STAIRWAY TO HELL | The Spiritual and Cultural Costs of Led Zeppelin

This is NOT about backwards messages in vinyl records. It's much worse than that. Rather, when the gods of rock made their deal with the devil, our own souls were written in the fine print.

The following is a very rough draft of a very long chapter that will be part of an upcoming book of mine on occult influences on Western culture (All of them Witches, hopefully in early 2026). I’ll be talking about Led Zeppelin for Catholics this week on Uncanny Catholic and doing a dramatic reading about the band’s occultism for The Ghostlorist podcast. I’ll share those links with you after they are posted. Please be aware that the content ahead contains some graphic lyrics. It couldn’t be helped.

Thanks for reading. I’d appreciate your comments, corrections and input.

God bless you.

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Return of the Gods

The house was quiet, save for the muffled shuffling of boxes and the occasional voice calling from downstairs. Jimmy Page, twelve years old and restless, wandered through the unfamiliar corridors of his family’s new home in Epsom, Surrey. The place smelled of dust and old wood, the air thick with the presence of past lives. It wasn’t haunted, not exactly, but it felt like something had been left behind.

Upstairs, in a small, dimly lit room tucked away at the end of the hall, he found it.

A Spanish guitar.

It sat in the corner, untouched, forgotten—seemingly waiting. No one in his family played. No one had carried it in. And yet, there it was, as if it had always been there, as if it had been expecting him.

Jimmy stepped closer, drawn by something he couldn’t name. The instrument was an old Spanish-style acoustic, its strings loose but intact, its wooden body humming with an energy that made the fine hairs on his arms stand on end. He knelt down, hesitant, then ran his fingers over the fretboard. The wood was warm beneath his touch, almost alive. He picked it up, cradled it, and strummed.

A single chord rang out, clear and resonant, filling the empty room like an invocation.

He felt it then—that first spark, that first taste of something beyond himself. It was more than curiosity. It was a calling.

Years later, after music had become his language, after the blues had swallowed him whole, after power and magic had become indistinguishable from melody, he would feel it again. But this time, the presence would be stronger.

It was 1970, and Jimmy Page was sitting in an old country house with bandmate Robert Plant, a fire flickering in the hearth. A storm rolled in outside, the wind rattling the windows, shadows shifting in the corners. The two musicians had been writing, playing, waiting for something to emerge. And then, without warning, it came.

Robert Plant, in a trance-like state, picked up a pencil and began to write. Words spilled onto the page as if they were being whispered into his ear. He barely remembered thinking them, barely recognized his own hand as it moved.

He pushed the page over to Jimmy. In the flickering light, Page read the words aloud:

"There’s a lady who’s sure all that glitters is gold…"

Later, the two would try to describe how the song—“Stairway to Heaven”--was not composed in the usual way. It was not labored over or refined.

It was received.

Led Zeppelin was never just a band. Their music was an alchemy of sacred and profane, intoxicating and damning. They reached into the abyss and pulled forth something raw, something ancient, something that did not belong to them alone. They were magicians, conjurers of sound, playing with forces they barely understood.

But power always comes with a price. And in the eyes of many, they climbed too high, indulged too deeply, lost themselves in the illusions of their own making. Pride, gluttony, lust, curiosity—the very temptations warned of in scripture—became their currency. And through it all, Jimmy Page remained at the center, the quiet architect of it all, the man who had once found a guitar in an empty room.

For many, Led Zeppelin represents the very pinnacle of rock music—a fusion of musical brilliance, raw energy, and lyrical mysticism. Their influence is undeniable. Since their debut in 1969, they have sold over three hundred million albums worldwide, making them one of the best-selling bands in history. Led Zeppelin IV alone, released in 1971, has moved more than thirty-seven million copies, securing its place as one of the most commercially successful records ever.

Yet, for all their musical innovation, Led Zeppelin’s legacy extends far beyond great guitar solos and stadium anthems. They did not merely play music; they reshaped culture itself, promoting a worldview built on indulgence, power, and rebellion. For Catholics—or anyone concerned about the moral, spiritual, and cultural health of society—Led Zeppelin is more than just a band. Their music and lifestyle helped accelerate the collapse of traditional morality, replacing faith and virtue with hedonism, self and spiritual darkness.

In fact, if we do a short cultural autopsy on our dying collective, we’ll find one particularly malignant tumor: the rock band that helped push Western civilization away from its Christian foundations and into an era of self-worship and indulgence. Pulling back the skin, we’ll find Jimmy Page’s deep involvement in the occult and how it shaped the band’s ethos, as well as the hyper sexualization of music, as Led Zeppelin took the most explicit elements of underground blues and introduced them to millions. We also find the destruction of masculinity and femininity, as the rock-star archetype replaced the Christian models of manhood and womanhood (albeit in some unexpected ways), and we find the loss of reverence, as Led Zeppelin and their peers helped replace church with the concert hall.

Many may dismiss this as alarmist or as just another moral panic, but this critique is grounded in historical reality, secular scholarship, and the evidence of cultural decline that has played out over the past fifty years. It’s not a panic; it’s a postmortem.

As Christians, however, we live in hope of a resurrection.

Jimmy Page: Rock’s Darkest Magician

The Strange Beginnings of Jimmy Page

Jimmy Page’s journey into music—and later into the occult—was almost eerily predestined. Born in 1944 in Heston, Middlesex, he moved with his family to a house in Epsom when he was eight years old. In a corner of that house, he discovered that dusty, abandoned Spanish guitar. No one in his family had ever owned it, and they had no idea how it got there. It was as if the instrument had been waiting for him.

From the moment he picked it up, Page was obsessed. He quickly taught himself to play, developing a precocious talent that led him into London’s booming early rock scene by his teenage years. By the time he was sixteen, he was playing session guitar on pop records, absorbing musical influences that ranged from American blues to British folk. But even as his musical career took off, something darker was calling him.

Meeting the Beast

By the early 1960s, Page had discovered the writings of Aleister Crowley, the infamous English occultist who had declared himself “The Great Beast 666,” and who had founded the religious philosophy of Thelema. Thelema centers on the idea that individuals must discover and follow their True Will. Its core tenet, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Love is the law, love under will," emphasizes personal freedom and spiritual purpose. Crowley claimed to have received The Book of the Law in 1904 through a mystical experience, introducing concepts such as the progression of human consciousness through different spiritual ages, the worship of Egyptian-inspired deities like Nuit, Hadit, and Ra-Hoor-Khuit, and the practice of ceremonial magic. Thelema rejects conventional morality in favor of alignment with one's “higher purpose.”

For Page, the meeting with Crowley’s thought was love at first sight. He said that in finding Crowley, ritual magic and mysticism, he had found “my thing.” And, unlike other rock musicians who dabbled in Eastern mysticism or countercultural rebellion, Page took his interest in the occult very seriously. He began collecting Crowley’s books, magical artifacts, and esoteric grimoires, eventually amassing one of the most extensive private collections of Thelemic material in the world. While Beatniks and hippies—and the Beatles—had studied mysticism and the occult (especially William S. Burroughs), Jimmy Page was living it all, despite claims that he wasn’t really a practicing magician. It’s clear to anyone with eyes to see that Page was fully committed to the occult.

Boleskine House: A Haunted Mansion for a Rock Star

In 1970, with Led Zeppelin rising to global fame, Page took his Crowleyan devotion to another level by purchasing Boleskine House, a remote former hunting lodge on the shores of Scotland’s Loch Ness. This was no ordinary home. Generations earlier, locals claimed, a local wizard had been raising people from the dead in the Boleskine burying ground. A priest had to be summoned to return them to their rest and banish the magician.

Crowley, who some came to call “the other Loch Ness monster,” purchased the house after tiring of his tussles with London occultists, particularly William Yeats, who Crowley believed was trying to curse him. At Boleskine, he intended to perform one of the most dangerous and elaborate of all occult rituals: the Abramelin, a lengthy and dangerous occult ritual designed to summon and control spirits. Crowley never completed the operation, leaving it unfinished—a mistake that, according to his own writings, meant that dark forces remained at Boleskine House, unbound and malevolent. Some local folklore even holds that it was Crowley’s ritual that resurrected the creature known as the Loch Ness Monster—a beast that had been banished to its depths by the missionary Saint Columba centuries earlier.

