Book description
Stephen Davis's brilliantly-written personal account of criss-crossing
America with Led Zeppelin on their 1975 tour. A warts-and-all snapshot
of the world's biggest hard-rock band at their peak.
As a young rock writer Stephen Davis landed the ultimate commission -
touring America with Led Zeppelin.
This is a personal account by Davis of his journey, which saw him
crossing the country with the band on board the Starship, their famous
Boeing passenger jet, complete with deep shag purple carpet, electric
pianos, girlfriends and star-struck hangers-on.
This is also the story of one of the hardest-living bands in the world
at their peak. For Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and John
Bonham, the most beautiful women in America tear their spangled jackets
from them and riots start outside their gigs.
LZ-75 captures a few perfect months in rock, when Led Zeppelin
epitomised the free-living rock dream, but, like Icarus, their wings
were already beginning to melt. It wouldn't be long before John Bonham
died of a vodka overdose, and punk killed their brand of monumental rock.
With it's up-close-and-personal accounts of band members, managers,
groupies, fans and drug-dealers, there's a lot of Almost Famous about
this book - Led Zep's 1975 tour is in fact the very one on which Cameron
Crowe's film was based.
Stephen Davis was barely twenty in 1975, but now he is recognised as one
of the best rock writers in the world. He is the author of the
mega-selling Hammer of the Gods - a biography of Led Zeppelin. He
recently unearthed his notebooks of the 1975 tour - which he didn't use
for Hammer of the Gods - to write LZ-75.
LZ-75: Across America with Led Zeppelin is a wonderful and unique thing
- a beautifully succinct account of a single moment in rock, when no
lyric was too far-fetched, no drink went undrunk and no expense was
ever, ever spared. It's a moment that will never be repeated. Stephen
Davis is a veteran rock writer and contributor to Rolling Stone and The
New York Times
