MTV also went on to play "One Vision" incessantly later on. While their chart showings were pretty dismal the rest of the way through, I do recall seeing ALL of the videos from The Works in heavy rotation on MTV at the time - including "I Want to Break Free", which didn't cause a stir, didn't get banned, and no one was refusing to play it, as the narrative tends to be these days. It was so unbearably out of step with what was happening in music in this country at the time, that they were perceived as hopeless relics from the previous decade, and they were thrown onto the same waste pile as the Bee Gees and KC and the Sunshine Band, considered to be old news. There was more than a hint of homophobia tied up in it, I'm sure, but really - they essentially made a disco album about three years after anything that sounded remotely like disco was cast out like yesterday's newspapers. If any one thing truly "destroyed" that band here, it was Hot Space. But he shouldn't conflate the two.Ĭlick to expand.The narrative that the "I Want to Break Free" video had any kind of effect on Queen's popularity in the US is revisionist history. I love Page, I think he's been a musical genius in the genre, but I think he's very controlling of his band, his baby, and it must irk him that a) they played a bad gig and b) Phil Collins is forever associated with them in a few people's minds. But I would bet a dollar that if Collins had not played with Zeppelin that day, it would have sounded exactly the same to 99% of viewers/listeners. MTV was obsessed with the whole stunt aspect of Collins doing so much that day. They mentioned Collins every ten seconds, and kept the camera on him half the time, as if what he was doing mattered at all. Who Page and anyone else should be blaming is MTV. And there were two drummers! It's bizarre that this is even a thing. It's a bad look for Page to have criticized Collins decades later when Page is clearly on another planet and sounds awful through the entire performance. They cut to Collins for what seems like every fill, when Thompson is the one playing them.Ĭollins may be great or Collins may be a lame joke but he has practically nothing to do with what happened on stage. Collins is watching Thompson like a hawk and barely contributing, for better or worse. Plant sounds rusty, not warmed up, tired. Page is the most blitzed man ever seen on live TV, playing extremely poorly. But the idea that it is Collins' fault in any way is laughable.
I love Zeppelin and don't care if their one-off reunion in 1985 wasn't very good.
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