Page was fully aware of the house’s reputation when he bought it. He openly spoke about his belief in its supernatural presence, admitting in interviews that it had an eerie atmosphere and that he often felt watched. Friends who visited the estate reported bizarre occurrences, from shadowy figures appearing in the hallways to strange noises that had no explanation. Zeppelin’s tour manager, Richard Cole, refused to stay there, claiming that the house radiated a malevolent energy.

Even Page himself spent little time at Boleskine, entrusting it to a friend who later suffered a complete mental breakdown while living there. In 2015, years after Page had sold it, Boleskine House mysteriously burned to the ground, fueling speculation that whatever dark forces resided there had finally consumed it—or that locals had taken matters into their own hands and tried to destroy it.

The Occult in the Stagelights

Page’s Crowleyan obsession did not remain private. He actively brought it into the public sphere. His fascination was reflected in his personal style, stage presence, and the iconography surrounding Led Zeppelin. One of the most striking visual elements of his occult leanings was the black silk dragon suit he often wore during performances in the 1970s. This robe-like outfit featured esoteric symbols, including a red embroidered dragon (symbolizing wisdom, power, and transformation) running down one leg and an astrological sign on the chest. The design was reminiscent of the magical robes worn by occultists in ceremonial rituals, and indeed practicing occultists verified that’s what they were, suggesting Page saw his performances as something more than just music—they were acts of power, ritual, and transformation.

Led Zeppelin’s album artwork, physical records, and packaging contain numerous occult symbols, esoteric references, and cryptic messages that have fueled speculation for decades. While the band never fully explained many of these elements, their presence contributed to Zeppelin’s mystique and deepened the connection between their music and the arcane.

One of the most iconic examples of occult imagery in Zeppelin’s discography is the set of four symbols that represent each band member on their untitled fourth album. Jimmy Page’s sigil, often referred to as "Zoso," Not to be confused with the so-called “Zozo demon” that’s all over the internet these days, the Zoso sigil has been the subject of endless debate, with some believing it to have ties to alchemy or the work of 16th-century occultist Girolamo Cardano. Robert Plant’s feather-in-a-circle symbol comes from the ancient Mu civilization, while John Bonham and John Paul Jones selected interlocking circles with roots in both esoteric and mundane interpretations. The album itself was deliberately left without a title, adding to its aura of mystery.

Houses of the Holy, released in 1973, took its surreal aesthetic from Arthur C. Clarke’s novel Childhood’s End. The book describes humanity’s evolution under the influence of alien overlords, culminating in a mass transformation as children leave behind their physical forms and merge into a higher cosmic intelligence. The novel’s final scenes, where children are drawn toward an unknown force, find a visual echo in the Houses of the Holy cover, designed by Hipgnosis, which depicts glowing, golden-haired children climbing the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland.

I have warned about Childhood’s End in my work, particularly in how it presents the idea of supernatural entities guiding humanity toward an evolutionary leap that erases God. Clarke’s anti-Christian vision, while framed as science fiction, reflects the same deceptive promises found in occult philosophy and spiritualist movements—the idea that external forces, be they aliens or ascended masters, hold the key to enlightenment. The unsettling parallels between this and real-world esoteric teachings should not be ignored, especially given how often these themes surface in pop culture, hidden beneath layers of artistic expression. And particularly how they are surfacing again now, with a vengeance, in the new UFO/AI “Age of Enlightenment.”

Beyond its science fiction inspiration, Houses of the Holy also contained overt esoteric imagery. Inside the gatefold, a veiled figure stands atop a rocky outcrop, holding a lantern aloft. The image mirrors the Hermit card from the Tarot, symbolizing hidden wisdom, initiation, and enlightenment—concepts that Jimmy Page, a known student of the occult, was deeply invested in. This furthered speculation that Zeppelin’s art was more than just provocative imagery, but part of a deeper, ongoing engagement with esoteric traditions.

The band also embedded messages in the runout grooves of their vinyl records. On Led Zeppelin III, the original UK pressing featured the phrase "Do what thou wilt" etched into the vinyl—an unmistakable reference to Aleister Crowley’s Thelemic philosophy. On the other side of the record, the phrase "So mote it be" appears, another direct link to ceremonial magic and Masonic traditions. The phrase is the occultist’s “Amen.” These messages reinforced Page’s known interest in Crowley’s teachings and added another layer of intrigue to the band’s legacy. Some even believe the runout groove messages were an attempt to cast a spell through the records themselves, possibly influences by Page’s meeting with William S. Burroughs, another Crowleyan who believed the electronic could be a channel for occult forces (something I’ve written at length about in reference to the wildly popular field of Electronic Voice Phenomenon or EVP—spirit communication through voice reorders and transmitters).

I won’t dwell on this as I feel it’s not crucial to my message, but this is how the Stairway to Heaven backmasking controversy came to be known. In the early 1980s, Christian fundamentalist groups claimed that the song contained subliminal satanic messages when played in reverse. The specific phrase they focused on was said to be "Here's to my sweet Satan," allegedly hidden in the lyrics of the song’s middle section. While audio engineers and skeptics dismissed this as a case of pareidolia—the brain imposing patterns where none exist—the controversy took on a life of its own. The idea that Zeppelin had encoded secret messages into their music played into the band’s already-established mystique, further cementing their place in rock’s occult mythology.

Whether through deliberate symbolism, hidden inscriptions, or unintentional resonance with occult themes, Led Zeppelin’s visual and lyrical choices left a lasting impression. Their use of esoteric imagery, combined with the influence of works like Childhood’s End, contributed to the broader narrative of rock music as a medium where hidden messages, mysticism, and cultural transformation intersect.

Anger—and Rage.

One of the most legendary associations of Page with the occult was his relationship with Kenneth Anger, an avant-garde filmmaker and occultist who had been a disciple of Crowley’s teachings for years. Anger was infamous for blending satanic imagery with experimental film, most notably in Lucifer Rising, a 1972 short film meant to glorify Lucifer as a misunderstood force of rebellion and enlightenment: a central theme of Theosophy, Freemasonry and other esoteric philosophies.

Page, eager to expand his involvement in the occult beyond mere book collecting, agreed to compose the soundtrack for Anger’s film. He became deeply involved in the filmmaker’s world, spending time at Anger’s residence, which was filled with Crowleyan artifacts, Egyptian relics, and ritualistic paraphernalia. Importantly, Page invited Anger to stay at Boleskine House, and the filmmaker accepted.

The partnership eventually turned sour. Anger accused the drug-addled musician of failing to complete the drug-score, while Page claimed Anger had become increasingly erratic and paranoid. The feud culminated in Anger publicly cursing Page, proclaiming that he would suffer for betraying him.

Not long after, Led Zeppelin’s streak of untouchable success began to unravel, as their music began to seem to lose its tight genius and dissolve into an increasing madness and chaos. Some said it was their addictions, their sexual excesses, their unbridled animalism. Others said it was something else.

The Equinox

But Page was seemingly nonplussed. 1974, he opened The Equinox Booksellers and Publishers on Holland Street in Kensington, London, a bookstore dedicated to the occult, esotericism, and mystical traditions. Named after Aleister Crowley’s occult journal, the shop specialized in rare and out-of-print books on magic, alchemy, astrology, and Thelemic ideology. Page had envisioned the shop as a way to preserve and promote esoteric knowledge, and its shelves were stocked with grimoires, texts on ceremonial magic, and volumes on spiritism, many of which were difficult to find elsewhere. It became a hub for occult enthusiasts, drawing in scholars, mystics, and those curious about the hidden forces of the universe. Page himself rarely worked the counter, but he oversaw the selection of books and occasionally visited, reinforcing his reputation as rock’s most enigmatic occultist.

