On the commentary with director Michael Lindsay Hogg, he says Zepellin rejected from show because their demo was 'too guitary,' which I agree with. Both the Stones and the Who have more wit and soul than the mindless pounding of Zeppelin, and this special would have lost its charm with them in it.
shareZeppelin is Great but I hate when people try and say they are better that The Beatles or Stones those people must have something wrong with em
RIP
Michael Jackson
Elvis Presley
John Lennon
Jim Morrison
Jimi Hendrix
Kurt Cobain
Probably the main reason why Zeppelin wasn't at the Rolling Stones Rock n Roll Circus was the fact that the group wasn't around long enough. This is December 1968, the band just formed that year, and they did not yet release their first album. Plainly their reputation hadn't been established yet so there was no reason for them to be at this gig.
shareDismissing Led Zeppelin as "mindless pounding" is pretty inaccurate if you actually listen to their catalogue. Sure, they spearheaded hard rock and inspired the birth of heavy metal, but they had a much greater range than some appreciate. In addition to the loud electric rock, they also did a lot of twangy electric blues stuff (think late 60s Muddy Waters), light folksy tunes, and eastern-inspired music. Plus some forays into what almost sounds like reggae and samba-inspired grooves.
Having said that, I don't think they would have been a good fit for this show, particularly since they hadn't released an album yet.
One of the most interesting things about this movie is that it seems to straddle that period when the hopeful, optimistic love-and-peace 1967-1968 aesthetic was just starting to slowly lose itself to harder drugs and to the realization that the negative forces that the generation was railing against WEREN'T simply going to give up, but were going to fight back, and fight back hard. Within eight months came the Manson murders (which suddenly transformed hippies in the public perception from lovable peaceniks to potentially dangerous thugs), the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia, Woodstock's last gasp, and then Altamont.
Tony Iommi's inclusion is thus interesting, an unintentional harbinger of things to come: just over a year later, his band Black Sabbath would release their debut -- a much darker, heavier, more doom-laden sound than had ever been heard before. For similar reasons, Zeppelin wouldn't have fit this either. Goodbye Sixties... hello Seventies.
Revenge is a dish best served cold.
-- Klingon proverb