Led Zeppelin's dirigible flies again thanks to Early Days and Latter Days, the recent double anthology that includes all the hits of the legendary British band. "We want that a new generation could know our music", the guitarist Jimmy Page revealed. "I always thought that our music could last for a long time, but I didn't imagine to live so much... When I was 18 I thought I would die at 30, today I'm 54 and I hardly believe I got over 50".

A long-playing revolution

Not only their everlasting songs made Led Zeppelin legendary. Page, Plant & C. released some musical revolutions too. Their explosive cocktail of blues, hard rock and psychedelic music updated the Cream's formula and changed rock'n'roll tradition at the beginning of the Seventies. They were the first band to became popular without the promotion of the Radio stations. Until then the charts and the hit singles ruled on the radio and the television. Led Zeppelin were successful despite they didn't enter those charts. Not even their greatest hit, "Stairway to heaven", was a single. They broke traditions rule also with their albums covers: almost empty, sometimes devoid of their same name.

More than their songs were their live performance to excite the audience: they were pure rock'n'roll wildness, on the wave of Woodstock. In fact Led Zeppelin's concerts were made of ferocious energy and fury. They were sonorous bacchanals and folk melodies, blues ballads and psychedelic fire, thanks also to the Jimmy Page virtuous guitar and the acute Robert Plant singing. The videocassette "The song remains the same" showed it very well.

In Italy, Led Zeppelin played only one time. It was in Milan, on the 3rd of July 1971, and it was a total mess. As soon as Robert Plant started singing, the policemen shot teargases on the crowd. At the third song, new teargases were shot. It started a fight with many people invading the stage. "That night we thought we could die", Plant told. "We had to shut down a door to take shelter in the dressing room. When we tried to take our instruments we realised it was all destroyed". A strange circumstance happened to them in Copenhagen too, in the February 1970: Led Zeppelin were forced to perform as "The Nobs" because of a legal threat by the heirs of the count Von Zeppelin, the inventor of dirigible used by the group.

Triumph and tragedy

Typical long-haired guys (that's why they couldn't be admitted in China), Led Zeppelin are creatures of the 1968 protests days. In that year Jimmy Page (a former Yardbirds member who collaborated with the Who and the Kinks) knew the singer Robert Plant. They engaged the eclectic John Paul Jones (bass guitar and keyboards) and the drummer John "Bonzo" Bonham and debuted with Led Zeppelin I, an album full of psychedelic blues. Dragging songs like "Dazed and Confused", "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" and "Communication Breakdown" soon conquered the audience.

The Led Zeppelin's popularity continued with II, thanks to the hard rock energy of "Whole Lotta Love" (from a Willie Dixon theme) and the drum a solo of "Moby Dick" (considered as one of the most famous of the whole rock history). But the real best-seller was IV, pervaded by a mystic-folk spirit, with the memorable "Stairway to Heaven".

The Led Zeppelin's dirigible continued flying high also with Houses of the holy (that included the touching "Rain Song") and the double live Physical graffiti. Afterwards the bad days came and the Led Zeppelin's story was marked by two tragedies: the sudden death of Plant's son (because of a viral infection) and the death of the drummer John Bonham, who died of suffocation after a night of alcoholic excesses. On the 4^th of December 1980, a band's press release sounded like an epitaph: "The loss of our friend and the respect towards his family convinced us we could never go on again". Since then, except some live exhibitions (like Live Aid), Page and Plant choose separate ways.

Celts, wizards and flower-power

Not only blues and hard rock were in the Led Zeppelin's repertory, but also the Celtic folk and the Medieval myths, besides a special taste for esoteric. A passion that took Page to go to in the "cursed house" of Aleister Crowley, near Loch Ness, in Scotland. And the band was also accused to promote Satanist rock. Critics that sometimes sounded grotesque. Some months ago, Page won a legal quarrel against the magazine "Ministry magazine" that accused him to have let Bonham die, dressing a Satanist tunic and trying to put a spell on him...

Instead Robert Plant was criticised for his flower-power old-fashioned lyrics: "How can you consider the flower-power old-fashioned?", he replied. "The essence of my lyrics is the desire of peace and harmony. That's all everyone have ever wanted. How could it become an old-fashioned matter?".

Nowadays the flower-power dreams are souvenirs of a past era, but the Led Zeppelin fans are more and more. The last ones came from the Seattle grunge generation, the one of Nirvana and Pearl Jam, bands that updated the Led Zepppelin's hard rock at the time of desolation and disillusion. But Led Zeppelin don't need any heir. They already sold 80 millions copies of their albums (only the Beatles were more successful) and the young people still love them. An elixir of eternal youth: that must be their "stairway to heaven".