Rhino Factoids: That Time Led Zeppelin Hung Out with President Obama
Compared to some of the other moments we spotlight here at Rhino.com, this one seems like it happened only yesterday, but it’s still worth noting: two years ago today, the members of Led Zeppelin received the Kennedy Center Honors for their “lifetime contributions to American culture through the performing arts,” making it probably the only occasion where the band’s name has found its way into the same sentence – or even paragraph – as Buddy Guy, Dustin Hoffman, David Letterman, and Natalia Makarova.
Actually, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, and John Paul Jones were formally honored the day before, at a gala dinner held at the State Department, where President Barack Obama paid tribute to the band with a speech that he admitted outright was far from the easiest he’d ever had to compose. Nonetheless, Obama found plenty of praise for the band, observing, “It’s been said that a generation of people survived teenage angst with a pair of headphones and a Zeppelin album, and a generation of parents wondered what all that noise was about. Even now, 32 years after John Bonham’s passing, we all, I think, appreciate the fact that the Led Zeppelin legacy lives on. Tonight, we honor Led Zeppelin for making us all feel young, and showing us that some guys who are not completely youthful can still rock.”
The following evening – yes, the one that took place two years ago tonight – found the band receiving a more raucous tribute. Although Guy, Hoffman, Letterman, and Makarova received their awards first, Led Zeppelin managed to get namedropped on a few occasions prior to the portion of the proceedings dedicated specifically to the band. In particular, Ray Romano remarked, “As a performer, the last thing you want to do is bomb in front of Led Zeppelin: I lost my virginity to the first two minutes of ‘Stairway to Heaven’ and spent the next 11 minutes of it apologizing.”
When the time finally arrived for the full-fledged tribute, it was a man who once sang a song called “Tribute” – Jack Black – who introduced Foo Fighters to perform “Rock and Roll.” From there, Kid Rock tackled “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” and “Ramble On,” Lenny Kravitz delivered a solid version of “Whole Lotta Love,” and Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart closed the show by teaming with, among others, Jason Bonham and the Joyce Garrett Youth Choir to hit “Stairway to Heaven” completely out of the park. All the while, Plant, Page, and Jones looked on, sometimes seeming amused and entertained, other times looking stunned and amazed. Whatever emotions they may have been experiencing at any given moment, however, there’s no doubt that they ultimately felt honored.
