The creepy Led Zeppelin song that Robert Plant should regret: “I feel sorry for them”
In their 12-year existence, English rockers Led Zeppelin reached heights that remain the stuff of dreams for aspiring musicians. To be the leading outfit of a rock revolution is impressive enough, but to have your music still loved and lauded over five decades since your arrival on the scene suggests a longevity that befits icon status.
Their crowning achievement is that they were the outfit that dethroned The Beatles as the world’s most important band. This regicide occurred when the Liverpudlian group were slowly winding down proceedings towards the end of the 1960s.
To achieve this feat, Zeppelin did three things. Firstly, 1969’s Led Zeppelin II knocked Abbey Road off the top of the charts, with its successor, Led Zeppelin III, doing the same to The Beatles’ final album, Let It Be. Then, in their final demonstration of the epoch change, they broke the record for concert attendance that the Fab Four set at Shea Stadium in 1965. This arrived via a 57,000 show in Tampa, Florida, in 1973.
Musically, Led Zeppelin are often spoken about in only glowing terms, given the remarkable form they found for rarely releasing misfires. The group might be considered one of the most robust outfits of their generation, a group of rock-solid musicians with enough guile to deliver lots of hits. However, there are failures to be found in their discography.
One of the most glaring blots on their oeuvre is ‘Sick Again’ from 1975’s Physical Graffiti. Allegedly, the track was written by frontman Robert Plant as a way of voicing his pity for the group of young girls he called the ‘L.A. Queens’, who would flock to the band’s hotel rooms to offer “favours”. Despite his apparently well-meaning intentions, the lyrics haven’t aged well and come across as extremely creepy.
“Well, I am. I haven’t lost my innocence, particularly,” Plant confessed about seeming depressed about growing up when speaking to Cameron Crowe for Rolling Stone in 1975. “I’m always ready to pretend I haven’t. Yeah, it is a shame in a way. And it’s a shame to see these young chicks bungle their lives away in a flurry and rush to compete with what was in the old days the goodtime relationships we had with the GTOs and people like that.”
But there is one track, in particular, that will always leave a bitter taste in the mouth. Plant explained his lyrics: “If you listen to ‘Sick Again’, a track from Physical Graffiti, the words show I feel a bit sorry for them. ‘Clutchin pages from your teenage dream in the lobby of the Hotel Paradise/Through the circus of the L.A. Queen how fast you learn the downhill slide’. One minute she’s 12, and the next minute she’s 13 and over the top. Such a shame. They haven’t got the style that they had in the old days … way back in ’68.”
However, lyrics such as the following have – make no mistake about it – aged terribly: “From the window of a rented limousine/ I caught your pretty blue eyes/ One day soon you’re gonna’ reach sixteen” and “Said you dug me since you were thirteen/ Then you giggle as you heave an’ sigh”. Given the series of moans Plant closes the song with, ‘Sick Again’ serves as a reminder of the dark side of classic rock, regardless of the singer’s meaning. The thought of a grown man waiting for a young girl to reach the age of consent is profoundly insidious.
When you add to this the known experiences of bandmate Jimmy Page and ‘baby groupie’ Lori Maddox, it is an ugly scene. The young girl has often shared her thoughts on the relationship she shared with Page, “I got approached by Led Zeppelin’s manager Peter Grant… I felt like I was being kidnapped. I got taken into a room, and there was Jimmy Page. He wore a wide-brimmed hat and held a cane. It was perfect. He mesmerised me. I fell in love instantly”.
All this paints an unwelcome picture, which, at the very best, has aged terrible in the view of the 21st century.
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