The bitter song Robert Plant wrote after fighting with Led Zeppelin: “Where was your bow?”
Emerging from the ashes of The Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin rose emphatically to the top of the rock ‘n’ roll pyramid alongside the Rolling Stones and The Who in the late 1960s and early ’70s. Their heavier blues-style approach, fuelled by John Bonham’s thunderous percussion, John Paul Jones’ melodic rhythm and Jimmy Page’s rapturous guitar, made something extraordinary as they framed Robert Plant’s powerful yet dynamic vocals.
As Page built his new incarnation of the Yardbirds, he carefully selected bandmates for both talent and demeanour. After hearing of a unique rock singer from Birmingham, Page put his nose to the trail and found Plant at the other end.
Plant remembered their first encounter: “I was appearing at this college when [manager Peter Grant] and Jimmy turned up and asked me if I’d like to join the Yardbirds. I knew the Yardbirds had done a lot of work in America – which to me meant audiences who would want to know what I might have to offer – so naturally, I was very interested.”
During this meeting, the frontman sang Jefferson Airplane’s song ‘Somebody To Love’ to Page. The guitarist later recalled the moment: “When I auditioned him and heard him sing, I immediately thought there must be something wrong with him personality-wise or that he had to be impossible to work with, because I just could not understand why, after he told me he’d been singing for a few years already, he hadn’t become a big name yet. So I had him down to my place for a little while, just to sort of check him out, and we got along great. No problems.”
For the most part, Page’s assemblage was perfect; the band struck a fine balance both on and off the stage as they began to embody the quintessential rock and roll lifestyle of excess moving into the ’70s. The group operated like a bright and shiny silver army, impervious to the downfalls of their counterparts in the counterculture scene. The group seemed bereft of a primadonna singer, a spotlight-demanding guitarist, or a wayward drummer.
However, the truth is that the group were all of those things and more. Plant was more than capable of throwing a wobbly amid his “golden god” phase, Jimmy Page was often brash in his bravado, proclaiming himself the band’s most trusted songwriter and Bonham’s infamy off stage and in the nearby bars will likely outlive us all. But, somehow, they managed to hold it together. But, on a few isolated occasions, mainly toward the end of the decade, the band began showing early signs of disrepair.
One of these rough patches is set in stone for eternity in the lyrics of ‘Carouselambra’. The classic song, which appears on Led Zeppelin’s eighth and final album, In Through the Out Door, was written by Plant during the group’s fractious period. It encapsulates the bitterness that all bandmates feel at one time or another. Working with four individuals is tough enough at the best of times, but when that tiny organisation supports a group of hundreds more, your decisions are predetermined with a layer of expectation.
The tensions came at a time when the band were arguably staring over the crest of the wave. The 1970s had been their decade. They had outsold many of their contemporaries and their live shows were world renowned. But, as the turn of a new decade approached, the group, who had been on the road or in the studio for most of the last ten years, were beginning to fall away at the seams.
In the run-up to In Through the Out Door, tensions were rising because of Page and Bonham’s increasingly hedonistic rock star lifestyle. Meanwhile, Plant and bassist John Paul Jones were more dedicated to the studio exploits, showing up on time and doing most of the work for the album. Over this period, the band worked in two halves, with Page and Bonham often recording their parts in late-night sessions.
The pressures within the band grew to a fever pitch. As Plant dedicated himself to songwriting, he began to exalt his frustrations through his work and wrote a bitter bite at the band that had given him so much. Those feelings are most transparently reflected as Plant sings: “Where was your word, where did you go? Where was your helping, where was your bow?”
“I thought parts of ‘Carouselambra’ were good, especially the darker dirges that Pagey developed,” Plant reflected in a 2003 conversation with Mojo, showing that while he may have taken aim at his friends in the song, in truth, without them, he couldn’t have brought it to fruition. “And I rue it so much now, because the lyrics on ‘Carouselambra’ were actually about that environment and that situation. The whole story of Led Zeppelin in its latter years is in that song… and I can’t hear the words!”
Sadly, Led Zeppelin would only stay together for another year after In Through the Out Door. On September 25th, 1980, Bonham was found dead from asphyxiation after a heavy night of drinking.
Instead of finding a replacement for their bandmate, Led Zeppelin decided to disband out of respect for their late friend. In a press release on December 4th, 1980, the band announced to their fans: “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.”
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