Beyond selling books, The Equinox also functioned as a small publishing house, reprinting rare Crowleyan texts and other obscure mystical works. Page’s dedication to Thelemic philosophy was so deep that he once owned the original manuscripts of Crowley’s writings, further cementing his connection to the infamous magician. However, by the early 1980s, Page’s priorities had shifted, and the bookstore quietly closed its doors. Despite its relatively short existence, The Equinox left an imprint on the London occult scene, serving as a rare physical space where the arcane knowledge Page revered could be explored. To this day, the bookstore remains part of Led Zeppelin’s mythology, a testament to Page’s unwavering belief in the power of the occult—and his desire to spread its secrets.

Something in the Room

After the Anger curse was reportedly unleashed, something else began to surround the band. Friends and associates began to notice a sort of “presence” around them, with an occasional persona speaking about it publicly: a shadow in the corner, a voice in the ear, or other manifestations of . . . something. One associate said Robert Plant came to visit and, when he left, his house was “haunted” thereafter—with strange noises, the movement of objects and shadows following him in his daily takes. Some took to avoiding the band members, chilled by whatever was happening around them.

But no one was more spooked by Led Zeppelin than a fellow occultist and musician: David Bowie.

Bowie and Page had known each other from early days in the 1960s, when Page had played as a session musician with one of Bowie’s many bands. Discovering a mutual interest in Crowley and the occult, the two became fast friends. But in early 1975, the musicians had a tense encounter at Bowie's Manhattan townhouse. During the meeting, Bowie questioned Page about his esoteric practices, but Page's cryptic responses and unsettling demeanor led Bowie to feel increasingly uneasy. The atmosphere deteriorated further when Page allegedly spilled wine and attempted to deflect the blame onto another guest, prompting Bowie to insist that Page leave, preferably through the penthouse window.

Following this incident, Bowie became convinced that Page, along with a satanic coven, intended to use his bodily fluids in dark rituals, possibly to conceive the Antichrist. To thwart any such attempts, Bowie began storing his urine in a refrigerator, believing this would prevent it from being stolen for nefarious purposes. This behavior was indicative of Bowie's deteriorating mental state during a period marked by heavy cocaine use and deepening obsession with esoteric practices.

The Pact

One of the most enduring legends surrounding Led Zeppelin is their connection to the myth of the Faustian bargain—the idea that musicians sell their souls to the devil in exchange for talent and success. The legend, rooted in blues folklore, is of course most famously associated with Robert Johnson, a major influence on Zeppelin’s sound. The band's flirtation with this theme—along with rumors of backmasked messages in “Stairway to Heaven”—only added to their enigmatic reputation.

According to the Zeppelin mythos, in 1975 Page urged his bandmates—Robert Plant, John Bonham, and John Paul Jones—to take part in a ritual meant to secure Led Zeppelin’s place in rock history and ensure their success. The ritual was never to be spoken of, its purpose steeped in mystery and its consequences far-reaching. Among occultists, such magic is no game; it calls upon ancient forces and demands deep knowledge and caution.

These rites would have been familiar to Aleister Crowley, but there was a crucial problem with Led Zeppelin performing them—as Crowley would have been the first to point out. They must be performed by experienced and sober men. While he was experienced, Crowley himself was rarely sober, and it was this aspect of his character that put him on the outs with his fellow occultists. It was only later that he realized, too late, that they’d been right to disdain his excesses.

At any rate, the Zeppelin ritual was, reportedly, completed, though stories would later swirl that John Paul Jones refused to participate. Not long after, misfortune struck.

Robert Plant and his family suffered a near-fatal car crash while on vacation, leaving him severely injured and forcing the band to delay recording and touring. The following year, while still recovering, Plant contracted a dangerous throat infection, further sidelining him. These misfortunes, combined with Page’s increasing withdrawal into esoteric studies and heroin addiction, fueled rumors that Led Zeppelin had invoked something beyond their control. Some within the occult community whispered that Page’s experiments with Crowleyan magic had gone awry or that the infamous pact ritual allegedly performed by the band had exacted its toll.

The idea of a "curse" surrounding Zeppelin grew stronger as more tragedies struck: in 1977, Plant’s five-year-old son Karac died suddenly of a mysterious stomach virus, devastating the singer. By the time of the In Through the Out Door sessions in 1978-79, Page was heavily addicted, and the band’s cohesion was unraveling. Then, in September 1980, John Bonham was found dead after an all-day drinking binge, choking in his sleep. With his death, Led Zeppelin effectively ended.

Whether one believes in the supernatural or not, the eerie sequence of tragedies that followed the band's rise—especially in the wake of Page’s deepening immersion in the occult—left many wondering if the forces he had sought to harness had instead consumed them. There can be no doubt that musician as a conduit for dark forces continued to inspire rock and metal artists for decades. From Danzig to Jack White, from The Black Keys to Ghost, countless musicians have drawn from the same well of blues mythology and Faustian storytelling that Zeppelin helped popularize in rock.

Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll—The Blueprint for Cultural Decay

A Shift Like No Other

The rise of Led Zeppelin did not just mark a shift in music; it signaled a transformation in values. If the 1960s had been an era of youthful rebellion wrapped in idealistic slogans about peace and love, the 1970s, with Led Zeppelin at its helm, abandoned any pretense of virtue. This was no longer about resisting “the man” or pushing for social justice. Nor was it about exploring the transcendent roads of Eastern mysticism. It was about indulgence, power, and excess for its own sake.

Rock critic Simon Reynolds, in his book Shock and Awe: Glam Rock and Its Legacy, described Led Zeppelin as “the moment when rock stopped being about revolution and became about hedonistic triumphalism.” Unlike the beatniks and hippies who had at least pretended to seek enlightenment, Led Zeppelin made it clear: life was about pleasure, conquest, and domination.

Catholic thinkers have long warned against the dangers of unrestrained sensuality in culture. In The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis argued that a society that abandons self-restraint and embraces pure pleasure will ultimately destroy itself. Pope Pius XII, in his 1957 address on morality in entertainment, warned that when the pursuit of pleasure becomes the guiding principle of art, it ceases to elevate the soul and instead degrades it.

Led Zeppelin embodied this shift. They were not just products of their time—they helped create the world we now live in.

Groupie Culture and the Sexual Revolution’s Dark Side

Sex has always been a part of rock and roll, but Led Zeppelin took it further than any band before them. While Elvis scandalized America with his hips, Zeppelin normalized behavior that, in any other context, would be seen as outright predatory.

Jimmy Page’s relationship with 14-year-old Lori Maddox remains one of the most disturbing examples of rock-star abuse. Maddox was part of the infamous Los Angeles groupie scene, where young girls—many of them underage—were passed around by rock musicians. Page, in his late twenties at the time, had Maddox brought to him under secrecy, aware that his actions were illegal. Her mother gave her approval. According to Maddox herself, Page kept her effectively imprisoned in a hotel room for months to avoid legal trouble, only allowing her out under the watchful eye of bodyguards.

This was not an isolated incident. The band’s road manager, Richard Cole, later admitted in his tell-all book Stairway to Heaven: Led Zeppelin Uncensored that the band’s touring lifestyle involved routinely humiliating and abusing young women. In one infamous story, Cole recounted how the band, along with roadies, engaged in a ritualistic “shark episode” in which a young woman was sexually assaulted with a live shark at the Edgewater Inn in Seattle.

According to Stephen Davis’s unauthorized biography of the band, Hammer of the Gods, the Led Zeppelin’s road manager, Richard Cole claimed to have been fishing from the window of the hotel room, along with John Bonham. They apparently caught several fish, including a small shark. A young groupie was stripped naked and tied to the bed and pieces of the shark forced into her rectum and vagina. Mark Stein, singer with the group Vanilla Fudge—who had played with Led Zeppelin—reportedly filmed the episode. Cole claimed the girl “loved it.” Many have tried to dismiss the event as pure fiction, especially since Cole and others involved were heavily into drugs and alcohol, and Cole was known for embellishing and making up tales.

But in the biography, Stick It, one of the authors, Carmine Appice (drummer for Vanilla Fudge), said he was sitting on the side of the bed while the event was playing out. It was he who had picked up the young groupie the day before, and she’d shown up, he says, at the hotel looking for him. There were many people there to witness what happened: The girl was stripped, tied to bed and whipped with a still-living spiny dogfish shark—also known as a mudshark--and penetrated with it. Appice said he had a video camera and filmed the entire incident—but that the film later disappeared.

