A few days ago I was browsing the youtube comments of Deep Purple’s Japan’s live performance of Child in time. One of the people who posted claimed that “Deep Purple was/could have been better than Led Zeppelin, had they stayed together as Zep did.” This got my attention.
Speculating in sports is a bit easier because you can see the career’s projection of the person, therefore you can safely assume (to a certain degree) that similar results may keep happening in similar future contexts. IE: Monica Seles would have kept dominating the tennis cirquit throughout the 90s had she not been stabbed, because she had been doing so for the past three years and nobody had an answer against her game. In music though, it’s a bit different.
Regardless of either Deep Purple had kept its original line up (Giliam, Blackmore, Lord, Paice), Led Zeppelin was a great band, arguably second to The Beatles, or at least worth enough to be mentioned in the conversation of candidate bands for second place after The Beatles. Zep’s only “average” album is their last one, which is not that bad and it’s just that it’s not on par of its predecessors. I also know that Zep may have plagiarized a few songs and recorded them as their own without giving proper credit, but still it’s not like it was 80% of their songs.
As much as I love Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin’s songs cover a wider range with a variety of themes, than those of Deep Purple. I can listen to DP all day long and I know that it’s hard to believe they are the same band that play “Smoke in the water”, “When a blind man cries” and “Lazy”. Overall I think Zep was able to perform and demonstrate their talents on a more consistent basis than Deep Purple, and this is why I have to rate LZ over DP. The same logic applies to Uriah Heep: as much as I love “July Morning” (I can listen to this song in loop all day), “Rain” and “Gypsy”, UH also fell short to showing what they could have been.
HR