Is Led Zeppelin the sound of white conquest? The music bends to make sweet, sweet love even as the sound of it makes war in your bed-head. Milking the blues, this band is eclectic, the rhythms almost so hard (i.e., violent) and funky (i.e., sexy) that they become a manifesto — a propulsive power-grab. And the rudiments of the blues lend a sort of tribal heft to the whimsy on display, those Nietzschean overtones of being white and British (i.e., the Delta blues of the druids). You can hear it in the vocal — the joining of some tropes — the spade and the banshee. The result is a strapping plan to rule the world, the best ham-hock. With a mat top and a huge bottom, the band cuts the waffle: Robert Plant is the mover, John Paul Jones is the shade, and Jimmy Page is the catalyst. Everything, of course, is fixed to John Bonham’s galloping swing (the kick-drum from hell). And you laugh with it.
