The Led Zeppelin Principles of Innovation

The recent Zeppelin reunion and a book on innovation (Weird Ideas That Work by Robert I. Sutton) I have been reading have given me the opportunity to reflect on the particularly innovative qualities of the band.

Whether you think Zeppelin rocked or sucked, there is no denying the innovative success of the band. No, they didn’t innovate the way jazz musicians innovate, but they were probably the most disruptive force to hit popular music in the roughly 25 years between the age of Elvis and the era or The Sugar Hill Gang and The Sex Pistols. Led Zeppelin was not only hugely commercially successful, but they created an entirely new category of music that to this day bears their mark clearly. How did they do it? Here are some lessons I think we can learn from Zeppelin about innovation:

1. Be proud of other people’s rejection.

The story goes that the name “Led Zeppelin” came from an insult thrown at Jimmy Page: that his new band would go over like a “lead balloon”. Who names their band “Led Zeppelin” (in 1968)? Who names a company “Google” or “Yahoo!”? If people think your idea is going to fail, great. That’s less competition for you. If you are doing something innovative, don’t call it something traditional to try to make it palatable to the main stream, put your differences front and center.

2. If you are doing something that seems ridiculous and makes you uncomfortable, then you might be doing something right.

Jimmy Page actually wanted Rod Stewart for the singer in his new band, but Jeff Beck got him instead. The legend is that Robert Plant’s over the top vocal and stage persona bothered Page so much at the beginning that he was ready to fire him after their first tour. What 26 year old seasoned musician wants to be on stage with an 18 year preening hippy doing a bizarre James Brown impersonation? In the end though, it is the un-self-conscious audacity of Zeppelin that made it so different from the myriad of other British bands imitating black American blues.

3. Forget about tradition and following the proper path.

Led Zeppelin basically hacked traditional blues songs and called them their own. While this practice has many ethical issues, there is a lot to be admired in their lack of timidity in appropriating what they liked, and they weren’t overly concerned with following the established traditions of appropriation (i.e. performing traditionals as “traditionals”).

Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, and Eric Clapton all came out of the Yardbirds, a British blues/garage rock band. Beck and Clapton continued on the trajectories set in the Yardbirds, refining traditional blues motifs and conservatively synthesizing them with rock. Page violated those traditions by stealing riffs and putting them in non-traditional contexts. For traditionalists, the original context is sacrosanct. If you are going to play the blues, you have to play it like a bluesman from Mississippi, not like a Viking. So, while Eric Clapton aspires to play “Crossroads” in as close an homage to Robert Johnson as possible (with some incremental changes), Jimmy Page took a Muddy Waters riff and turned into “A Whole Lotta Love”, the first Heavy Metal anthem of all time.

*Disclaimer: everything above on Led Zeppelin was taken from memory, from my many readings of Hammer of the Gods during the 8th grade. All of you devotees out there, please excuse any minor factual inaccuracies.