Empowering slogans like, ‘Girl Power!’, ‘Sisters Doing It For Themselves’, and ‘Women Can Do Everything’, just don’t cut it when you’re trying to describe the sheer ferocity of all-women tribute outfit Lez Zeppelin. In paying electrifying homage to one of the greatest bands in rock ‘n’ roll history (Led Zeppelin, in case you hadn’t already sussed that out), this band of brazen broads let the music do the talking, and in the case of the rapturous audiences who attend their shows, the music causes all the screaming.
The plethora of video footage of the band online really doesn’t, especially in Lez Zeppelin guitarist Steph Payne’s opinion, capture how their take on the music will affect you live. “It’s almost indescribable,” she says, “It’s an exciting show, very intense. It’s hard to capture that sometimes.”
For those of us who haven’t seen Lez Zeppelin, we only have their reputation to go by, and that reputation largely stems from the collective positive responses of their peers. Ascribed to their name, Lez Zeppelin have quotes up the wahzoo from everyone who is anyone; from newspapers like The Boston Globe and New York Times, to Aerosmith’s Joe Perry and Led Zeppelin guitarist himself, Jimmy Page. “Sometimes when I think about it, I’m like, ‘this is completely surreal,” laughs Payne. “This was supposed a little fun thing I was gonna do – put a band together, go play some Zeppelin once a month in NYC’s East Village, all girls, they’ll give us $50 and that’ll be it, then we’ll do it next month – but no.”
No, indeed. The good people of the world weren’t having it, that wasn’t enough, Lez Zeppelin proved to be too good. “’Sorry, you’re now gonna have it completely consume your life!’” Steph stages a collective response to the band’s popularity. “I call it the vortex.” The vortex is what Steph describes as a sensation of not being able to enter a shop or a room, or some public place, without a Led Zeppelin song coming on. “It’s just the universe saying ‘You thought you were gonna get away from it for a minute but you’re not’,” she jokes.
There’s a lot of commentary as to how electrifying and how well Lez Zeppelin capture the original band – the biggest draw it seems, is not that Lez Zeppelin are an all-girl tribute group, but that they’ve brought so much of their own passion for this music to what they do. “I think the all-female twist as it were, is compelling, and it’s interesting in its own right, just because in the context of ‘Oh well Led Zeppelin are such a male band, heavy guys with groupies lining up – whatever – so when girls do it it’s some shocking gender bending thing which turns the whole concept on its ass.”
Indeed, and Payne certainly is in agreement with the flaws of the gender bending argument – what’s wrong with women embracing their raw sexuality and being debaucherously rock ‘n’ roll in the first place? Absolutely nothing. “You said it, not me, sister!” cries Payne. “Not only is there nothing wrong with it, the bigger revelation is that it’s frighteningly natural. Payne laughs, blending incredulity with amusement.
“All of those things that have been reserved for the boys’ club and the assumption being that omen don’t have that kind of sexual force – a different sexual force, if it’s a force at all – like a striptease, its different. That’s passive, not the aggressive. That the come-get-me, aren’t-I-sexy, you-can’t-resist- me. That has been the typical role of female sexuality but not this coming-at-you-with-a-guitar sort of thing!
“That’s the thing – I think sexiness is just sexiness, it’s beyond gender. Maybe that’s what’s happened. When we’re playing, and you come with all this scepticism and assumption, then you’re met with this force that’s very much like Led Zeppelin, it’s shocking to people, and it has a great effect. It’s transformative, both for the player and the listener.”
When Lez Zeppelin take to the stage and turn opinion on their head – and if you look far enough into their activity and reviews of their shows you’ll see that they do – there’s got to be some massive feeling of not only satisfaction, but of victory. “Let’s just say it’s affirming,” begins Payne. “When you’ve got hardcore Led Zeppelin fans – and believe me when we first started, I was worried about that! There was hate mail! Not a lot, and the most hardcore Led Zeppelin fans, those men who had seen the band 10 times when they were teenagers and lived with posters in their room, in a way they got it more than anybody.
“Once they witnessed it, they got it. It was authentic to them. That was a very affirming thing because that’s what it is, it’s the virtuosity of the musicianship, sure, but even more than that, it’s the way in which it’s played, and how the band throw licks at each other, that whole conversation that happens on stage. Things like that that really give it that feeling.”
“It’s a very rich experience for so many reasons,” says Payne. “I didn’t quite understand it when I started the group, but as we progressed to this point of getting on stage and seeing the reaction of what was happening, it began to be clear very quickly that this was multilayered.”
And of course, across March and April and coming out to tour Australia for the very first time, Lez Zeppelin are adding another layer even then. “You know, you’re a little like us,” begins Payne. “The Americans, the Australians, we’ve all been kicked out of the mother country! It’s a new land, a new pioneering, slightly Wild West, slightly wild underworld in your case – but there’s a great spirit, and this music ties us all together.
“I have a feeling there’s a great appreciation of something that has soul and spirit in it and is done with a sense of danger in the band.”
When & Where: Memo Music Hall, St Kilda – April 6 & The Barwon Club, Geelong – April 7.
Written by Anna Rose