Fallen Angel: The Untold Story of Jimmy Page and Led Zeppelin [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Like picking a scab, I forced myself to finish this book because I have been a Led Zeppelin fan since 1975. I found the book to be simplistic, overlong, entirely too autobiographical, and to suffer from a serious lack of editing - much like other vanity published works from evangelical Christian literalists. Fallen Angel is repetitive, loaded with constant unfulfilled promises of the shocking "proof" to come, full of tedious personal anecdotes about the author's rather mundane pre-conversion drug use, and obviously suffers from Friend's inability to distinguish fact from fantasy. This is a book to scare the parents or anyone ignorant of the areas Friend covers - But Friend is clearly no expert on any subject he addresses. His understanding of Crowley is the typical reactionary response that Crowley himself actively sought to produce in Christian literalists - Friend doesn't understand ritual magick, what it is or what it's really for, and fails to understand that Crowley said things to scare and offend people just like Friend. In truth, Crowley worshipped no person or thing except himself. Friend also displays a complete ignorance of traditional blues idioms - Zeppelin didn't invent this stuff or get it from an evil British mystic - it came from very early black american folklore. Zeppelin's very liberal lyrical borrowings from Howlin Wolf, Willie Dixon and Robert Johnson is ignored. Blues idioms are instead attributed to coded Crowleyisms designed to instill a love of Satan in the unsuspecting listener. Friend also fails to note the heavy influence of Tolkein and Celtic mythology on Zeppelin's lyrics. Battle of Evermore is not about Armageddon, it's about the Lord of the Rings and Welsh history. In order to make his "thesis" work, Friend forces Zeppelin lyrics to mean what he wants them to mean through selective paraphrases which in some cases are obviously taken out of context (coveniently, he claims he was legally unable to print any actual quotes from Zep songs). He repeatedly denies factual statements made by others where they contradict his conclusions - for instance, he refuses to believe that "Black Dog" was named for a dog concluding that nobody would let a dog wander around in a studio - he apparently forgets the use of country cottages and the Stones' Mobile studio to record much of Zep III and IV. Friend also relies on a ludicrous belief that Peter Grant was a satanist but offers absolutely no support for this key contention. He also engages in his own amateurish interpretations of Hebrew and occult symbolism (disagreeing with experts far more studied than himself) and offers such examples of evident satanism as the fact that the Page/Plant band all wore black at their gigs. All in all, the book suffers from the same sort of force fitting approach that spawned the "Paul is Dead" phenomenon. If you truly look hard enough, you can see and hear all sorts of nutty things and then the patterns start to form....Neither are Friend's arguments all that new or novel - the same sort of sensationalistic "Occult Curse on Zeppelin" nonsense was hugely popular in the late 70's - whole magazines set out to prove that selling your soul to the Devil was the only way a band could have gotten so big and that death and destruction was the ultimate price. Yes, Jimmy Page was interested in the occult, but so were a lot of people in the 70's. There really is no basis for his conclusion that Page, Plant and Peter Grant tried to use the band to convert all the world's children to devil worshippers. People who want to believe such a nutty claim will love this book. Anyone who knows anything about the subjects covered in the book will be sorely disappointed. And, unfortunately, the book does not stand up well as entertainment due to the flaws in style, repetitiveness and length.

I fondly remember when Led Zeppelin was releasing and touring behind albums. I've been a big fan of the 70's rock scene, and have been curious about the links between many of the hard rock acts of the time and the occult. More than other bands, Led Zeppelin was personified by its own power and mystique, and much of that comes from the vision and will of its founder and guitarist, Jimmy Page.

The premise of this book could have made it a huge hit, if true investigative journalism were applied to "uncovering" the mysteries of Led Zeppelin and occult influences upon its music. Again, while being too young to experience Led Zeppelin in its prime, time has only made the myths surrounding this band grow.

This book, however, is a sophmoric attempt by a fan who has become a born-again Christian to write a magnum opus exposing the band as Satan-worshippers. At 600+ pages, I can only recommend it to people like me who would read it to find occasionally interesting tidbits of information to mull over, but there is really no new material uncovered here, just a rehashing of quotes and facts from magazines and books that have already been written about the band. If anything, this book points the way towards other useful sources for information to explain the imagery used by Led Zeppelin in their songs. The author admits to being a huge Led Zeppelin fan in his youth, and his fascination with Page led the author to his own exploration of the occult. The author also admits to attending a Led Zeppelin concert, and while tripping on acid, seeing 6-6-6's flying at him from Jimmy Page onstage, and feeling the band trying to lead him to sell his soul to Satan. So be prepared to fasten your seatbelt on this roller-coaster ride of hyperbole, unsupported claims, and inconguous conclusions made by the author.

The author traces EVERY occult reference in Led Zeppelin songs to Satanism, including much of the imagery in Robert Plant's lyrics that are almost universally accepted as having come from the Lord of the Rings trilogy (a fictional story). If true Satanism is convoluted and confusing, so is this author's strange viewpoint. The author goes to great lengths to propose a long-winded argument that the song "Battle of Evermore" is Satanic (a Lotr-inspired song), while only briefly glossing over songs like "Houses of the Holy," which includes the following lyric "Are you dizzy when you're stoned?/Let the music be your master/Can you hear the Master's call?/Satan and Man (the last line "Satan and Man" is hard to make out the way its sung, unless you listen closely).

Buy this book only if you're willing to sift through 600+ pages of sophmoric writing that occasionally stumbles upon points of some merit, and references books on the occult that could help in further exploration of Led Zeppelin's music, lyrics, and imagery. While someone like Ozzy Osbourne used occult imagery in a vaudville-like fashion to draw attention and notoriety to their act, there certainly appears to be enough evidence to suggest Jimmy Page was truly influenced by his interest in the occult, and not just using it to create interest in the band. There is a deeper story behind Page's interests in the occult as an alternative road to knowledge and sprituality, and the effect it had on Led Zeppelin and its music that could make a great story one day if it were explored and developed in a meaningful way. Unfortunately, anything that does not fall within the author's definition of orthodox Christianity is considered Satanic by him in this book, and therefore "evil," and limits the further exploration of what Page was referencing or trying to create (conjure?) through Led Zeppelin's music.

Usually I would not write a review for any book, but, I felt compelled after wasting my precious time reading this crap. This so called book is the worst collection of words I have ever had the misfortune of reading in my life! The author sounds like he has been stuck under a "religous" rock all his life and has to put his "brand" on everything about the greatest rock band ever. Grasping at straws in the dark, Mr. Friend tries to explain the reasons behind all the lyrics in Led Zeppelin's cataloge, but , instead, he makes a complete idiot of himself by taking a "holy-roller" high road in explaining the reasons of his beliefs. No doubt, he has done his research on Alister Crowley, but, some of the ideas he presents are completely assanine. For example: all of Zeppelin"s lyrics were written not by members of the band, but, by Satan himself. Or that the band wants to convert all their fans to Satanism, please. You would be better off by taking the money your going to spend on this book and flush it down the toilet. Thomas Friend should stop writing books and write a written apology to the band, or better yet, go crawl back under the rock from which he came. My opnion is based on the 102 pages out of 632 that I have read of this so-called book. Please be warned, avoid this piece of trash like the plague. Any serious fan of Led Zeppelin will feel the exact same way about this abomination. Pure blasphemy.