Roots and Raw Feeling

The juggernaut roll of the Big Beat, the slash of the old blues strain, the euphoria of yeh-yeh-yeh are all fading. With the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper (1967), rock crossed the line into self-consciousness, sophistication and experimentation. The result has been an exciting diversity of sounds produced by eclectic rock musicians. But a problem remains: How can this evolution go on without depleting the primitive power that first gave the music its momentum?

Among the best strategies is the one used by England's Led Zeppelin, which recently dislodged the Beatles as England's most popular rock group (TIME, Sept. 28). The Zeppelin's aim is to explore all the styles and techniques in today's rock spectrum without ever losing a heavy core of raw feeling.

A supergroup consisting of ex-Yard-bird Jimmy Page and three other young veterans of the British rock scene, Led Zeppelin was launched in 1968 in what Lead Vocalist Robert Plant calls a "smash-bang-wallop" fashion. After a week's tour of Scandinavia, the group knocked out its first ragged LP in 15 hours. The group's spontaneity and free-floating blues improvisations struck a responsive chord among the young, and the LP became a million-dollar seller in the U.S.

A far cry from that first hectic session, the group's third album, Led Zeppelin III (Atlantic), now No. 1 on the Billboard charts, was put together during the first six months of this year. The care and leisure show. Gallows Pole shows the clear influence of San Francisco's Creedence Clearwater Revival, and its monosyllabic, root-heavy style is powerful. One of the two best tracks is That's The Way, whose rich harmonies are a perfect match for the somewhat surreal lyrics about adolescent alienation. The other is Since I've Been Loving You, a superb slow-blues song that has more togetherness than a revival meeting.

Kind of Stamp. Led Zeppelin's four members were born to the ashes of World War II, restless or disaffected in school, stirred to life in the 1950s by Elvis Presley and the early rock 'n' rollers. Bass Guitarist John Paul Jones, 24, is the son of a big-band pianist from the swing era. Plant, 22, son of a civil engineer, spent most of his formative years scouring blues-record shops. Drummer John Bonham, 22, son of a carpenter, got his first set of drums at age seven. Page, the eldest at 25, is the son of an industrial personnel manager. "When I first heard rock," he recalls, "and realized that it was not just Guy Mitchell and Pat Boone, but that something was really going on there, then I knew it was for me."

Many groups do not last two years. One reason for Led Zeppelin's survival is that its fans can expect virtually anything from them. "Somewhere along the line, though," says Plant, "we hope there's a kind of stamp that identifies it as us."

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