| Hammer of the Gods | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Stephen Davis |
| Language | English |
| Subject(s) | Biography |
| Genre(s) | Non-fiction |
| Publisher | William Morrow & Co |
| Publication date | 1985 |
| Media type | |
| ISBN | 0688045073 |
| OCLC Number | 11371190 |
| Dewey Decimal | 784.5/4/00922 B 19 |
| LC Classification | ML421.L4 D4 1985 |
Hammer of the Gods is a book written by music journalist Stephen Davis, published in 1985. It is a biography of the English rock band Led Zeppelin. After its release it became a New York Times bestseller, and is probably the best known Led Zeppelin biography in existence.[1] It has been updated several times over the years and has been released under the alternative title Hammer of the Gods: The Led Zeppelin Saga. The title is derived from a line in "Immigrant Song", a track from the band's third album.
Davis traveled with Led Zeppelin for two weeks during the band's 1975 U.S. Tour while he was an editor at Rolling Stone magazine.[2]
The book has been the subject of much criticism. All three surviving members of the band have cast doubts on its accuracy,[3] with one article summarising their collective view of the book as a "catalogue of error and distortion."[4]
Guitarist Jimmy Page has stated:
I think I opened [the book] up in the middle somewhere and started to read it, and I just threw it out the window. I was living by a river then, so it actually found its way to the bottom of the sea.[5]
According to the band's vocalist Robert Plant:
The guy who wrote that book knew nothing about the band. I think he'd hung around us once. He got all his information from a guy who had a heroin problem who happened to be associated with us. The only thing I read was the "After Zeppelin" part, because I was eager to get on with the music and stop living in a dream state.[6]
One of the author's primary sources of information was Richard Cole, the band's tour manager. As Plant explained:
He (Davis) did a lot of investigations with a guy who used to work with Led Zeppelin, Richard Cole, who, over the years, had shown deep frustration at not being in a position to have any authority at all. He was tour manager and he had a problem which could have been easily solved if he'd been given something intelligent to do rather than check the hotels, and I think it embittered him greatly. He became progressively unreliable and, sadly, became a millstone around the neck of the group. These stories would filter out from girls who'd supposedly been in my room when in fact they'd been in his. That sort of atmosphere was being created, and we were quite tired of it. So eventually we relieved him of his position and in the meantime he got paid a lot of money for talking crap. A lot of the time he wasn't completely well. And so his view of things was permanently distorted one way or another.[7]
Cole subsequently published his own biography of the band, entitled Stairway to Heaven: Led Zeppelin Uncensored.
Davis has responded to these criticisms in interviews,[8] maintaining that Hammer of the Gods "was a book that outed members of Led Zeppelin as heroin addicts and as people that brutalized other people."[2]
Entry on Amazon.com http://musicbooksreviews.com/hammer-of-the-gods-the-led-zeppelin-saga