Flying high with Led Zeppelin

Half a century on, Zep exists as the staple of the CD industry and in memoirs that talk breathlessly of sexual depravity, drug excess and serious physical violence. This meticulously compiled oral history by Barney Hoskyns has a similar riff, but it also has a wonderful humour and a careful examination of the how and why of the darkness that surrounded the band and its entourage.

Hoskyns, too, is excellent on the musicianship of an extraordinary group. This was not a bunch of mates who decided on a cold evening in some suburban living room that it would be fun to form a band. Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones were session musicians with a formidable reputation, with the latter arranging songs for Lulu and Herman's Hermits in his early days before helping post-Zep to construct Automatic For The People for REM. Robert Plant and John Bonham were sought-after artists, with the former going on to win Grammys with Alison Krauss and the latter becoming the most singular drummer in rock before succumbing to alcoholism, thus bringing the band to an end.

Led Zep, then, were formed consciously to make an impression, money and music. They did all of that and also left a whiff of sulphur in the air. This was most conspicuously created by Page, who famously bought Boleskin House, home of Aleister Crowley, the black magick man. Kenneth Anger, a seriously dark force, dismissed Page as a charlatan who bought black magick books but never read them. Page –who survived heroin addiction, alcoholism and the attentions of an army of groupies – was more deeply, deeply naughty than evil, though he is memorably described by a festive guest at his home as "the only man who could look sinister in a Christmas hat".

The violence of the band was undeniable. Peter Grant, the manager with alleged but never fully disclosed links to both East End gangs and the Mafia, helped beat up a succession of unfortunates but had the connections to avoid legal repercussions. Richard Cole, another associate, is described thus by an employee: "One of my jobs was to stop him jumping off balconies. But he was still a great tour manager."

Led Zep were therefore involved in dreadful behaviour that mostly involved consenting adults, though there is the deeply unsettling suggestion some of the groupies may have been under-age. The biggest damage was self-inflicted for band and fellow travellers. Bonham died a drunken boor. His son Jason once asked one of the entourage for a funny story about his dad. "Your dad was a lout and f***head" was the brisk reply.

Grant consumed cocaine in his lair in a manner that would have disturbed Tony Montana of Scarface. The Zep manager – "Shrek meets The Long Good Friday" – died, clean and sober, of a heart attack. Others could not climb out from under the burden of drugs or alcohol and drifted into anonymous, awful fates.

But, hey, there were the laughs. One fellow traveller was recruited for a top-level post with an alacrity that confused him. It later became clear; the band believed he was a pharmacist when he was in fact a physicist. There was Page dismissing a diabolical curse from Anger with the observation that he was already somewhat at a low as "a homeless junkie". There was Bonham walking into a pub to be told that it was shutting in 10 minutes and ordering 50 pints of beer.

"There were no innocents," one accessory after the fact remarks of tours when promoters were strong-armed and all opposition, real or imagined, was crushed. The power and excess of Led Zep were interlinked. One could not exist without another. There is a simple reason for Zep's narcissistic obsession, their regular disregard for others and their extraordinary consumption of chemical substances. It is this: they did everything because they could do everything. It is the way of the rock band and Led Zeppelin were the greatest of their time.

The music endures and Plant, Jones and Page have survived to pensionable age. But, then again, they never had to walk home through the Gorbals.