George Harrison and Mick Jagger were members of two of the biggest bands in the world when Led Zeppelin broke onto the scene. They would go on to achieve similar success as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. At first, though, Harrison and Jagger couldn’t see what was so great about Led Zeppelin. A producer tried to play the band’s first album for Harrison and Jagger, but neither showed any interest.
George Harrison and Mick Jagger didn’t care for Led Zeppelin’s work
Led Zeppelin’s first album came out in 1969. They worked with producer Glyn Johns, who had previously worked on albums for The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. He found the young band’s sound thrilling.
“I don’t think I’ve come down yet from the staggering buzz I got from being in the room; it was unbelievably inspiring and incredibly easy to record,” Johns told Music Radar in 2014. “They were well rehearsed and masters at what they did, which is why it took only nine days, including mixing.”
Johns was so excited that he wanted to show others the Led Zeppelin record. As he was working with The Rolling Stones at the time, he brought it to them first.
“We were putting the Stones’ Rock And Roll Circus together around the same time, and I took an acetate of the album into a production meeting,” he said. “I told them ‘This is going to be huge,’ but Mick Jagger wasn’t interested in hearing it…”
Johns also showed Harrison, but the Beatle took little interest in the album.
“So I dragged George Harrison into Olympic to listen to it on the way back from a Beatles session,” he said. “He didn’t get it, strangely.”
The musicians’ lukewarm reactions didn’t dampen Johns’ enthusiasm, though.
“I still think that album is their best. It shook everything from the roots,” he said. “But they were an example of a band that didn’t need much input from me, and aside from recording them I kept my jaw on the floor throughout those sessions, just floored by their natural talents.”
Both George Harrison and Mick Jagger warmed to the band
By the early 1970s, Led Zeppelin was massively famous and could count both Harrison and Jagger as fans. Harrison was friendly enough with the band that he attended drummer John Bonham’s birthday party and affectionately threw cake at him. He also attended one of the band’s concerts in Los Angeles. Afterward, he met them backstage, impressed with their endurance.
“F*** me! With the Beatles we were on for 25 minutes and could get off in 15!” he told the band after their three-hour show (via Rolling Stone).
Jagger grew similarly impressed with the band’s shows.
“I remember watching their concerts live in New York and everything,” he said on The Zoe Ball Breakfast Show. “And it was great, thunderous, wonderful racket. Brilliant.”
The Beatle influenced a Led Zeppelin song
As Harrison grew closer to the members of Led Zeppelin, he felt comfortable critiquing the band to their faces. He said his primary problem with the band was that they didn’t write ballads.
“George was talking to Bonzo one evening and said, ‘The problem with you guys is that you never do ballads,’” Jimmy Page told biographer Brad Tolinski. “I said, ‘I’ll give him a ballad,’ and I wrote ‘Rain Song,’ which appears on Houses of the Holy. In fact, you’ll notice I even quote ‘Something’ in the song’s first two chords.”
