Bob Spitz: preference

Transcript context

…How can you know nothing about Led Zeppelin, given all the other things you know? That’s weird. It’s like if I said I know nothing about Adam Smith or Keynes. I had been on the road with Bruce Springsteen and Elton John while Led Zeppelin came into the forefront. Our paths never crossed. I never listened to their music. I knew that they were a heavy metal band. I wasn’t interested in heavy metal. I have 20,000 vinyl albums in my collection. I didn’t have a single Led Zeppelin album. When my editor asked me about it, I might have been able to mention that I knew “Whole Lotta Love.” I might have known “Stairway to Heaven,” but I couldn’t name another Led Zeppelin song. I found myself saying to my editor, “Of course, I’m your guy.” I was really happy that I did it. I’m convinced now that I was the right person to do it because I’m a musician. I love music. I was an empty vessel when it came to Led Zeppelin. I just let them fill me up. I really studied it as if I were taking a foreign language and had never studied that language before. It gave me an opportunity to spend a good year and a half before I started writing, listening to their music, trying to understand it. Asking other great musicians, “Explain John Bonham’s drum technique to me. Explain Jimmy Page’s guitar to me.” I asked Jeff Beck to explain it to me. Jeff Beck was Jimmy’s boyhood neighbor. I came at Led Zeppelin from a neophyte’s angle, and I thought, “Okay, I can be incredibly objective here when it comes to writing about this band.” I was happy that I had the experience to do it. It taught me a lot, and I fell in love with their entire catalog of music that I had never appreciated before. “Stairway to Heaven,” overrated or underrated?…

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