When Stephen Davis’s Hammer Of The Gods was published in 1985, it set the bar not only for lurid tales of debauchery in the Led Zeppelin camp, but also for salacious rock biogs to come – Mötley Crüe’s The Dirt is a direct descendent. With this beautifully presented hardback, Marc Roberty takes a very different approach, leaving the groupie gossip to one side and concentrating instead on the band’s history on a tour-by-tour, album-by-album basis, from Jimmy Page’s time with The Yardbirds right up to 2007’s Ahmet Ertegun tribute show.
Completists will love it, as it’s stuffed with setlists, original regional reviews, tour ads and posters, alongside forensic, no-nonsense entries for each of the band’s shows.
It’ll be a little dry for some, and you’re unlikely to read it all in one sitting, but anyone interested in the inner workings of Led Zeppelin as musicians, rather than in their rumoured backstage shenanigans, will find themselves dipping into random pages for months ahead.
