Guitar Licks of the Brit-Rock Heroes
Book/CD Pack

Jesse Gress takes you deep inside the styles of these three guitar heroes. Presenting more than 100 of the players' signature licks, Gress shows you the secrets of their styles and explains how you can develop your own playing by understanding the essence of each guitarist's approach. This book presents each example with its own mini-lesson, and Gress performs the licks on the accompanying CD. 256 pages!

Inventory # HL 331177. Book/CD $19.95 (US).

Led Zeppelin

Jimmy Page - guitars
Robert Plant - vocals
John Paul Jones - bass, keyboards
John Bonham - drums

Formed: in 1968 by Jimmy Page, guitarist for the recently-disbanded Yardbirds. Page wanted to fulfill the Yardbirds' remaining contractual obligations for a tour in Scandinavia, while at the same time putting together a group to develop some new musical ideas he'd been working on.

Background: John Paul Jones was an English recording session veteran, like Page, who'd played and arranged for many groups on many hit songs. The New Yardbirds (the original name for the band) nearly featured ex-Yardbird Chris Dreja and members of Procol Harum, but Procul Harum vocalist Terry Reid recommended singer Robert Plant of the group Hobbstweedle, who recommended drummer John Bonham, whom he'd known from the group Band of Joy.

The name: Page had originally tried to put together a supergroup with Jeff Beck, John Entwistle and Keith Moon (the latter two considering leaving The Who), and possibly Steve Winwood or Steve Marriott on vocals. Beck, Page, and Moon recorded a song, "Beck's Bolero," with John Paul Jones and Nicky Hopkins, which ended up on Beck's Truth album. While the group never went any farther than that, Moon's quip that the band would "go over like a lead zeppelin" provided Page with a band name.

The beginning: By all accounts, the group knew from the moment they finished playing their first song together ("Train Kept A-Rollin'") that there was a chemistry between them. Following the Scandinavian tour, they recorded Led Zeppelin in just 30-some hours, with the recording financed and produced by Page. They took the finished tapes to Atlantic Records, who signed them almost immediately. Their first US tour in early 1969 created a sensation; as opening act for Iron Butterfly at the Fillmore East, their performance so amazed the audience that Iron Butterfly refused to perform.

Discography: Eight studio albums from 1969 to 1979, with one live soundtrack album and movie.

Led Zeppelin - 1969
Led Zeppelin II - 1969
Led Zeppelin III - 1970
Untitled - 1971
Houses of the Holy - 1973
Physical Graffiti - 1975
Presence - 1976
The Song Remains the Same - 1977 (live - soundtrack from the movie)
In Through the Out Door - 1979

The end: Led Zeppelin announced its breakup in December 1980, following the death of drummer John Bonham in September. Bonham choked on his vomit after drinking a large amount of alcohol and passing out following a day in the studio and then a gathering at Robert Plant's home.

Signature song: "Stairway to Heaven" is the song most identified with the group, although it is now widely considered the most overplayed song in rock history. Robert Plant has been quoted as saying that "Kashmir" (off the Physical Graffiti album) is his idea of the definitive Led Zeppelin song.

Their style:

Jimmy Page has said that he wanted Led Zeppelin to be "a marriage of blues, hard rock and acoustic music topped with heavy choruses" with "lots of light and shade in the music." The battle will probably rage evermore over whether Zeppelin "invented heavy metal," but it's clear that this formula of blues, hard rock and acoustic music, with lots of light and shade, is what defined Zeppelin early on. Later on, they embraced a range of styles that would now be called World music, with influences from North Africa, Jamaica and elsewhere.

Blues: Just as artists like Cream, Hendrix and the Bluesbreakers had already done, Zeppelin used Chicago and Delta blues forms as a basis for their hard rock sound. The first album is perhaps the best example of this, with its two Willie Dixon songs ("You Shook Me" and "I Can't Quit You Baby"). It's interesting to note that Dixon sued the group - and won - for infringement on the song "Whole Lotta Love" on the second album, copped from his song "You Need Love."

Hard rock: Page took the blues, his experimentations along with Jeff Beck from the Yardbirds, and inspiration from hard rock pioneers like Hendrix, and created his own distinctly powerful wailing sound. Together with his creative production and recording techniques and liberal use of overdubbing, he also forged a Marshall-stack-driven concert sound which was derided by some as "sloppy," but whose over-the-top ferocity inspired generations of guitarists after him with songs like "Dazed and Confused," "Communication Breakdown," "Black Dog," and "Houses of the Holy."

Folk and acoustic: Page was influenced by the new breed of English folk guitarists such as Bert Jansch and Davey Graham and their distinctive picking styles, and many Zep classics featured acoustic fingerstyle parts on them from the very first album - often with the acoustic part giving way to an electric crescendo later in the song. Plant's lyrics were especially well suited for songs like "Ramble On," "Over the Hills and Far Away," and "Going to California." The only guest vocalist on a Zeppelin album was Sandy Denny of the English folk-rock group Fairport Convention, who sang on "The Battle of Evermore."

Exotic influences: Page and Plant became interested in the music of Morocco and Egypt in the latter half of Zeppelin's lifespan, and it showed its influence in lush creations such as "Kashmir" and "In the Evening," and their interest in Middle Eastern styles has endured, as evidenced by their Egyptian backing band in the '90s Page/Plant tour. Later Zeppelin albums show an adventurous mix of influnces like the the funky backbeat of "D'yer Maker," the swirling synthesizer of "Carouselambra," and even the Bakersfield satire of "Hot Dog."

THE BRITISH BLUES GUITAR HEROES
Play-It-Like-It-Is Guitar

13 tab-transcribed blues classics from the British guitar heroes:

Fleetwood Mac's Peter Green (Albatross · Oh Well Part 1 · Oh Well Part 2 · The Green Manalishi), John Mayall with Eric Clapton (All Your Love (I Miss Loving)), Rory Gallagher (Bullfrog Blues), The Jeff Beck Group (I Ain't Superstitious), Led Zeppelin (I Can't Quit You Baby · You Shook Me), John Mayall with Mick Taylor (Oh Pretty Woman), Gary Moore (Since I Met You Baby), Cream (Sitting on Top of the World), and the Rolling Stones (Time Is On My Side).

Inventory #HL 02500464
Book $14.95 (US).