Feminist critic Camille Paglia, who has often been critical of puritanical attitudes toward sexuality, still condemned the Zeppelin-era rock-star culture as an example of pure, unchecked male predation masquerading as liberation. She noted that “the rock world sold women a vision of empowerment while in reality turning them into disposable playthings.”

From a Catholic perspective, this culture was not merely immoral—it was a direct attack on the dignity of human beings. Pope John Paul II, in his Theology of the Body, warned that a culture which treats women as objects for pleasure destroys not only women but men as well, reducing relationships to a form of mutual consumption.

Led Zeppelin was not just a band that engaged in excess; they were the poster children for a new standard of sexual depravity.

The Normalization of Drug Culture and Self-Destruction

Occultism and sexual unrestraint were only part of Zeppelin’s blueprint for cultural decay. Drugs were another. Rock and roll had always been associated with substance use, but Zeppelin helped make heroic levels of consumption a virtue. By the mid-‘70s, the band members were completely enslaved to their own excesses.

Jimmy Page, by 1973, was fully addicted to heroin. His addiction was so severe that during Zeppelin’s 1977 U.S. tour, he often appeared skeletal, barely able to stand on stage. At their concert in Oakland that year, he was described by journalist Charles Shaar Murray as looking like “a ghost playing guitar, barely tethered to reality.”

John Bonham, the band’s drummer, was addicted to alcohol. His drinking became legendary, culminating in his tragic death in 1980 after consuming approximately forty shots of vodka in a single sitting. His final hours were spent choking on his own vomit.

Robert Plant and John Paul Jones, though less chemically dependent, fully embraced the culture of indulgence that Zeppelin helped define. The band’s parties became orgiastic displays of self-destruction—women, drugs, and alcohol mixed with a sense of impunity that allowed them to do anything without consequence.

Catholic moral theologians, from St. Augustine to St. Thomas Aquinas, have always warned against the dangers of intemperance. Aquinas, in Summa Theologica, defined gluttony—not only of food but of pleasure—as one of the primary gateways to darker vice.

The secular world, too, has recognized how Zeppelin’s lifestyle helped normalize self-destruction. Christopher Lasch, in The Culture of Narcissism, argues that Zeppelin and their contemporaries created an ideal of manhood that was based on self-indulgence rather than self-control, leading directly to the drug-fueled excess of later generations of musicians.

By the time the 1980s arrived, Zeppelin’s blueprint had been fully absorbed into mainstream culture. MTV, which launched in 1981, took the aesthetic of sex, drugs, and rock & roll and made it the dominant cultural language. The next wave of rock stars—from Mötley Crüe to Guns N’ Roses—modeled their entire personas on Zeppelin’s blueprint of decadence.

As St. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 6:12, “All things are lawful for me, but not all things are beneficial. I will not be mastered by anything.” Led Zeppelin and their peers not only became mastered by vice but turned it into an art form.

From the Blues to W.A.P.: How Zeppelin Made Vulgarity Mainstream

Led Zeppelin didn’t just live decadently—they wrote music that actively celebrated it. Their lyrics, many inspired by or lifted outright from the darkest corners of underground blues, helped transform popular music into something openly pornographic.

From “Whole Lotta Love” to “The Lemon Song,” Zeppelin didn’t just hint at depravity—they made it an anthem. And that legacy continues today.

Before Led Zeppelin, popular music, even in its more rebellious forms, still retained a sense of restraint and structure. Early rock-and-roll was youthful, playful, and suggestive, but it was rarely explicit. Elvis may have scandalized middle America with his hip movements, and The Beatles may have caused panic with their long hair, but their music was still rooted in romantic longing, not raw sexual conquest.

That changed with Led Zeppelin.

More than any other band, they were responsible for taking the most vulgar and sexually aggressive elements of underground blues and delivering them to a massive global audience. Their music was not simply suggestive—it was unfiltered and unapologetic in its glorification of lust and dominance.

By normalizing sexually explicit lyrics in rock music, Zeppelin opened the floodgates for the hypersexualized pop and rap culture we see today. Songs like W.A.P. by Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion—which would have been unthinkable on mainstream radio in 1970—are only possible because Led Zeppelin helped destroy the last cultural barriers to musical depravity.

The Blues and the Sexual Underbelly of American Music

To understand how Led Zeppelin changed music, it is important to understand their musical roots. Zeppelin’s sound was deeply influenced by American blues music, particularly the early hokum blues tradition, which often featured songs filled with thinly veiled sexual metaphors, double entendres, and outright vulgarity.

For decades, these songs were largely confined to small, underground audiences. Blues musicians played them in juke joints and bars, knowing full well that the lyrics would never pass the standards of mainstream radio.

Some of the most infamous examples of early, sexually explicit blues songs include "Shave 'Em Dry" (1935) by Lucille Bogan, which contained lyrics so explicit they were considered obscene even by modern standards:

I got nipples on my titties, big as the end of my thumb,

I got something between my legs that'll make a dead man come.

In "Sixty Minute Man" (1951), Billy Ward and His Dominoes openly boasted about male sexual performance.

There'll be fifteen minutes of kissin’,

Then you'll holler ‘Please don’t stop!’’

In “Let Me Play with Your Poodle" (1942) by Tampa Red, listeners needed little help decoding the lyrics, which urged:

Come on baby, let me play with your poodle,

If you let me play with your poodle,

I'll make him stand up and howl.

Though these songs were played to live audiences, they were largely kept out of mainstream popular culture. They were seen as fringe, lowbrow entertainment akin to risqué Vaudeville numbers--not the kind of music that shaped the broader moral fabric of society.

Led Zeppelin changed that forever.

Zeppelin didn’t just borrow from the blues; they took its most sexually aggressive elements and amplified them for a global audience, creating intoxicating cocktails of raw lyrics and the moans, wails and panting evocative of sexual acts. Their music wasn’t subtly suggestive like Elvis or The Beatles, or even the Stones. It was graphic, unambiguous, and obsessed with sexual dominance.

In 1969, "The Lemon Song" took an old blues lyric from Robert Johnson and Howlin’ Wolf and turned it into one of the most explicit metaphors in rock history:

Squeeze me, babe, 'till the juice runs down my leg
Do, squeeze, squeeze me, baby, until the juice runs down my leg
The way you squeeze my lemon-a
I'm gonna fall right outta bed, 'ed, 'ed, bed, yeah

It was no longer a hint of sexuality—it was a celebration of it. Zeppelin’s version left no doubt about the meaning.

That same year, "Whole Lotta Love" became one of the first rock songs to feature overtly orgasmic moaning in the breakdown, mimicking sexual pleasure.

You need coolin', baby, I'm not foolin’

I’m gonna send you back to schoolin’

A-way, way down inside
I'm gonna give ya my love
I'm gonna give ya every inch of my love

The entire song is a demand for sex, with no romance, no pretense of love—just conquest. The word “love” literally takes the place of “penis.”

In 1975, the band released "Custard Pie,” another song filled with sexual metaphors that barely disguise their meaning

Drop down, baby, let your daddy see.

I chew on a piece of your custard pie.

That same year, in the song, "Sick Again,” the pedophilia of the rock god ideal is on full display:

From the window of a rented limousine
I caught your pretty blue eyes.
One day soon you're gonna' reach sixteen

It’s a blatant lyric about teenaged groupies, written from the perspective of an older rock star using them for pleasure.

The lyrics make no attempt to critique the practice—they glorify it.

Like much of Zeppelin’s music, the song ends with a lyric straight out of a sex act:

Ooh, that's right!
Ooh, yeah, that's right!
Ooh, that's right!
That's right.
That's right.
Oooh, yeah, that's right.
That's right.
Aoaoh, aoaoh, aoaoh, aoaoh, aoaoh...

By normalizing explicit sexual themes in rock, Zeppelin set the stage for the evolution of pop and rap music into something even more depraved.

