Here’s another life lesson, courtesy of Frank’s interviewees.
(If you’re starting to think you might like to read all the details in these stories, check out our website www.learn-about-led.com to find out more about Frank’s book on the impact Led Zeppelin had on people and rock music history).
Craig M. is an ethnomusicologist and professor at Montreal’s Concordia University. His take on Led Zeppelin being among the first of the “Post-Modernist” bands just blew us away. But before he got into that discussion with Frank, he had a quick history lesson from the world of country music.
It’s all about authenticity.
Professor M. has a favourite video clip he always shows his students. It’s of country singer Ernest Tubb.
Tubb performs his hit, I’m Walkin’ The Floor Over You, with a big goofy smile on his face. So what? Well, the song is about total abject misery! Why is he grinning like an idiot?
Prof M. tells us it’s because he’s an entertainer. That’s how it was done in his time (up to the mid 1940s). Later that decade, Hank Williams would start singing his songs like he felt and meant them. There was real pain in his eyes and body language. And people responded.
As Prof M. points out, the original bluesmen weren’t entertainers. They sang to forget their problems and to take control of their lives in the only area they could – their fantasies. It doesn’t get more authentic and true than that.
These days, even so-called “reality” shows are totally bogus. And everyone knows it. Audiences right now are outraged that Britney is lip-synching in “live” performance.
Another of Frank’s interviewees is a guy who wasn’t even born when Zeppelin disbanded. He told Frank that the reason Led Zeppelin’s music is still so popular with his generation is that it’s so REAL. Not overly packaged or slickly produced. There’s an energy even on their earliest albums that simply cannot be faked.
We’d all do well to take a page from Hank Williams’ songbook. Drop the BS and artifice. Sing it, play it, DO it – whatever IT is – like we mean it.
Led Zeppelin did.
I’ve never seen this song title mentioned before. I wonder if Robert Plant was aware of it when he added the lyrics “I’m walking the floor over you” to “Walter’s Walk,” which one could argue is another song about abject misery (but which nobody could argue is a rip-off in any way).