They took the typical blues rock and roll of the day, and really rocked out with it, plus kept up their own eerie, fantastic quality all along the way.

So did about sixty million other bands in the sixties.

aaaahahahahahahaha that was unexpected Chef!
*raises from a chair like a huge monstrous hurricane, thundering WHAT.
*cracks knuckle

but it's OK i see what you mean. I'll explain more myself:

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Led Zeppelin did good music from wide variety of genres, mostly consisting of heavy/hard bluesrock and folk rock, with twists of blues, funk, ballads etc.

The thing is though that they influenced the future generations with their long epics and stage appearance (well, who didn't by then). This is especially the case with the 80's stadium/heavy metal bands. (thank god they didn't adopt the ridiculous, bloated mysticism of zeppelin urgh)

I'll list the most obvious.

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Stairway to Heaven - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mNjd-hnxbs
Now this is the most obvious. I can't imagine any other songs inspiring future songs such as Nothing Else Matters than this. If you haven't already heard of it then check it then. It's a long, dynamically ascending folkrock/rockballad - song.

No Quarter - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae-LDQVrDUY
No Quarter, a long dream-like epic, is one of the piano-driven songs - has a huge impact upon prog bands ever since.

Kashmir -  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTaOvzZKRxA
The constant distort-drone, the hypnotically repeating gigariff (my own term, heh.... see: Blue Öyster Cult - Godzilla) - I think this song has definitely affected the heavy metal genre. One of the well-known songs, a long raga-drone-heavyrock song.

The next two songs are the most obvious, I'm sure you notice.

The Rover - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SihzNpiBPL8
aahahaha if this isn't heavy metal then i don't know what is! Don't get me wrong - this song is nice and the riff is very effective. It's been rumoured that Van Halen performed this song along with "Rock and Roll" and "Hots On For Nowhere" - if you are stupid but brave you can find van halen's rover from youtube........urgh

Achilles Last Stand - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6F5U_fgLOA
And this is pretty obvious metal ballad-epic of sort. A great song, nonetheless.

Note: In the Light is quite metal in some aspects, especially the bootleg version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRCJLcI2EhI&feature=related

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Sooooooooooo, guys. These five songs are 6,25% of their total studio songs.  Even if you add some more songs that has more indirect influence - Immigrant Song, Dazed & Confused, Sick Again, In My Time of Dying, For Your Life, In the Evening - the ratio still hangs around ~14% (YES I DID COUNT). That's like the very tip of the iceberg. Mostly they were about heavy bluesrock and folkrock. (the latter being my influence)

A ridiculously long, fan-like response yeah but i wanted to throw this out to demonstrate Chef's post (i guess? has yet to response) and to make sure you understand that Led Zeppelin isn't really about heavy metal/glam-stadium rock like Guns'n'Roses or Lef Deppard.

I really really hope this didn't came out like a stupid rant from a fan, i just happen to know everything (w/ pros and cons) of the band.
Yes, i was few years ago (and still am) a big Led Zeppelin fan. Nowdays i pretty much listen to quite variety of music. Right now, the big influences are Jeff Buckley and Elliott Smith.

Apologies for bad grammar.

aahahah i already regret posting that, i'm sorry chef sorry guys jesus i hate my posts

nah, fuck all the haters!  GET THE LED OUT 24/7, bro, ON 96.1 THE ROCKETTTTTT....

haha i think i understand all the references. let's not turn this topic into lz topic, ok buddy?

Let's just talk about the topic.

why

(i do not know anything about led zeppelin beyond CLASSIC ROCK and that i dont really like them but yeah)

well led zeppelin is pretty tolerable! ramci posted a lot of reasons why led zeppelin is a band that i can appreciate in small doses. the problem is that led zeppelin spawned about a decade of stadium rock and hair metal.

no there has never been a good band inspired by led zeppelin.

im pretty sure of this.

i used to post on a metal forum that said immigrant song was the first viking metal song, so nope.

WELL DON'T WORRY GUYS I WILL PROVE YOU WRONG ON THAT ONE *hits the dong to the keyboard*

no i don't think mainstream music has gotten worse. bands were just as shit in the old days. led zeppelin being a good example yeah.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeswZaReE0I

i agree

i used to post on a metal forum that said immigrant song was the first viking metal song, so nope.

arent you a stoner doom murder head???

i bet d. meadow blasts zeppelin in their free time

Yeah, I agree with Holm. People who listen to oldies radio go "ah, the good old days" but that's because they play the good stuff from back then rather than the thousands upon thousands of tracks consisting of totally forgettable, disposable stuff that were around.

Mainstream music isn't great but I don't think it's getting worse. As someone (Headphonics I think) mentioned, much of the 90s was disgustingly bad in retrospect. Shoot me if you want but I'd take Soulja Boy and Lil Wayne over S Club 7 and the Vengaboyz anyday.

I think there's been some bright lights for pop music as of late, but a lot of the better stuff really blurs the lines and is only presented as pop because it's popular rather than because it fits that plastic, shiny bubblegum bullshit feel of most generic pop stuff. But hey pop is just popular music so fff. Stuff like Justin Timberlake (yes his album was really good fk u), Lily Allen, Amy Winehouse, M.I.A, LCD Soundsystem, The Presets and so on are all really popular (albeit some only among certain circles of mainstream music listeners, like the 'indie' crowd in Australia who listen to the same crap as everyone else who goes to uni but like to think they're better than the top 40 crowd, even if most of the songs they like are in the top 40, just not played on the bubblegum stations) groups who make some genuinely good music. It's different, sure, but I don't think it's necessarily way worse than it's ever been.

i'd rather hear tpaine's autotuned voice a thousand times than a single reo speedwagon song, and if you have taste at all you agree with me...

People argue that the auto-tune thing means LESS TALENT IN THE STUDIO and sure, in terms of raw vocals this is true. But T-Pain writes his own stuff which is more than I can say for most pop artists!

So yeah he can't really sing but he knows how to write a song which makes up for it imo