It’s tricky, divvying up the credit afforded to an entire band. Bruce Springsteen famously got his nickname as The Boss because he would take it upon himself to dish out the pay packets after a show or tour; however, when looking at the album and single sales, things can get a little bit trickier. The kind of royalties most of us dreamed of when setting our sights on rock and roll stardom is only handed out to the song’s credited writers, which means there is often a clamour for certain members of the band to put their names to the odd song here and there. Led Zeppelin suffered a similar fate.
Like The Beatles before them, Led Zeppelin were blessed with musical talent. But while the Fab Four had a singular songwriting partnership at the foundation of the journey in john Lennon and Paul McCartney, Led Zeppelin were buoyed by four equally impressive musicians. Sure, George Harrison would pen some of the band’s better songs, and Ringo Starr’s contribution to the band’s numbers is undoubted; there was a marked difference in musical talent between the bands.
As such, while Jimmy Page had already had his hand in some chart-topping hits via his work as a session musician before finding fame with The Yardbirds, and Robert Plant had equally enjoyed some of the spotlights, the band were a tight music-making unit. Compounded by the immense talent of John Bonham on drums and John Paul Jones’ unique vision for arrangements, Led Zeppelin were always set up as a highly functioning machine. However, like many bands before them, only Jimmy Page and Robert Plant received the majority of the songwriting credits.
In fact, there are only eight songs, discounting those adapted from old blues numbers, in which all four members of the band were credited as songwriters. Out of over 100 tunes they released, that is a remarkably small number. Of course, using the whole band as collateral when adapting songs from Willie Dixon and Robert Johnson was a shrewd and possibly litigiously minded move, but the group rarely held credits as a unit.
Of course, the reality is, that all four members of the band, with their wild talents in hand, were always involved in the final production and preening of every song. As John Paul jones reflected in the 1980s when discussing the increase of credit on In Through the Out Door: “I was always involved with that stuff on all the albums, but I got more credits on that album because Page was less involved with it. Basically, I was at rehearsals earlier, and Robert and I more or less wrote that album together.
“In all honesty, I’d say that I probably should have paid much more attention to the writing credits in the earlier days of Zeppelin,” Jones continued. “In those days, I’d just say, ‘Well, I wrote that, but it’s part of the arrangement,’ or something like that, and I’d just let it go. Not realising at the time that that part of the arrangement had more to do with the writing than just arranging something. I always thought that John Bonham’s contribution was always much more than he ever received credit for as well. In fact, I know it was.”
Looking through some of the songs credited to all four members, there is a case that some of their best work was completed as a songwriting quartet. For example, the belting ‘Communication Breakdown’ is one of the band’s hardest rocking anthems. ‘Good Times Bad Times’ from the same debut album is another cherishable moment. While ‘The ocean’ shows the band’s softer side, ‘Heartbreaker’ may literally be one of the band’s finest efforts.
Jones summed up the band and the lunacy of songwriting credits by noting: “Zeppelin was really a partnership between four people, and sometimes when you see songs with ‘Page-Plant’ on everything, it makes it seem like it was a ‘Lennon-McCartney’ situation where they wrote everything and John and I just kind of learned the songs that Jimmy and Robert taught to us [laughs]. That’s so far from the truth, it’s ridiculous.”
The only Led Zeppelin songs credited to all four members:
‘Communication Breakdown’ – Led Zeppelin (1969)
1. ‘Darlene’ – Coda (1982)
2. ‘Good Times Bad Times’ – Led Zeppelin (1969)
3. ‘Heartbreaker’ – Led Zeppelin II (1969)
4. ‘In My Time of Dying’ – Physical Graffiti (1975)
5. ‘The Ocean’ – House of the Holy (1973)
6. ‘Rock and Roll’ – Led Zeppelin IV (1971)
7. ‘Royal Orleans’ – Presence (1976)