Music historians and critics have acknowledged this connection. Greil Marcus, rock critic and author of Mystery Train, argued that Zeppelin “took the blues and removed its last traces of humility, turning it into an anthem of conquest.” Camille Paglia noted that Zeppelin’s influence “helped pave the way for the sexual exhibitionism of later rock stars and, eventually, hip-hop artists.” David Hepworth, author of Never a Dull Moment: 1971 – The Year That Rock Exploded, wrote that Zeppelin’s music “helped push the Overton window of acceptability in pop culture, making sexual provocation a standard rather than an exception.”

And those women that Led Zeppelin objectified?

Let’s meet their descendants.

Follow the years down the slippery slope to 2020 , and the release of rap singer Cardi B’s “W.A.P.”:

Yeah, you fucking with some wet ass pussy
Bring a bucket and a mop for this wet ass pussy
Give me everything you got for this wet ass pussy

Here’s a verse from the “clean” version played on US radio:

Beat it up, baby, catch a charge
Extra large and extra hard
Put this cookie right in your face
Swipe your nose like a credit card
Hop on top, I wanna ride
I do a kegel, I'm kinda wild
Look at my mouth, look at my thighs
This water is wet, come take a dive
Tie me up like I'm surprised
Let's roleplay, I'll wear a disguise
I want you to park that big Mack truck right in this little garage
Make me dream, make a stream
Out in public, make a scene
I don't cook, I don't clean
But let me tell you how I got this ring

Two years earlier, Cardi B’s debut studio album, Invasion of Privacy (2018), not only debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 but also earned her the Grammy Award for Best Rap Album, making her the first solo female artist to receive this honor. Wikipedia says the album was lauded for its “powerful and unique” sound, with Variety describing it as "one of the most powerful debuts of this millennium." Additionally, Time magazine named it the best album of 2018.

Here are some of the award-winning lyrics: The track “I Do” proclaims:

Pussy so good, I say my own name during sex.

On the same album, the line

Finger fuckin' money, finger bangin' to the hunnids

was praised by critics and fans as a powerful show of female financial independence. Cardi B went on to become nothing less than a role model, exemplifying the Modernist ideas of female sexual and financial freedom, with excess in both areas the evidence of triumph. Fans and critics call her work a celebration of female sexual and material desire and autonomy. The album received critical acclaim, with Rolling Stone highlighting its "personal and powerful" content.

Another notable track, "Please Me", a collaboration with Bruno Mars released in 2019, features Cardi B rapping:

Your pussy basura, my pussy horchata.

Here, she uses Spanish slang to contrast a lackluster intimate experience ("basura" meaning "trash") with a more desirable one ("horchata," a sweet drink), showcasing her sexual confidence and assertiveness. The song was praised by critics and peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Beyond her Grammy success, Cardi B has amassed a collection of accolades, including six American Music Awards, eight Billboard Music Awards, and fourteen BET Hip Hop Awards. She has also set multiple Guinness World Records, such as being the first female rapper to achieve three Diamond-certified songs by the RIAA: "Bodak Yellow," "I Like It," and "Girls Like You." In 2020, she was honored as Billboard's Woman of the Year, becoming the first female rapper to receive this distinction.

The unbelievable filth, materialism and worship of self and excess in Cardi B’s music is impossible to comprehend, let alone describe. My blog version of this content and my companion YouTube video can’t even talk about it; it’s unacceptable for the platform standards and those of their advertisers.

And our culture cannot get enough of it.

There is no way Cardi B would have happened without Led Zepplin.

In dismantling the last remnants of restraint in rock lyrics, Led Zeppelin helped create a world where mainstream pop stars feel no hesitation in openly celebrating pornography and sexual indulgence. And in objectifying women, they created a future race of females who feel compelled to “take back their power” in the only way they know how: the way it was taken from them—through sex, money and self-indulgent excess.

The Church has always warned that art and media must uplift the soul, not degrade it. Pope Pius XII, in his 1957 address on entertainment, warned that “When culture ceases to inspire virtue and instead promotes vice, it becomes a tool of destruction.”

Saint John Paul II, in his “Letter to Artists,” spoke of how music, when properly ordered, can lead the soul toward the good, the true, and the beautiful—but when corrupted, it becomes a force for disorder and sin.

The question is not simply whether Led Zeppelin’s music is enjoyable. The question is: What kind of world did their music help create?

A world where sex is no longer sacred.

A world where self-control is mocked.

A world where artists like Cardi B can celebrate the most degrading aspects of sexuality, and no one even blinks.

Led Zeppelin did not create this world alone, but they played a major role in leading us here.

The Collapse of Gender in the Led Zeppelin Era

The Destruction of the Family

Perhaps the most devastating legacy of Zeppelin’s era was the way it eroded traditional family structures and gender roles.

Before the 1970s, men were expected to be leaders of their families, providers, and moral guides. The model of masculinity was still, for the most part, rooted in self-discipline. By the time Zeppelin’s influence had saturated culture, a new model of manhood had taken over—one that glorified selfishness, conquest, and irresponsibility. The decline in marriage rates, the rise of single motherhood, and the collapse of the traditional family structure all coincided with this new vision of masculinity, one that traded duty for indulgence.

Catholic thinkers have been sounding the alarm on this issue for decades. Bishop Fulton Sheen, in his 1979 address on the crisis of fatherhood, noted that “when men abandon responsibility for pleasure, society collapses from the inside out.”

The secular world has also acknowledged the damage. In his book Of Boys and Men, Richard Reeves observed that the decline of responsible fatherhood and the rise of hyper-masculine rebellion in pop culture have led directly to the crisis of male identity today.

Would modern men have abandoned church, marriage, and fatherhood in such great numbers if they had not been conditioned by decades of music that told them excess was freedom and responsibility was oppression?

The rock-and-roll lifestyle, particularly in the hands of Led Zeppelin, helped dismantle the long-held vision of masculinity. Instead of self-mastery, Zeppelin celebrated self-indulgence. Instead of duty, they promoted hedonism. Instead of faithfulness, they glorified sexual conquest. Their model of masculinity—arrogant, pleasure-seeking, and rejecting all forms of moral restraint—became the new standard for male behavior in popular culture. That shift not only shaped the music world but also influenced generations of young men who absorbed these attitudes.

Prior to the 1970s, even in an increasingly secularized and “liberated” world, masculinity was still defined by strength, leadership, and self-control. Cultural icons of masculinity included figures like John Wayne, Gregory Peck, and Charlton Heston—men who, though flawed, still embodied a sense of responsibility, honor, and resilience. Early rock musicians, from Elvis Presley to The Beatles, were certainly rebellious, but they still retained elements of traditional manhood. Even in their edgier moments, their songs yet centered around love, relationships, and emotional sincerity. Later forays into social justice and transcendent subjects were—alas—trying to reach for something noble.

Led Zeppelin shattered that mold.

The band’s stage presence, lyrics, and lifestyle all reinforced a new type of masculinity—one built on excess, not restraint. And each member presented a crucial aspect of the new ideal.

Robert Plant, with his open-shirted, hypersexualized stage persona, became a model for a new kind of manhood—one focused on seduction rather than strength. His stage performances were not just about music; they were about sexual dominance, and his voice, filled with moans and wails, only heightened that effect. Jimmy Page, meanwhile, presented a different kind of rock-star masculinity—mysterious, occultic and detached. If Plant was Dionysian, Page was Faustian—a man who had supposedly sold his soul for power, embodying a vision of manhood where success and mysticism replaced faith and virtue. Drummer John Bonham represented yet another version of Zeppelin masculinity—raw, violent, and addicted. His legendary destruction of hotel rooms, his binge drinking, and his physical aggression were all hallmarks of a man who had abandoned self-control in favor of chaos.

Their lyrics reinforced these personas. Love, fidelity, and responsibility were replaced with conquest, indulgence, and erotic obsession.

In "Black Dog," Robert Plant sings:

I gotta roll, can't stand still,

Got a flaming heart, can't get my fill.

The song is not about love—it is about sexual addiction and the inability to be satisfied. Led Zeppelin has shared that the song was inspired by a black dog that would hang around outside the recording studio. The dog would go off at night and come back in the morning, bedraggled—obviously after a night of sexual conquests.

In "Trampled Under Foot," the narrator compares a woman to a car, stripping away any sense of romance and reducing her to a machine meant to be “ridden” and “driven.”

