(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
There seems to be one band that comes along every decade to turn the music world on its head. Even if fans weren’t born when they came out, it’s easy to imagine the excitement from seeing The Beatles for the first time or when Nirvana took over MTV with the release of the video for ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. Although Rick Rubin has been around to see many different eras of rock and roll, he admitted that one band changed how everyone approached the genre.
Before he had even listened to rock music, though, Rubin was already focused on any kind of aggressive music that he could get his hands on. Founding the label Def Jam out of his dorm room at NYU, Rubin was looking to put a spotlight on the music that made people move whenever they heard it, signing acts like Beastie Boys and Run-DMC as some of his first acts.
While the genesis of hip-hop involved a lot of unique beat switches throughout every song, the art of sampling became much more prominent when combing through different rock and roll songs. Although the backing tracks of songs like James Brown’s ‘Funky Drummer’ would become a foundational part of hip-hop’s evolution, the grooves on Led Zeppelin records were too sticky to ignore.
Across the first handful of early rap tracks, it’s easy to spot Zeppelin lifts left and right, with the Beastie Boys featuring the drum break to ‘When the Levee Breaks’ as the beating heart of their song ‘Rhymin and Stealin’. When looking at how Zeppelin interacted with each other onstage, though, it’s easy to see how it would lend itself to a hip-hop beat.
Adopting the grooves of old blues records, the interplay between Jimmy Page and John Bonham was always solid as a rock. While Page was known for playing slightly ahead of the beat, ‘Bonzo’ always prided himself on being behind the beat, making for a swampy groove whenever they locked in on a riff.
When talking about Zeppelin’s influence on him, Rubin admitted that Zeppelin drastically altered the course of rock music. Through some of their swampy material, the band could cross different genre boundaries without compromising their bluesy identity.
Singling out the song ‘No Quarter’ as one of his favourite Zeppelin tracks, Rubin admitted that the band was responsible for pushing the genre forward, telling Rolling Stone, “It takes such confidence to be able to get really quiet and loose for such a long time. Zeppelin completely changed how we look at what popular music can be”.
Outside of being a foundational sample in hip-hop, Zeppelin would indirectly impact every style of heavy music that would come later. Without even knowing it, bands that followed in Zeppelin’s footsteps would become pioneers in their own right, being associated with everything from blues rock to hard rock to the start of heavy metal. Even though Zeppelin may have only been around for a decade, their legacy as trailblazers of popular music is still being felt today.
