Best zeppelin biography

There are a few different approaches one can take in chronicling Led Zeppelin, the larger-than-life hard rock band that blazed through the 1970s like an out-of-control comet.

You can stick to the music, the approach taken by the worshipful upcoming documentary “Becoming Led Zeppelin.” You can go salacious, as in Stephen Davis’ highly unauthorized 1985 book “Hammer of the Gods.” Or you can bite off the whole story, the glory and the mayhem, the train wreck and the true bliss.

That’s how Bob Spitz approaches his sprawling account, “Led Zeppelin: The Biography” (Penguin Press, 688 pp., ★★★½ out of four, out now).

Spitz, whose previous subjects include The Beatles, Bob Dylan and Ronald Reagan, knows he needn’t exaggerate the band’s abhorrent behavior, from drummer John Bonham’s blind-drunk sexual assaults to guitarist Jimmy Page’s petulant entitlement.

He also knows said behavior doesn’t e