This was not rebellion against oppression or a quest for artistic freedom. It was pure self-indulgence, wrapped in the language of male domination.

The Impact: From Rock Stars to the Everyman

The Zeppelin model of masculinity did not remain confined to the world of music. It filtered into movies, fashion, relationships, and the expectations placed on young men.

Christopher Lasch, in The Culture of Narcissism, argued that the 1970s saw the death of the “heroic” model of masculinity and the rise of a new, performative masculinity that was about display rather than responsibility. Zeppelin was at the center of that shift.

Camille Paglia, though a feminist, recognized Zeppelin’s role in redefining gender roles, noting that “Led Zeppelin made masculinity into an act—something that was performed on stage, something meant to be consumed, rather than something grounded in responsibility or virtue.”

By the 1980s, this shift in masculinity had reached its logical conclusion. The next generation of rock stars—from Mötley Crüe to Guns N’ Roses—took Zeppelin’s formula of hedonism and self-indulgence and escalated it. The era of the “rock god” as an unchecked hedonist was fully realized.

Meanwhile, as rock culture evolved, traditional male archetypes began to erode. Church attendance among men dropped drastically in the 1970s and 80s, as religious practice became associated with weakness rather than strength. Marriage rates declined, and divorce rates skyrocketed, coinciding with a culture that taught men that commitment was unnecessary. Fatherhood became an afterthought, as the model of the responsible family man was replaced by a vision of masculinity centered on personal pleasure.

Bishop Fulton Sheen, in one of his later addresses before his death in 1979, remarked that modern men were being trained not to be fathers, but to be “entertainers of the self.” He saw the coming crisis clearly—a world in which men no longer knew what it meant to lead, to protect, or to sacrifice.

Would This Cultural Shift Have Happened Without Zeppelin?

Secular critics will argue that the collapse of traditional masculinity was inevitable. They will point to economic shifts, second-wave feminism, and changing social structures. But even non-religious scholars recognize that Zeppelin and their peers did more than reflect cultural change—they accelerated it.

David Hepworth, in his book 1971: Never a Dull Moment, wrote that Zeppelin, more than any other band, made self-indulgence seem noble, making it nearly impossible for young men to aspire to anything else but the freedom, animalism and self-indulgence dictated by the band’s particular brand of rock and roll.

Greil Marcus, in Mystery Train, noted that Zeppelin’s model of masculinity was “not just an alternative to traditional manhood—it was a full rejection of it.”

Would young men have abandoned faith, marriage, and fatherhood in such staggering numbers if they had not been conditioned by their new rock gods that self-indulgence was the highest virtue? Would modern men have accepted the pornification of culture so easily if Zeppelin had not first made sexual conquest an art form? Would masculinity itself have become a spectacle rather than a duty if not for the model of Plant, Page, and their disciples?

The loss of strong men, the decline of fathers, and the collapse of reverence did not happen in a vacuum. Led Zeppelin was not the sole cause, but they were a central force in pushing the world toward that outcome.

Apotheosis: How Zeppelin turned Music into Religion

Modesty, masculinity and femininity and self-control as an ideal standard were not the only casualties of the Zeppelin era. Their rise also coincided with a mass exodus of men—and, as a result, women and children--from the Church and the replacement of religious devotion with rock star worship.

Zeppelin concerts became “ritual experiences,” replacing the sacred with the profane. The lyrics, imagery, and live performances turned music into something more than entertainment—it became a new kind of idolatry.

As faith declined, concert halls replaced cathedrals, rock stars replaced saints, and self-worship replaced God. And Led Zeppelin was at the center of it all.

By the 1970s, Western culture was undergoing a dramatic shift in spiritual orientation. Church attendance, which had remained steady throughout the 1950s and early 60s, began to decline, particularly among young men. The idea that a man should lead his family in faith, kneel in prayer, and seek God as his highest ideal was beginning to seem outdated, even embarrassing.

At the same time, something else was happening. Rock concerts were becoming more than just musical performances—they were taking on the character of religious rituals. The energy, the spectacle, and the communal experience of worship that once belonged in churches was now happening in stadiums.

Led Zeppelin was at the center of this transformation. Their concerts were not just about music—they were designed to be immersive, almost mystical experiences. With their hypnotic guitar solos, Plant’s otherworldly voice, and the pulsating, trance-like energy of the performances, Zeppelin created a new kind of spiritual experience—one that required no God, only sensation.

The Rise of the Concert as a Religious Experience

Before Zeppelin, concerts were relatively simple affairs. Even at the height of Beatlemania, The Beatles’ performances were short, structured, and somewhat restrained. They wore suits, played their instruments, and left the stage after an hour. The focus was still on the music itself.

With Zeppelin, that changed. Their concerts were lengthy, immersive, unpredictable, and theatrical. Jimmy Page’s extended guitar solos, often played with a violin bow, took on a ritualistic quality, stretching for twenty minutes at a time, designed to entrance the audience. Robert Plant, with his long golden hair and open chest, strutted across the stage like a prophet or a demigod, commanding the adoration of tens of thousands. The concerts were not structured—they were designed to feel organic, like a spiritual journey.

Music critic Simon Reynolds, in Shock and Awe: Glam Rock and Its Legacy, wrote that Zeppelin’s concerts had “an almost Dionysian quality, where the line between musician and audience disappeared, and the experience became something greater than the sum of its parts.”

This wasn’t just entertainment. It was an initiation into something beyond music.

Peter Bebergal, in Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll, described Zeppelin’s concerts as “ritualistic gatherings, filled with the energy of invocation.” He argued that they were not just selling music—they were selling an alternative form of spiritual transcendence.

In Catholic tradition, worship is meant to draw the soul toward God. The Mass, with its sacred music, incense, and prayers, is designed to elevate the spirit above the material world. The focus is not on personal indulgence but on union with the divine.

Zeppelin’s concerts mirrored religious experiences but inverted them. Instead of drawing people toward something greater than themselves, their music and performances turned inward, celebrating the self, the senses, and raw emotion.

Rock journalist Mick Wall, in his book When Giants Walked the Earth, described Zeppelin concerts as having “a cathedral-like atmosphere, except the altar was the stage, and the object of worship was not God, but the band itself.” Instead of hymns, Zeppelin offered lyrics steeped in mysticism, sexuality, and power. Instead of incense, the air was filled with marijuana smoke and the electric haze of feedback. Instead of sacramental wine, there was Jack Daniel’s, passed between musicians and fans.

If the Church had once been the place where young men sought meaning, the rock concert had become its secular replacement.

Jimmy Page’s Occult Influence: A Ritual in Every Show

Let’s return for a moment to Jimmy Page’s obsession with Aleister Crowley, which was not confined to his personal life—it bled into Zeppelin’s performances. From his iconic Zoso sigil to his wardrobe of occult robes embroidered with magical symbols, Page presented himself as more than a guitarist—he was a modern magician.

One of his most infamous performances was Zeppelin’s 1973 Madison Square Garden concert, later immortalized in their film “The Song Remains the Same.” During his “Dazed and Confused” solo, Page performed a lengthy, trance-inducing improvisation with a violin bow, lit dramatically to cast eerie shadows across his face. The entire sequence was intercut with a surreal film of Page ascending a mountain, meeting a cloaked figure (who turns out to be himself), and undergoing an esoteric transformation.

This was not just a guitar solo—it was a ritual.

In an interview with Rolling Stone in 1975, Page admitted that he believed music could channel supernatural forces, stating: “There is a power in music that goes beyond what people understand. It can unlock something deep in the unconscious.”

Peter Bebergal noted that Page’s approach to music was deliberately shaped by Crowleyan philosophy, where the performance itself became a form of magical invocation. This was no longer entertainment—it was the deliberate replacement of Christian spirituality with something else entirely.

As Zeppelin’s influence grew, a noticeable shift occurred in young men’s spiritual lives.

Before the 1970s, it was expected that men attended church, married, and took their role as spiritual leaders of their families seriously. By the 1980s and 90s, those expectations had crumbled.

