Led Zeppelin And Dustin Hoffman Among Winners At 35th Kennedy Center Awards

The Kennedy Center Honours are widely regarded as the most prestigious honour you can gain in the USA if you’ve worked in the creative or arts industries, and proof of that has once again been given by the sheer calibre of names that have been announced to receive the next batch of the annual awards from President Barack Obama on December 2nd, on what could be one of the last acts he performs as leader of the country.

E! Online reports that the surviving members of the rock group Led Zeppelin will join acting legend Dustin Hoffman, chat show host David Letterman, blues legend Buddy Guy and ballerina Natalie Makarova for the 35th edition of the awards, with the prizes being presented at the White House in Washington ahead of a Gala there.

Old-timers all, there’s no denying the impact that all of them have had on their respective fields; Led Zeppelin changed the face of live rock music, taking their blues inspired rock to the sort of size venues that would seemed like a world away for alternative bands just a decade before their existence. Hoffman is now in his sixth decade of a film career that’s included countless classic titles including The Graduate, Midnight Cowboy and Little Big Man. 76 year-old Guy pioneered a music known as the Chicago blues, influencing not only Zeppelin themselves, but others including Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce. 71 Makarova defected from the Soviet Union in 1970 and joined the American Ballet Theatre in New York at a time when political tensions between the two countries were hugely tense.