The forgotten hippie band Led Zeppelin gave a second chance: “They were very insistent”
In rock ‘n’ roll, there’s a certain level of stardom where being one of the biggest and most important acts is no longer enough. It’s a level reached by the likes of Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, and Jack White. At this point, the reasoning often goes: “I’m tired of being jerked around by my record label. It’s time to be the record label! I’ll treat my artists fairly because I’m one of them! There’s no way this could possibly go wrong!” Famous last words, all too often.
The truth is, a lot of the time, it’s less about genuinely wanting to be a person in business and more about wanting to give opportunities to your mates. If done right, it can lead to even more great music seeing the light of day. Case in point, before stepping down from the position in disgrace, Matt Healy was the creative director of Dirty Hit, the label formed to release the music of his band The 1975.
As embarrassing as this sounds, he was actually pretty great at it. Perhaps he could see the stardom that Beabadoobee, Rina Sawayama and The Japanese House would go on to enjoy, we only have his (famously dodgy) word about this, but the most important thing was that they were acquaintances of his and he loved their music. This however, is nothing new. In fact, it goes all the way back to the kings of the 1970s themselves, Led Zeppelin.
By 1973, the band had well and truly taken over the world. They were sitting pretty, having just released Houses of the Holy, and, much to label Atlantic’s horror, decided to let their five-album contract with them expire rather than renew. Instead, they set up Swan Song, a vanity label with the manager and the sole person in the entire world who could keep John Bonham in check, Peter Grant, at the helm.
The first record they released was, understandably, a debut album. The self-titled first effort from Paul Rodgers’ new outfit Bad Company. A very exciting prospect by one of the premier rock singers of the day. Any label would have been lucky to have them at the time. Their second and first UK release, however, was the seventh album by a band who, at the time, were regarded as casualties of the hippy dream — a laughing stock that Led Zeppelin were taking a huge punt on.
Despite forming five years before the Jimmy Page-led group, the Pretty Things had spent the late 1960s crashing and burning so hard they had to sell their songs to softcore porn movies to stay afloat. No ordinary record label would go near them, but Swan Song were no ordinary label.
Singer Phil May spoke to Classic Rock about this, saying, “When Zeppelin formed the Swan Song label, Jimmy and Robert approached me. They were very conscious that they didn’t want it [to] become a big stars vehicle and just use the Zeppelin name. They were very insistent that they controlled the artist roster.”
They were probably put up to the task by their drummer in particular, as May also said, “John Bonham loved the Pretties, and any time we recorded a track, he insisted on getting a copy.” Perhaps listening to their madman of a drummer wasn’t such a great idea, though. While Bad Company became one of the most reliable acts of the day, The Pretty Things failed to deliver.
The band got two albums into their deal with Swan Song before collapsing again due to infighting. The band they tried to form from the ashes, Metropolis, did not get a contract offer from Swansong. That’s the risk you take by trying to run a label as a fan than as a business person. They took a chance on a band they believed in though, and maybe more labels should think that way today.
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