LZ-'75: The Lost Chronicles of Led Zeppelin's 1975 American Tour
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A revealing account of Led Zepplin's 1975 North American tour including all- new interviews with-and insider information about-the band, from the bestselling author of Hammer of the Gods. As a young music journalist in 1975, Stephen Davis got the opportunity of a lifetime: an invitation to cover the sold-out 1975 North American tour of Led Zeppelin, the biggest and most secretive rock band in the world, for a national magazine. He received a backstage pass, was granted interviews with band members, and even got a prized seat on the band's luxurious tour jet, The Starship. While on duty, he chronicled the Zeppelin tour in three notebooks, but after writing his article in 1975 he misplaced them. After three decades of searching, in 2005 he finally found the notebooks, on the covers of which he had scribbled the words "LZ-'75," and unearthed an amazing amount of new information from the tour including: • Lost interviews with canny vocalist Robert Plant and the brilliant guitarist Jimmy Page • Information on the rock icon who moonlighted as a heroin dealer • Revelations about the identity of the lover about whom Robert Plant sings in "What Is and What Should Never Be" and "Black Country Woman" • A detailed chronicle of each performance from a musical perspective, and a vivid account of the band members' extravagant, and often troubled, lives on tour Tied together by Davis's entertaining narrative, and including more than forty never-before-published photographs, LZ-'75 is an unprecedented and comprehensive personal portrait of the greatest (and most notoriously press-shy) rock band in history at its apex. Library Journal Rock journalist Davis tries to do for Led Zeppelin what Larry Kane's Ticket To Ride does for the Beatles—give fans an inside look at life on the road for a legendary band. But Davis fails to add anything new to what is already well known about these heavy metal pioneers. One of the few journalists invited to follow the band as they crisscrossed the country on their spring 1975 tour, he recounts a series of anecdotes of on- and offstage antics. Groupies, alcohol, illness, violence, and bad behavior of all sorts abound, but somehow Davis, who uses his recently discovered journal notes from the tour to piece this story together, manages to make it all seem boring. VERDICT A quarter century ago, Davis published a disappointing but best-selling biography of Led Zeppelin, Hammer of the Gods, and his latest will neither surprise nor inform anyone familiar with the band; even readers new to the group will likely not find their interest piqued. Still, people will be looking for it. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/10.]—Douglas King, Univ. of South Carolina Lib., Columbia
