Lovebitesandeveryfing
Well-Known Member
It's horses for courses. No one's a bigger fan of Zep than me. Saw them at Manchester University in spring of 1971. I'd still to this day choose Physical Graffiti as one of my five greatest double albums in rock for the desert island.
However, the Who were a slightly different generation (as they sang so memorably, and by the way if there is any anthem for people of my age, it is that song, which we identified with totally, and Zep has no single song like that). They were absolutely electrifying on stage, as riveting as Zep in their pomp. I was lucky enough to see the Who at the Oval, and at the Rainbow. But just watch the Monterrey performance, then think of the year.
Incidentally,I never saw Fleetwood Mac, unfortunately — I mean the Fleetwood Mac that I care about, the Jeremy Spencer/Danny Kirwan/Peter Green incarnation, not the later Buckingham/Nicks poppy version — but I was told by several people that they were the best thing they'd ever seen live.
As pure musicians, I will allow that Zep easily take it. Position for position, if you think in football terms, I think Page is a much more creative guitarist than Townsend; much as I loved him, Moon is a crazy drummer but Bonzo was much more precise and, in my view, inventive: he is the rock drummer's rock drummer. Entwistle is a perfect bassist for what the Who did — that sound zooming overhead like a 747! — but Jones is also a brilliant composer, and incidentally a multi-instrumentalist, something often forgotten. Listen to his bluesy/gospelly organ work on “Your time is gonna come”. I wouldn't care to choose it between Daltrey and Plant. Rock singers are a race apart anyway.
But the Who brought out a whole string of singles that seemed to define, as much as the Kinks, what is was to be a rocker, and also to be English to the core. They were as important for me as the Beatles, the Stones, the Animals, and anyone else. Maybe more so, in terms of who I felt I was. And until the end of the sixties, singles were what is was all about. I don't think Zep bothered with singles at all. I'm finessing the dates a bit, but if pushed I'd have to say the Who are mainly a sixties band. Zep are mainly a seventies one. Both defined by, and defining, their age.
Also, incidentally, the Who always had that operatic side to them, courtesy mainly of Townsend — Tommy, Quadrophenia. The desire to make a magnum opus. Which is a strange contradiction when you think what I've just said about singles. Zeppelin had no such ambitions — and no interest — in that direction.
As I say. Horses for courses. Or, to mix the metaphors, “Let a hundred flowers bloom”.