Reprinted from Green Man Review.
Whenever I’m handed anything on the subject of Led Zeppelin, I check the bibliography for the presence of two particular names, and one particular factoid. If the first name’s there, I’ll open the book and start reading; if the factoid (which attaches to that first name) is present and correct, I’m already down the road with the book under my arm. If the second name’s ever there, I’ll probably mist up, and the author will have made a friend for life.
So, how did this stack up? One out of three.
The first name — Nicky Hopkins — is not the first one to come to mind in connection with Led Zeppelin. But here’s the obscure factoid: Hopkins was considered as a potential member. When he asked what they planned to call the new band, he was told “The New Yardbirds.” He declined.
In Bream’s extensive, beautifully presented work, name number one is in the bibliography. The famous “you’ll go down like a led zeppelin” comment, ascribed over the decades to either Keith Moon or John Entwistle, is present and accounted for. My pet factoid is not. The “New Yardbirds” are mentioned elsewhere, but not in that context.
I can’t blame Bream for the absence of the second name, since it has no claim to fame outside the immediate Swan Song family. I’m betting those concerned with the band and the record label offices in the seventies will do a double-take, should they happen to read this: her name was Fiya Hunt, and she managed the London Swan Song offices at World’s End (where Chelsea becomes Fulham, at the end of the King’s Road). She died in September 1978, mere days before Keith Moon. A bad month in London.
My own memories of Led Zeppelin would be far less pleasant without the memory filter of Fiya herself. She was a big bouncing girl with a taste for outrageous hats, a distaste for pomp, and a total unwillingness to take bullshit, from rock stars or anyone else. I remember a couple of uproariously funny afternoons at Swan Song in January 1978; one of them, a classic oh Jesus the floor can open and swallow me now moment, involved me mistaking John Paul Jones for a delivery guy. Cringe-inducing in the extreme, despite Jones’ very nice manners.
Fiya was a sister spirit to me, and I loved her dearly. Every reaction I have to Led Zeppelin — bad boys, hard rockers, spoiled superstars — goes through my memories of Fiya. That includes Bream’s book; in an odd way, filtering the book through my own memories makes the book easier to look at with a detached eye, rather than from the warm place of personal history.
Whole Lotta Led Zeppelin is drop-dead gorgeous. It’s exquisitely produced and laid out. The memorabilia and photography are in sufficient quantity to keep the most die-hard fan at the edge of orgasm, and the quality is jawdropping. No expense has been spared in the production of Whole Lotta Led Zeppelin, and it shows. This is a coffee table book for the serious rock collector.
Getting past the purely visual and into the content, Bream knows his stuff. He also knows where to get specifics about specifics. There are in-depth breakdowns on the LPs, and commentary from a gamut of professionals with a world of cred: Barry Cleveland, Barney Hoskyns, Charles Shaar Murray. There are also the gossipy, juicy insets (courtesy of period groupies Pamela des Barres and Bebe Buell), and notes from all the way on the inside, by way of Richard Cole, the band’s tour manager. It all goes to illuminate not only the band, but the sensibilities of the world around them.
Bream himself has the light sure touch of an experienced music journalist — he avoids any hint of pomposity. He also has an endearing quality, too rare among musicology types: he takes neither himself nor the subject too seriously. He pays the band, the music, and the history itself, appropriate respect – but he doesn’t venerate it. He gets top points for that. Stodgy veneration too often renders music writing unreadable.
Whole Lotta Led Zeppelin has something for pretty much everyone: For the Led Zep fan, it’s a must-have, right up there on your Christmas list with the complete studio recordings. For the general rock enthusiast, the book is a big well-stuffed goodie bag, full of nuggets and tidbits and nifty little surprises to unwrap. For the serious rock historian, it’s cover to cover and edge to edge.
I suspect Fiya would approve.
(Voyageur Press, 2008)
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