[!--QuoteBegin-national acrobat+Jul 29 2005, 01:56 PM--][div class=\'quotetop\']QUOTE(national acrobat @ Jul 29 2005, 01:56 PM)[/div][div class=\'quotemain\'][!--QuoteEBegin--]After all, [Led Zeppelin] were in a slow decline when John Bonham died, so had they reached 13 studio albums, they might not have maintaned such a high quality of music.
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While I see where you're coming from, I'm inclined to disagree. Keep in mind that this is both just my personal opinion and mere speculation, but I think Zeppelin were in a transitional state. As of Physical Graffiti, they had mastered the "epic heavy blues" thing and were ready for something different. I agree the last couple Zep records aren't as good as the first 6, but I think those guys had sufficient talent to work their way out of that slump.
My evidence, meager as it is, for thinking they were in transition:
Increased reliance on keyboards, such as "Carouselambra" and "All My Love"
More innovative song structures in their blues-rock numbers, e.g. "Nobody's Fault But Mine"
A more interesting question is: how many of Zep's fans would have stuck with them if they had continued to change their style? There were (and still are) millions of casual fans who only wanted to hear clones of "Black Dog". I fear that Zep was on their way to the fate later suffered by Metallica; that is, a great portion of the original fan base turning away because they didn't like the newer music as much.
This suggests to me two criteria for declaring a band to be among the greatest:
1. The band should exhibit obvious artistic growth over the course of their entire career. Zeppelin, Maiden and the Beatles fit this criteria, along with many others. An example of a band that doesn't is AC/DC. They started out well, but they've been trying to replicate
Back In Black since 1980 and have stalled artistically.
2. The band's music should be consistently good enough that stylistic changes don't alienate half their fans. Of couse some fans will always get left behind because they can't handle change, but retaining the majority of the fan base is a good standard to set. Again, Zep, Maiden and the Beatles are bands that fit this category. Metallica is the prime example of band that fails in this regard. Even for fans like me who thought
Load and
ReLoad were at least acceptable,
St. Anger was the last straw that firmly put Metallica on the B-list of "once great, now a has-been".
The bottom line is we'll never know what might have become of Zep if Bonham had lived: eventual progression to a higher artistic plane, or a slow slide into irrelevancy. Maybe I prefer the first option simply because Zep is my #2 favorite band (#1 is Maiden, of course) and I don't want to imagine my heroes turning into zeroes.
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