Many people believe that Led Zeppelin was one of the most influential rock bands to ever pick up a guitar. Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham founded them in 1968. Their guitar-heavy, blues-infused sound caught on with listeners all over the world.
Of course, radio play was crucial to Led Zeppelin’s ability to reach listeners across the globe. When the band first gained popularity in the 1970s, getting noticed was best achieved through radio play. It became essential that bands have this as a result. Some were even willing to breach the law to have well-known musicians play their songs.
However, Led Zeppelin took a somewhat different tack. The band had a unique sound that made people eager to hear them. So radio stations were eager to play them. Their problem stemmed from the length of their songs. Many of them were considerably longer than five minutes, which radio stations were unwilling to air.
Zeppelin stuck to their position just as radio stations did. The band understood that their ability to create an atmosphere in their songs—a result of masterful musicianship and time—was one of their primary draws.
Because it takes so long for us to arrive, the payoff at the end of “Stairway To Heaven” feels almost like we have climbed there as listeners. The same goes for the face-melting sol0 in “Whole Lotta Love“. It was proficiently accompanied by Robert Plant‘s famous voice and featured a long bridge with a pick dragging across strings. Led Zeppelin wasn’t willing to compromise on the run time. The band, stuck for ideas, came up with a novel one. To make things go right, they had to appear as though they were making mistakes.
The 1969 album of the same name by Led Zeppelin includes the song “How Many More Times.”The clear indications in the way the song’s structure and music develop suggest that several vintage blues tunes influenced it. The band still had the determination to get it on the radio.
The song is 8:28 in length, not the 3:30 listed on the back of the album. Because of this, radio stations were much more likely to play the song because they were led to believe that it was shorter. The song ended up being one of the band’s hits, so much so that they used it to close out many of their gigs.
Radio stations still strictly regulate the duration of a song nowadays. But since music is now digital, it is impossible to misrepresent its length. Therefore, musicians will need to come up with more inventive ways to get their songs played if they want to create an atmosphere akin to that of Led Zeppelin.