Christopher Lasch, in The Culture of Narcissism, observed that the rock-star phenomenon had created a new kind of religious devotion—one based not on moral principles but on the worship of power, indulgence, and spectacle. Instead of God as the highest ideal, young men turned to rock stars as their aspirational figures. Instead of the cathedral as a place of reverence, the concert hall became the new sacred space. Instead of the priest as the guide toward truth, the rock star became the shaman of a new age.

Greil Marcus, in Mystery Train, wrote that “Zeppelin didn’t just change the sound of music—they changed what music was supposed to do. It wasn’t just a soundtrack for life anymore—it was life itself.”

By the time the 1990s arrived, church attendance among men had plummeted, and the idea of spiritual devotion was ridiculed in popular culture. Instead, young men were encouraged to seek experience over wisdom, sensation over self-discipline, and indulgence over devotion.

Pope John Paul II, in his encyclical Fides et Ratio, warned that when a society loses its sense of a higher moral order, it becomes enslaved to its own desires. He described modern culture as one that had replaced wisdom with pleasure, worship with distraction.

Led Zeppelin was not the sole cause of this transformation, but they were one of the most powerful forces that helped accelerate it. By turning music into an act of worship—but without God—they helped create a culture in which men no longer sought meaning in faith, but in spectacle and indulgence.

This is the world we now live in. A world where churches are empty but stadiums are full. A world where worship is no longer directed toward the divine, but toward whatever stirs the senses in the moment.

Would this have happened without Led Zeppelin? Perhaps. But their influence ensured that the modern world would look to the stage, rather than the altar, for meaning.

Addressing the Counterarguments

At this point, some will argue that my critique is too harsh. Was Zeppelin really responsible for the decline of masculinity and femininity, the sexualization of music, and the loss of reverence? Or is this just another moral panic? Some will say that Zeppelin was merely a product of their time, reflecting a broader cultural shift that would have happened with or without them. Others will argue that rock music has always been rebellious and that singling out Zeppelin ignores the contributions of other controversial bands like The Rolling Stones, The Doors, and The Who.

Was Zeppelin’s influence really as destructive as it seems—or even worse than we realize?

Counterargument 1: “It’s Just Music

One of the most common responses to moral criticism of Led Zeppelin is the claim that music is just entertainment, with no real impact on morality, culture, or human behavior. According to this argument, even if Zeppelin’s lyrics were hypersexualized, even if their concerts had a ritualistic element, and even if their lifestyle glorified hedonism, it ultimately doesn’t matter because people can separate entertainment from real life.

Response: Music Shapes Culture More Than Almost Anything Else

The argument that Led Zeppelin is “just music” ignores volumes of research, historical analysis, and even common sense about the influence of music on human behavior. Music is not passive background noise—it shapes emotions, behaviors, and cultural norms.

Plato, in The Republic, wrote that “Music is the most powerful force in shaping the soul of a people. Change the music of a nation, and you change its character.”

Saint Augustine, in Confessions, noted that music’s ability to stir the emotions makes it either a force for virtue or for vice.

Modern psychology supports this ancient wisdom. Studies show that listening to aggressive or hypersexualized music leads to increased aggression and sexualized behavior. Research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (2006) found that exposure to sexually explicit music increased permissive sexual attitudes and risky behavior.

Even secular music critics acknowledge that Zeppelin was not just entertainment—they were cultural architects. Greil Marcus, in Mystery Train, wrote that “Zeppelin didn’t just create music—they created a worldview. Their music didn’t sit alongside culture—it shaped it.”

Music has moral consequences. The hymns of the Church lift the soul toward God. The drunken revelry of Led Zeppelin lifted the soul toward indulgence.

As for those who offer “It’s just music!” as an argument for their continued consumption of Led Zeppelin’s music—and that of their depraved descendants like Cardi B.—I have found the often thundering resistance of these consumers to be curious. Few, if any, subjects rally them like the suggestion that they should maybe consider removing this music from their lives. It’s clearly not “just music” for them; it’s a powerful force, friend and ally (or so they believe) that they can’t seem to imagine living without.

Counterargument 2: “The Doors, The Rolling Stones, and Others Were Just as Bad”

Some argue that Led Zeppelin wasn’t uniquely responsible for corrupting music because The Doors, The Rolling Stones, and The Who were just as rebellious and sexualized. If we are condemning Zeppelin, shouldn’t we also blame these bands?

Response: Led Zeppelin Took It Further Than Any Band Before or During their Era

While other bands contributed to the sexualization of music and the breakdown of morality, Led Zeppelin escalated it to a new level. Let’s compare and contrast them, one by one, to the other two notable “rock gods” of the era.

The Rolling Stones vs. Led Zeppelin The Rolling Stones were undoubtedly rebellious, and their music was often sexual and provocative, highly influenced by the blues as well. Mick Jagger’s stage persona was built on androgyny and seduction, and songs like “Brown Sugar” and “Under My Thumb” contained disturbing themes of control and sexual exploitation.

However, the Stones retained a sense of irony and satire in their music. Even at their worst, there was still an acknowledgment that they were playing a role. Zeppelin, by contrast, fully embraced their hedonism and took it seriously. The Stones were provocative, but Zeppelin turned indulgence into an ethos. The Stones used sexual themes as part of their performance, but Zeppelin lived them as a spiritual philosophy.

Christopher Knowles, in The Secret History of Rock 'n' Roll, notes that “The Stones always had a wink and a smirk behind their decadence. Zeppelin had no such pretense. They believed in their own mythos.”

The Doors vs. Led Zeppelin Jim Morrison and The Doors were deeply influenced by Dionysian mysticism, and Morrison’s onstage persona was deliberately shamanistic. However, Morrison was self-destructive in a tragic way—he was burning himself out, rather than trying to convert the world to his philosophy. Morrison’s music was often dark and introspective, exploring themes of death, despair, and the meaning of existence. Zeppelin, on the other hand, never questioned their hedonism; they glorified it. Morrison saw indulgence as a way to self-annihilate; Zeppelin saw it as self-empowerment. The Doors reflected on mortality and spirituality; Zeppelin used mysticism to justify indulgence.

Rock historian Simon Reynolds observed that “The Doors had the curiosity of a poet; Zeppelin had the arrogance of a conqueror.”

While both bands were problematic, Zeppelin's influence was far deeper and longer-lasting.

Counterargument 3: “You’re Just Engaging in a Moral Panic”

Whenever music is criticized, defenders will argue that it’s just another moral panic, no different from when parents complained about Elvis’ hips or The Beatles’ long hair.

Response: This Is Not a Panic—It’s a Postmortem

A moral panic is based on exaggeration and hysteria. But the argument against Led Zeppelin is based on historical analysis and demonstrable cultural shifts. I’m not sounding an alarm; I’m giving remarks at the funeral.

When Elvis first scandalized audiences, he was still singing about love, romance, and devotion. The same was true for The Beatles, whose early music was about youthful idealism.

Zeppelin was different. They were not hinting at sexuality—they were celebrating sexual domination. They were not playing with mystical themes—they were steeped in real occult practices. They were not experimenting with rebellion—they fully rejected all forms of restraint.

Camille Paglia, a secular feminist, has defended sexual expression in music, yet she admitted that “Zeppelin marked the point where indulgence became the goal rather than the means.”

Even atheist cultural critics like Christopher Lasch recognized that Zeppelin’s era marked a cultural collapse, writing in The Culture of Narcissism that “the rock-star ethos of self-worship and excess has hollowed out the moral core of the West.”

This is not about panicking over new styles of music. It is about acknowledging a massive cultural transformation, one that has had devastating consequences for men, women, families, and faith.

Counterargument Number 5: “But Tolkien!”

Catholic fans of Led Zeppelin often point to the influence of J.R.R. Tolkien on the band’s music. Indeed, Robert Plant’s fascination with J.R.R. Tolkien and his literary worlds deeply influenced his songwriting, particularly in Led Zeppelin’s early years.

Response: Led Zeppelin Used the Themes and Imagery of Tolkien but not his Spirituality.

Tolkien, a devout Catholic, wrote The Lord of the Rings with a Christian worldview, embedding his epic with themes of good versus evil, sacrifice, and redemption. However, while Tolkien’s work was a vehicle for Catholic morality, Plant’s interpretation of it in Led Zeppelin’s lyrics often veered into a more mystical and esoteric realm, aligning with his broader interest in paganism, mythology, and the occult.

