Fifty or so years ago, Jimmy Page, the founder and guitarist of Led Zeppelin, was asked what he was looking for as he perused photos from which he would choose the band's official portraits. "Power. Mystery. And the hammer of the gods," was the reply.
In the age of the D.J. and ersatz everything, Led Zeppelin remains the quintessential rock-and-roll band, from its musical invention and superlative musicianship to raw power and enthusiastic debauchery. From its 1968 founding, the quartet electrified and psychedeli-fied American blues, soon incorporating English folk, Celtic and Norse mythology, funk, and more to push their sound into strange and mystical territory. The band issued eight studio albums before abruptly ending in tragedy -- a handful of one-off reunions notwithstanding -- when John Bonham, its drummer, died at 32 in 1980.
Led Zeppelin is estimated to have sold somewhere around 300 million records worldwide. Often imitated, never duplicated. Except . . .
"Our thing is to play the music as it should be played, not just to imitate what they did," Steph Paynes, the founder and guitarist of Lez Zeppelin, said last week of her band's inspiration. Ms. Paynes was considering the female quartet's ongoing run of 50th-anniversary concerts, in which they perform Led Zeppelin's "Physical Graffiti" double album in its entirety or its concert at Earls Court in London, regarded as one of its finest. "We've been doing a lot of 'special' shows, as we are prone to do," she said, "but now we have upped the ante."
" 'Physical Graffiti,' of all the Led Zeppelin records, exemplifies everything they did," Ms. Paynes observed. "It covers the gamut, whether harder rock, acoustic, funk -- everything that they experimented with is in that record. And Earls Court is a concert that shows them at their best, in every way. It's got pretty much every great song that everyone wants to hear, plus a few deeper tracks, and a whole acoustic set in the middle. It's challenging and beautiful to play. It's long, a lot of improvisation, and we try to do that as well. We let loose on this stuff."
Lez Zeppelin -- Ms. Paynes, Joan Chew on bass, keyboards, and mandolin, Hillary Blaze on drums, and Dana Athens on vocals -- returns to the Stephen Talkhouse in Amagansett on Saturday at 8 p.m. This will not, however, be the scene of a "Physical Graffiti" or Earls Court recreation, rather "a wild, intense, sensuous, in-your-face, no-holds-barred" show, Ms. Paynes said. "With surprises here and there, and a whole lotta love for one of our favorite audiences and venues over practically 20 years."
"We love the Talkhouse," she said, "because you're so close to the crowd, and we don't play a lot of places like that anymore. We're far away, or in some sort of open-air stage, or a theater," whereas the Talkhouse "is getting back down into the pit! It's the way to experience this kind of music on a raw level."
Officially, this is the band's 21st anniversary, but "it lifted off into outer space" in 2005, said Ms. Paynes, who has seen multiple changes in personnel over the years and is particularly pleased with its present iteration. Ms. Athens, who had been in the band around 10 years ago, "was doing her own blues project" since then, Ms. Paynes said, "touring all over Europe, making records. She's one hell of a blues singer, man. She came back into the saddle and took the bull by the horns -- we were all sort of stunned."
Ms. Chew "is a pure musician through and through," Ms. Paynes said. "She eats and breathes it. You need someone in that John Paul Jones position, where you're covering so much," she said of Led Zeppelin's multi-instrumentalist and arranger. "I feel so blessed to have someone like Joan. And Hillary," who joined in 2023, "has come into her own like wildfire. She's been studying Bonham for two years, like deep, because this is what she wanted. She's like the cheshire cat up there, the happiest person, and she's playing like a demon."
As the band continues to tour throughout the Northeast and beyond, a book documenting its 20-ish years is in the works. It will consist mostly of photos, Ms. Paynes said, along with her prose. "I've had to pore over histories, photos, newspaper articles from so long ago," she said. "Concerts, memorabilia, everything. It's been quite a journey. Some of it has left me in tears, some laughing. It has reminded me of so many of the amazing things that have happened."
Such as the evening in 2013 when Mr. Page himself attended a Lez Zeppelin concert in London, later remarking on the "extraordinary sensuality" with which they played Led Zeppelin's music and the "energy and passion that highlighted their superb musicianship." Or the band's 2008 performance at the Bonnaroo festival in Tennessee, following months of rumors and published reports that Led Zeppelin would reunite to headline the event. "You can't buy publicity like that," Ms. Paynes said. "Then we appeared at the festival with this huge buzz, and everybody waiting to see how like Led Zeppelin we were going to be. We killed it, people went nuts. It was an amazing experience."
As comprised today, the band "has all the elements in place that make it the most authentically Zeppelin," Ms. Paynes said. "All the singers have been great, but Dana's a real blues singer. Robert [Plant] was a blues singer. That clicks into place in a different way than the other incarnations, which are also great. But it feels like, wow, this is organic. I've been doing it for so long, I've been up and down and sideways, every which way, but the energy in this band is absolutely reinvigorating for me. Everybody is thrilled to be in the group. I just love that. When people are excited and want to push it as far as it can go, that's a different kind of energy, an energy I felt way back when I started the band. It's amazing how you can get to that place again."
Tickets for Lez Zeppelin are $70 and will be available at the door.
