Or again they don't live in America. There's 7.8 billion people, only 330 million of them live in Zeppelin's stronghold.
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Is Deep Purple in the same league with Led Zeppelin?
- Thread starter MidnightRunner
- Start date
Or again they don't live in America. There's 7.8 billion people, only 330 million of them live in Zeppelin's stronghold.
I enjoy this tune by them; though obviously I'm a bit biased here.
Makes me curious what the difference between The Elves and Elf was.
When Purple first came out they were doing covers of Cream, Hendrix, Beatles, and Tina Turner usually adding an instrumental prelude along with a few Hendrix/Purple Haze-influenced originals like "And the Address", "Mandrake Root", "The Bird Has Flown", and "Chasing Shadows". They were also experimenting with classical influences eventually leading up to the first brief appearance of Ian Gillan along with Roger Glover on Concerto for Rock Group and Orchestra which was a commercial failure and was only performed for a live recording. Likely inspired by Sabbath and Zeppelin Deep Purple's replacement of Rod Evans with Ian Gillan allowed them to move in a heavy rock direction even getting Black Sabbath producer Martin Birch to produce the In Rock album. The Gillan/Glover era music was never as diverse as what Zep was doing. They didn't have the lighter acoustic folk side to the band (Humble Pie also comes to mind in this regard). Purple were sometimes awkward and derivative as songwriters although they had outstanding musicianship to carry them through.
Led Zeppelin was the more groundbreaking band. Although they initially borrowed heavily from Jeff Beck and others they were among the first to do heavy blues-rock. Page in addition to his guitar work was skilled as a record producer and came up with recording techniques that had never been done before. The songwriting evolved with each album adding funk, reggae, eastern, and orchestral elements. From the second album on they did mostly original music with much of it being strong enough for FM radio play. Deep Purple didn't progress in the songwriting department and line-up changes didn't help. Machine Head was the closest the Gillan/Glover or any other version of the band ever came to making a classic studio album. Zeppelin on the other hand has several albums that can be considered rock classics.
Led Zeppelin was the more groundbreaking band. Although they initially borrowed heavily from Jeff Beck and others they were among the first to do heavy blues-rock. Page in addition to his guitar work was skilled as a record producer and came up with recording techniques that had never been done before. The songwriting evolved with each album adding funk, reggae, eastern, and orchestral elements. From the second album on they did mostly original music with much of it being strong enough for FM radio play. Deep Purple didn't progress in the songwriting department and line-up changes didn't help. Machine Head was the closest the Gillan/Glover or any other version of the band ever came to making a classic studio album. Zeppelin on the other hand has several albums that can be considered rock classics.
Can a layman chime in?
Around 1972, my listening veered off completely into jazz, blues and soul, and all '70s rock passed me by. After Duane Allman died, I threw in the towel.
So I think of Led Zep as the #1 hard rock band the same way Yes is the #1 progressive rock band. ("Name one.")
I did see Zeppelin at Madison Square Garden in September 1970, and I thought they were terrible-- sloppy, bombastic, self-indulgent.
I played in a band with a drummer who thought Ian Paice was great, so I have respect for him. But the only Deep Purple I've ever heard is "Hush" (I bought the 45 when it was released) and "Smoke on the Water", of course, thanks to 14-year-olds in guitar stores everywhere.
As far as Bonham, I prefer the jazz players of the era -- Baker, Mitchell and Densmore -- and the unique Moon. But Bonham was essential to Zep, no doubt.
Just my opinions...
Around 1972, my listening veered off completely into jazz, blues and soul, and all '70s rock passed me by. After Duane Allman died, I threw in the towel.
So I think of Led Zep as the #1 hard rock band the same way Yes is the #1 progressive rock band. ("Name one.")
I did see Zeppelin at Madison Square Garden in September 1970, and I thought they were terrible-- sloppy, bombastic, self-indulgent.
I played in a band with a drummer who thought Ian Paice was great, so I have respect for him. But the only Deep Purple I've ever heard is "Hush" (I bought the 45 when it was released) and "Smoke on the Water", of course, thanks to 14-year-olds in guitar stores everywhere.
As far as Bonham, I prefer the jazz players of the era -- Baker, Mitchell and Densmore -- and the unique Moon. But Bonham was essential to Zep, no doubt.
Just my opinions...
My point is that it’s all selective. Eyewitness trumps all. It’s absolutely true that Zep had bad nights. I saw a couple. But Deep was an automatron unit by comparison. If that’s your metric you win.
But if one were a fan of absolute precision there were always prog rock outfits like Yes and King Crimson.
I saw part of that tour as well, but the third band was was J. Geils, who, as they say, kicked ass. “Give It To Me” had been a hit at the time, so they were riding high on that. DP put on a great show, and while “Burn” had been a hot tune, with the change to Coverdale and Hughes there was this vibe that the band’s moment had passed, considering how huge MIJ had been just a year or two previous(WDWTWA was a bit underwhelming). As far as Elf was concerned, good workman type band, kinda bluesy, kinda boogie, with a bit of operatic proto-power ballad, but no big whoop. Dio’s voice was the best thing about them…
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To an earlier point, the J. Geils Band were tighter than Zep ever was. But that observation completely misses the point of what made Led Zeppelin great. They were dynamic in more ways than one.
Those bands were aiming for two different things. Led Zep was more versatile, and also had the "arena cartoon gods" bit sewn up.
But I wore out Geils' second album and learned how to play largely by playing along with Danny Klein, and I don't think I've ever played a Zeppelin album all the way through.
It's just a matter of taste... Back then, if it didn't swing, or wasn't the blues, it was mere pop music to me.
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there were a lot of “el” bands weren’t there?? elp, elo, elf, there was probably a few other variations in there too.
I think Herrick would really benefit from some 3M Worktunes Connect headphones.I'll check it out after work. 12-hour shift
Not super hifi, but I doubt I’ll ever work without them again.
His production, on pre-1975 Purple/Sabbath albums, doesn’t really sound good.
Those songs are great. Performances are good. But the quality of the recordings is pretty poor by modern standards.
That all being said, it’s possible he was dealing with limitations due to budget, and poor equipment quality. Since his later albums tend to sound much crisper/cleaner.
Impossible really to compare, both are different styles of music. Both perform as well as the other, both could cross over to the other style should the mood take them. So, yes, one is a s good as the other.
D
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If you listen to the album Fireball, half of it sounds like it was recorded in professional studios and half like it was done with a mono cassette recorder in someone's shed. In fact, some of that album was recorded in a country house not far from where I am right now, in an era where mobile recording equipment was not exactly state of the art.
