Davis travelled with Led Zeppelin for two weeks at the beginning of the band's 1975 U.S. Tour, while he was a music journalist at Rolling Stone magazine.

[2] It has been reprinted three times since its first publication and has been released under the alternative title Hammer of the Gods: The Led Zeppelin Saga.

Chicago Tribune music reviewer Greg Kot called it "one of the most notorious rock biographies ever written".

[3] All three surviving members of the band have cast doubts on its accuracy,[4] with one article summarising their collective view of the book as a "catalogue of error and distortion".

As Plant explained: "[Davis] did a lot of investigations with a guy who used to work with Led Zeppelin, Richard Cole, who, over the years, had shown deep frustration at not being in a position to have any authority at all.

"[9]Former manager Peter Grant told Proximity magazine that the book was "completely unreliable" and that Davis had asked for money from him over the manuscript, before publication.

"[11] The negativity of the book, along with other controversial music biographies by Davis, earned him the industry nickname "Stephen Salacious".