At War With the Mystics: Led Zep vs. "Rolling Stone"

In 1969, a twenty-one-year-old John Mendelsohn mailed Rolling Stone a review of Led Zeppelin's debut he'd written for his college paper. It was a scathing pan, and much to his surprise, Rolling Stone printed it.

That was the start of the magazine's combative relationship with Zeppelin, which didn't get any better when Rolling Stone invited Mendelsohn to review the band's second album. ("Hey, man, I take it all back!" it began, dripping with sarcasm. "This is one fucking heavyweight of an album! OK—I'll concede that until you've listened to the album eight hundred times, as I have, it seems as if it's just one especially heavy song extended over the space of two whole sides.") The bad vibes became legendary—as a character in Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous puts it, "It's Rolling Stone . . . the magazine that trashed Eric Clapton, broke up Cream, ripped Led Zeppelin!"

Lester Bangs gave a mixed review to Zeppelin III, and future Patti Smith Group guitarist Lenny Kaye raved about Zeppelin IV in 1971. But the damage was done. When Crowe was assigned a Led Zeppelin cover story in 1975, the band declined. "They had an idea that a cover, given their success, would be better for the magazine than them," Crowe says today. "I hatched a plan to stay on the '75 tour until they decided to give the RS piece a chance. I talked to Jimmy Page on their airplane, after a show one night, when he said, 'What the hell, Joe Walsh said I should trust you.' He posed for the cover holding an armful of black roses. That was his statement to Rolling Stone. The magazine chose a live shot in the end."

Crowe says that Zeppelin wore their negative press like a badge of honor. "They didn't need critics. They knew their music was too vital to stay ignored for too long."

As for Mendelsohn, his distate for Zeppelin endures, and he too wears it like a badge of honor.

"I discovered YouTube in the last months and I've been watching a bunch of videos by old bands," he says. "I was relieved to discover that I felt the exact same way about them I did when I was twenty-one. I like melody, wit, vocal harmony and expressiveness, all of which are lacking from Led Zeppelin. It's all just showing off."

More: Check out classic Led Zeppelin album reviews, articles, photos and more.