tape. Meanwhile, you had the likes of Pete Townshend paving the way for countless other raucous rock and roll outfits, injecting the pop charts with a much-needed sense of anarchy.
Once the dust had settled on that revelatory age, though, a new batch of guitarists emerged, and few were quite as incredible as Jimmy Page. With Led Zeppelin, the former session guitarist established an entire new era for rock, and it didn’t take long for the band to ascend to the uppermost echelon of the musical realm – something that didn’t sit right with the aforementioned Keith Richards or Pete Townshend.
You would be forgiven for assuming that Richards, in particular, would recognise the appeal of Led Zeppelin, sharing a common adoration of old-school blues with Jimmy Page. Nevertheless, the Rolling Stones guitarist has been repeatedly disparaging of the groundbreaking outfit, going right back to 1969 when he told Rolling Stone, “The guy’s [Robert Plant] voice started to get on my nerves. I don’t know why; maybe he’s a little too acrobatic.”
Seemingly, Richards did appreciate the guitar skills of Page – he did, after all, appear on a few Rolling Stones recordings as a session player back in the 1960s – yet he couldn’t connect with the rest of Zeppelin’s package. “I love Jimmy Page, but as a band, no,” he shared back in 2015. “Jimmy is a brilliant player. But I always felt there was something a little hollow about it, you know?”
One person who likely does know what Richards is on about is Pete Townshend, who has been similarly dismissive of Led Zeppelin over the years, even accusing the band of plagiarising their proto-metal sound from The Who. “We sort of invented heavy metal with Live at Leeds. We were copied by so many bands, principally by Led Zeppelin, you know heavy drums, heavy bass, heavy lead guitar,” he once declared to the Toronto Sun.
Decades before that particular accusation, Townshend was similarly vicious during a 1995 interview, in which he proclaimed, “I don’t like a single thing that they have done, I hate the fact that I’m ever even slightly compared to them.” Continuing, “I just never ever liked them. It’s a real problem to me, because as people, I think they are really, really great guys. Just never liked the band.”
While it is somewhat reassuring that neither Richards’ nor Townshend’s dislike of Led Zeppelin comes from the nature of the band members themselves, it is still rather bizarre that both guitarists have such an enduring resentment of the hard rock progenitors.
Perhaps they genuinely didn’t connect with the band’s output, or perhaps there was some resentment over a new band coming out of nowhere to rival the untouchable reputations of both The Who and The Rolling Stones.
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