“Waggle his ass”: The band Robert Plant dismissed as cheap imitations of rock
One of the main criticisms Led Zeppelin has received over time is that they have stolen material from other bands. While many people loved the band because of its innovative approach to music, many other artists turned their noses up at its sound, saying that many different guitar lines and styles of playing were lifted from other artists.
Jimi Hendrix always criticised Led Zeppelin for this. “Jimi Hendrix personally told me that he didn’t like Zeppelin because they were like excess baggage and they stole from everybody,” said Carmine Appice, the drummer of Vanilla Fudge, “’You Shook Me’ was on Jeff Beck’s record. ‘Dazed and Confused’ has a bit of Vanilla Fudge on it, and it has parts of ‘Beck’s Bolero’ in it. I think I was told by a member of the band that the ‘Good Times Bad Times’ riff came from Tim Bogart’s bass line.”
While there can be arguments for some overlap with guitar styles, especially in their earlier work, this has always felt like a harsh criticism. A lot of bands’ sounds overlapped during this period, but Led Zeppelin provided some of the most unique-sounding music from the 1960s and ‘70s, as they refused to be worried about dabbling in various genres and trying different things.
Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull said that when the band went on tour with Led Zeppelin, their unique approach to music showed them how to merge different styles. “I think what they showed to all their peer group as musicians was that there was, first of all, a very powerful and dramatic way to perform simple, direct rock music and also to introduce elements of more eclectic music,” he said. “Because Zeppelin, near the beginning, there were a lot of elements of folk music, and Asian music, and African music that crept into their stuff.”
The only part of their music that Led Zeppelin could truly be accused of stealing was some of their lyrics. Robert Plant has always been open that he took many of the lines that he wrote for Led Zeppelin from songs such as ‘Babe, I’m Gunna Leave You’ and ‘Whole Lotta Love’ from old folk and blues tracks.
This part of his songwriting meant that when Robert Plant criticised Skid Row for performing some Led Zeppelin covers, many people thought he was hypocritical. “I resent people nicking and stealing the Led Zeppelin tune,” he said, “But as far as the vocals go, I don’t really take any notice of it.”
Plant’s critique here could be seen as somewhat hypocritical; however, it came after a general rant about the band’s approach to music, and his main problem with Skid Row seems to be less that they covered his band and more that they put style over substance. He said that the way they perform is cheap and one of the easiest ways to engage a crowd without actually making good music.
“If you think about it, it’s the easiest thing for a kid to do to get attention, is to waggle his ass about, you know, take his shirt off and become like Skid Row or whatever, you know?” He said, “I mean, so, I don’t know whether it’s complementary or whether it really means that it’s the easiest thing to do, so let’s do it. We can get all the chicks and go to the bank.”
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