A notable example is "Ramble On" from Led Zeppelin II (1969), where Plant references Mordor and Gollum, but not in a way that reflects Tolkien’s deeper Christian allegory. Instead, the song romanticizes the restless wandering of a soul, which could be seen as a reflection of spiritual rootlessness, a theme that appears frequently in rock culture. Similarly, "The Battle of Evermore", from Led Zeppelin IV (1971), evokes an apocalyptic war between darkness and light, with overt references to a "Dark Lord." While this imagery aligns with Tolkien’s narratives, the song removes any Christian moral foundation and instead embraces a vague mystical worldview. Even "Misty Mountain Hop," borrowing from The Hobbit, reinterprets Tolkien’s moral storytelling in a more free-spirited, countercultural context.

Tolkien himself was wary of how his stories might be misinterpreted outside of their Christian framework, and one might argue that Led Zeppelin’s use of his themes reflects a distortion of their original intent. Plant’s fascination with folklore and pagan mythology, while artistically rich, often leans into a romanticization of pre-Christian spirituality rather than reinforcing Tolkien’s underlying Catholic worldview. For a Catholic listener, this serves as a cautionary reminder: while the beauty of artistic inspiration is undeniable, the interpretation of sacred or moral allegory outside its intended Christian framework can dilute or mislead its original truth.

Final Verdict: Was Led Zeppelin Uniquely Destructive to our Culture?

While other bands contributed to the moral decay of the West, Led Zeppelin was the tipping point where hedonism, mysticism, and self-indulgence became a way of life. They were the band that made the rejection of virtue, the embrace of excess, and the glorification of self-worship the gold standard for rock music.

Music matters. Culture matters. What we consume shapes what we become. The decline of masculinity, the collapse of reverence, and the rise of hypersexualized culture did not happen overnight. But they were accelerated in a unique way by Led Zeppelin, who made vice seem like a virtue and indulgence seem like wisdom.

As Catholics, the question is simple: Should we continue consuming music that helped shape a world of moral decline?

Or should we, as Saint Paul urged in Philippians 4:8, focus on that which is “true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, and commendable”?

Where Do We Go From Here? Reclaiming Culture

Led Zeppelin did not simply change music. They helped change the human person—how we see ourselves: our desires, our sense of identity, and our place in the world. When they emerged in the late 1960s, masculinity and femininity still carried some weight, some discipline, some connection to reality. Fathers still led their families in faith, boys still aspired to grow into responsible men, and male and female identities had not yet dissolved into narcissism, indulgence, and confusion.

Now, more than fifty years later, we live in a world of blurred lines, broken men and women, and the total collapse of traditional gender roles. We live in a world where young men no longer know what masculinity is, where gender itself has become a performance, and where even the concept of manhood and womanhood are up for debate.

If you had told a group of headbanging boys in 1973—somewhere in the smoky, sweat-drenched mass of a Zeppelin concert—that the hedonistic culture they worshiped would eventually lead to a generation of men identifying as women, they would have laughed. They were, after all, reveling in a hyper-masculine fantasy of indulgence, sex, and domination. The idea that their rebellion would eventually give birth to gender confusion and the destruction of the very categories of male and female would have seemed absurd.

Yet, here we are.

This is the final and unintended consequence of the Zeppelin worldview. The very same hedonistic, self-worshiping, woman-using. pleasure-first culture that Zeppelin helped create has led to an era in which masculinity itself has lost all meaning.

If we want to rebuild what has been lost, we must recognize how deep the problem runs. The solution is not simply rejecting Led Zeppelin’s music but rejecting the entire edifice of indulgence, confusion, and rebellion that they helped establish.

From Rock Gods to Genderless Beings: How We Got Here

Led Zeppelin shattered the old models of masculinity and replaced them with a new, self-indulgent vision of manhood—one that glorified pleasure, excess, and total rejection of order.

This model of masculinity had three major consequences, each leading to the next:

In Zeppelin we see the origins of the Death of Responsibility: Zeppelin’s world was about indulgence, not duty. Men were taught that pleasure, not self-control, was the highest goal. In Zeppelin we see the Death of Sexual Order: Once men no longer saw themselves as leaders, protectors, and fathers, sexuality became meaningless pleasure, leading to the rise of pornography, hookup culture, and gender confusion. In Zeppelin, we see the Death of Masculinity Itself: Once men were reduced to pleasure-seeking beings, the very concept of manhood lost its meaning. If manhood is no longer about strength, responsibility, and sacrifice, then why should it exist at all?

This is why transgenderism and the LGBTQ+ movement flourished in the very culture that Zeppelin helped create. Before the 1970s, gender roles were still firmly established in society. By the 1990s, masculinity had been reduced to a parody of itself—either a cartoonish version of aggression (heavy metal excess) or an aimless, whiny rebellion (grunge and emo). By the 2020s, masculinity has eroded so much that it has almost entirely disappeared from popular culture—replaced by an ever-expanding spectrum of gender identities, non-binary figures, and a cultural war against the very idea of male and female.

Led Zeppelin was a central force in creating the conditions for this collapse. They told the world that masculinity was about excess and indulgence, rather than discipline and order. They presented androgyny and mysticism as powerful, rather than recognizing the stability of the natural order.

And now, we live in a world where young men are so detached from reality that they genuinely believe they can become women.

The Feminization of Rock and the Blurring of Gender

When Robert Plant strutted across the stage in the 1970s with long golden hair, a silk shirt unbuttoned to the waist, and tight pants, he was presenting a new kind of masculinity—one that was sensual, fluid, and theatrical. Unlike earlier rockers like Elvis or Johnny Cash, who still had a commanding masculine presence, Plant was more androgynous, more ethereal, more detached from traditional masculine roles.

This style set the stage for the gradual feminization of men in rock culture. David Bowie took this aesthetic even further, fully embracing gender-fluid stage personas. Prince blurred the line between masculine and feminine with his clothing and sexualized performances. By the 2010s, rock had largely been overtaken by pop and rap culture, which fully embraced androgyny and fluid gender identities. Today, pop god Harry Styles wears dresses and pearls and is praised for it.

Zeppelin may not have been intentionally promoting gender confusion, but their rejection of traditional masculinity paved the way for it.

How Do We Rebuild? Returning to Order and Truth

The first step in reversing this collapse is rejecting the Led Zeppelin models of masculinity and femininity.

Masculinity is not about indulgence. It is about sacrifice. Masculinity is not about power for the sake of pleasure. It is about strength for the sake of protection. Masculinity is not about rebellion against order. It is about submission to God’s natural law.

Manhood must be disciplined, moral, and protective of women and children.

Femininity is not about “taking back” a warped and exploited sexuality that should never have been warped and exploited in the first place.

But, according to my admittedly small poll on YouTube a few days ago, a substantial majority of Christians do not want to do what needs to be done to reject these transformations: reject the music, the culture, and the philosophies that led us here. This is an order that is, for millions of Christians, so tall as to seem impossible to fill.

Can today’s Christian men and women:

-Stop glorifying musicians like Led Zeppelin, who built their lives on pleasure and indulgence, and stop supporting their philosophical and cultural descendants?

-Start looking to saints, warriors, and true leaders who embraced sacrifice and order? Stop letting entertainment shape personal values?

-Start choosing art and music that elevates rather than degrades the human person?

Pope Benedict XVI wrote, “The world promises you comfort, but you were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness.” Led Zeppelin’s world was built on comfort, indulgence, and excess. It has led to a generation of men—and women-- who are (sorry) dazed and confused, lost and disconnected from reality.

Led Zeppelin helped define a world where pleasure, self-indulgence, and rebellion replaced duty, discipline, and faith.

Now, we must choose:

Continue living in the world they built—where gender is meaningless, all beliefs are acceptable and the indulgence of the self is god? Or reject the Zeppelin worldview and return to a world where masculinity, femininity, self-control, order, and virtue are restored?

You’ll find the answer in hundreds of scripture passages. Including this one:

"Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness but instead expose them."

-Ephesians 5:11