Book Review: When Giants Walked the Earth

Astonishing lens on the world of rock music 1960 - 2000

Perhaps by my recent adoption of the electric guitar and a bunch of new friends who make up the Lonely Planet Band has made me biased towards learning about rock music?

I say that because I don't think I have ever read a book that grabbed my attention and entertained me for as long as this one.

Written in eye-watering detail, but not in an off-putting anorak fashion (as can happen with this sort of thing), the author brilliantly weaves the story of Jimmy Page, John Bonham, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones from their beginnings in the industrial estates of the UK midlands, through to the full-on Led Zeppelin era, borne out of the rapid demise of the 'New Yardbirds'.

Mick Wall has the most amazing ability to drop in a few pages of handily italicised 'fly on the wall, truth-telling mate' prose just when you can't absorb any more facts or stories about each of the band members or the music they were developing.

There is some genuinely creepy stuff relating Jimmy Page's obsession with the occult, and you soon start to understand how the great rock bands all descended into drugs, booze, 'magick' and unreality in a desperate attempt to keep their edge in musical performance. Having dabbled in the smallest possible way in the experience of being on stage in a rock band, I can only imagine what it must be like to play to 100,000 fans in a stadium.

As the book proceeds, the tragic ending is telegraphed early by things starting to go wrong on tour in the USA in the late 1970s, a growing intolerance from fans of 25 minute guitar or drum solos (judged 'self indulgent crap' by the emerging punk rock movement), and an inability to reach the creative highs of the early years of the band.

It took a while to finish this enormous book - and I wished longingly for an accompanying soundtrack and concert footage. Mothership is the obvious choice as a tour through the years, and an amazing reminder of the soundtrack of my youth containing a great deal of Led Zeppelin indeed.

My favourite moment? In the early days, as it becomes obvious the combination of their musical talents is special, they formulate a name for the band. "It'll go down like a lead balloon" one of them speculates. "More like a bloody Lead Zeppelin" comes the retort. To avoid confusion of the pronunciation they change it to 'Led' and the rest is history.

The only thing possibly better than this book could be this movie.