Led Zeppelin was one of the most successful bands of the 1970s, but this didn’t do much to impress Eric Clapton. While Clapton believed that Led Zeppelin’s music was a natural continuation of what he’d done in Cream, he didn’t like the way they were carrying on his legacy. He shared why he found certain songs tough to listen to.
Eric Clapton struggled to enjoy some of Led Zeppelin’s music
In 1966, Clapton formed Cream, a heavy blues band that influenced heavy metal for years to come. He viewed Led Zeppelin as a continuation of their legacy, but this didn’t mean he was a fan of the band.
“There was a band called Blue Cheer, who I think were probably the originators of heavy metal because they didn’t really have traditional roots in the blues,” Clapton told Uncut in 2012. “They didn’t have a mission. It was just about being loud. Cream were very loud, too, and we got caught up in having huge banks of Marshall amps just for the hell of it. But we had a really strong foundation in blues and jazz. Led Zeppelin took up our legacy. But then they took it somewhere else that I didn’t really have a great deal of admiration for.”
Clapton believed the band was being loud for the sake of being loud. He didn’t dislike all of their music, but he wouldn’t consider himself a fan by any stretch.
“I don’t know about them,” Clapton said, per the book Led Zeppelin: The Definitive Biography by Ritchie Yorke. “I’ve heard their records and I saw them play in Milwaukee — we were on the same bill. They were very loud — I thought it was unnecessarily loud. I liked some of it, I really did like some of it. But a lot of it was just too much. They over-emphasized whatever point they were making, I thought.”
Eric Clapton’s bandmate Ginger Baker took a stronger stance against Led Zeppelin
Clapton’s Cream bandmate Ginger Baker was a bit harsher in his dislike of Led Zeppelin.
“Jimmy’s [Page] a good player,” Baker told Forbes. “I don’t think Led Zeppelin filled the void that Cream left, but they made a lot of money. I probably like about 5% of what they did – a couple of things were really cool. What I don’t like is the heavy bish-bash, jing-bap, jing-bash bulls***.”
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Baker took particular issue with Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham, likely because they played the same instrument.
“Years ago, John said, ‘There are two drummers in rock and roll, Ginger Baker and me.’ There’s no way John was anywhere near what I am. He wasn’t a musician. A lot of people don’t realize I studied,” he said, adding, “I can write music. I used to write big band parts in 1960, ’61. I felt that if I was a drummer, I needed to learn to read drum music.”
Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton had a falling out
Years before Clapton insulted Led Zeppelin, he was friendly with Page.
“Eric and I became very close, I think,” he said. “We got on very well and we used to go out and have dinner. We talked about a variety of subjects — education, art school [which Clapton had also attended], music, films, books. It wasn’t just narrow conversation.”
Eventually, though, they had a falling out. Page produced for Clapton, and they had jam sessions together. When Clapton left Immediate Records, the company demanded that Page give them the recordings of their jam sessions. While Page didn’t want to hand them over, he wasn’t sure what else he could do, as Immediate Records owned the recordings. They released them as part of a blues anthology. This effectively ended Clapton and Page’s friendship.
“I don’t know if Eric got any royalties from it,” Page said. “He never knew what had really happened because it was released so long afterwards. Anyway he was in his heyday with John Mayall. I never heard anything from him about it.”
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