Rating: - Well detailed, yet very prejudice...
Keith Shadwick without a doubt has compiled the most detailed account of the bands career, interviews, and quotes; yet his "musical snob elitist" attitude gets in the way of enjoying this book to its full extent. Keith finds a problem with literally every single song the band had ever recorded, even down to the tinest detail, and constantly quips how great other lesser known, or more under appriciated older musicians are when comparing every song to older ones. It is to no Zeppelin fan's suprise that the band had borrowed ideas from other artists, from pop to folk music, but at that time in the music industry it was normal to cover other bands music and it was a time when bands wrote singles and did not worry about full albums like zeppelin did. His personal opinions make you wonder at times if he is even a fan of the band or not, by trying to make the best effort to disguise his disliking of the band in favor of more "pure" musicians who put out more "inspired" music, as he puts it over and over. His information about the tours, attitudes and visions of the band, and facts are wonderful and that is what kept me reading the book, but his obvious musical snobbery (many times simply just his WELL OVERTHOUGHT opinion about things) kept this book from being what it could have been. Rock n' Roll is not about sheer perfection, or always being musically correct, thats where the passion and originality comes from, but to Keith it seems as if he finds a flaw in anything and everything that Zeppelin ever recorded from track listing, to favoring obviously lesser quality b-sides (to make him look intelligent for liking "poor tom" more than "bron-yur-a-stomp"), to saying how out of pitch Robert is, or Page's "uninspired guitar solo", to Jones "overplaying" keyboard and bass lines, to Bonham obviously taking this drum pattern from the following songs. The fact is, the band wrote what they wrote and took in all their influences. You can't name a rock band that has not taken an idea from another group and gone with it, or showing obviuous influence...that is not a fault of musicians by any means.

The book is a fine read for the information, but the author's personal opnions really ruined alot of it.