Led Zeppelin [ˌlɛdˈzɛplɪn] (listen?/i) was a British rock band. Founded in 1968, it is one of the most successful bands ever, with 300 million albums sold. The death of drummer John Bonham in September 1980 marked the end of the band, which had been active with the same lineup throughout, consisting of singer Robert Plant, guitarist Jimmy Page, and bassist John Paul Jones. Musically, Led Zeppelin was a pioneer of hard rock, blues rock, progressive rock, and the emerging heavy metal, but also incorporated influences from folk music.
History
Prehistory and Foundation
The beginnings can be traced back to the British band The Yardbirds. Jimmy Page played there from 1966 on, first bass guitar, then electric guitar. After Jeff Beck and later also Keith Relf and Jim McCarty left the group, Page and the remaining bassist Chris Dreja formed a new band.
Originally, Page had planned to recruit Procol Harum’s drummer B.J. Wilson and Terry Reid, but both turned him down. The latter recommended Robert Plant, who had previously been the singer of the band Hobbstweedle. He suggested John Bonham as drummer, who had already played with him in the Band of Joy. When Dreja also left the band, they enlisted John Paul Jones. Thus, the new lineup was complete. Although Page was the only former Yardbirds member, the band initially performed under the name The New Yardbirds in September 1968, as existing Yardbirds contracts had to be fulfilled, and only later changed the name after a mini-tour in Scandinavia.
Keith Moon, the drummer of The Who, is credited with having a major influence on the naming. In 1966, he is said to have said during the recording of the Jeff Beck B-side Beck’s Bolero (in which Page and John Paul Jones participated) that a band around Page would “go over like a lead zeppelin.” The band finally adopted this name in October 1968. Since in English the word “lead” refers to both the verb “to lead” [liːd] and the noun “lead” [lɛd], the letter “a” was removed on the suggestion of producer Peter Grant to clarify the correct pronunciation and to prevent “thick Americans” from pronouncing it as “leed” [liːd].
The Path to Success
The second album, simply named Led Zeppelin II, followed the same style as the debut. It includes, among others, Heartbreaker and Whole Lotta Love, which are characterized by catchy guitar riffs. An old group photo with the Red Baron was used for the cover. The album reached number one on the US charts, where it displaced the Beatles’ album Abbey Road. Rolling Stone described Page as “the absolute number-one heaviest white blues guitarist” due to his musical performance.
As part of a European tour, the band gave their first four concerts in Germany in the spring of 1970, starting with a performance at the Munich Circus Krone on March 8. The tour was organized by the concert agency Lippmann & Rau, as were all subsequent performances in Germany.
The songs for the third album, Led Zeppelin III, were written by Page and Plant at Bron-Yr-Aur [brɔn‿ər.aɪr] (golden hill), a remote cottage without electricity in Wales. This resulted in a more acoustic sound, heavily influenced by Celtic and folk music, revealing a new side of Jimmy Page’s musical versatility, as heard in songs such as “Gallows Pole” and “Tangerine.” The opening track is the Immigrant Song, which Robert Plant was inspired to write during the band’s tour of Iceland in the summer of 1970. The songs Bron-Yr-Aur (later appearing on Physical Graffiti) and Bron-Yr-Aur Stomp (mistakenly titled Bron-Y-Aur Stomp on the album cover) were also named after the location. The album closes with “Hats Off to (Roy) Harper,” a tribute to the British singer-songwriter Roy Harper. The album was released on October 5, 1970.
World Fame
After successful tours thru North America and Japan in the summer of 1971, the band’s fourth album, titled only with four cryptic symbols, was released in November. This record became known under the names Led Zeppelin IV or Four Symbols. With the opening track “Black Dog,” the band created a hard rock song that highlights both Plant’s vocals and the musical abilities of guitarist Page and drummer Bonham. Rock And Roll is a testament to the stylistic origins of hard rock in the rock ‘n’ roll of the 1950s and 1960s. Contrary to the common assertion that the drum groove at the beginning is based on the title “Good Golly Miss Molly,” it is actually Little Richard’s “Keep-A-Knockin'” that served as the template. The pièce de résistance of the album is the rock ballad “Stairway to Heaven,” which is probably the band’s most famous song. Famous pieces include the folk rock song Going to California and the ballad The Battle of Evermore, which features a vocal duet by Robert Plant and Sandy Denny (Fairport Convention). The album was predominantly recorded at Headley Grange, a remote country house in Hampshire. The album not only received positive reviews but also sold extremely well. In the USA alone, 23 million copies have been sold to date. This makes it one of the four best-selling albums there.
In 1972, three short tours followed, which took the band to the USA and Japan again, in addition to Australia and New Zealand. On this and a later tour thru the USA, the musicians traveled in their own plane, a Boeing 720. After two performances in Montreux, Switzerland, a four-month tour of Great Britain began in November.
After a European tour in March 1973, the fifth album, Houses of the Holy, and a successful US tour followed. At the last three concerts of the tour at New York’s Madison Square Garden, most of the film and audio recordings for the 1976 concert film The Song Remains the Same and the soundtrack of the same name were made. Work on the concert film continued in the fall.
In 1974, Led Zeppelin founded their own label, Swan Song Records, which was subordinate to Atlantic Records. Beside the band, Bad Company, The Pretty Things, and Maggie Bell also signed with the label, among others. The logo was designed using the painting Evening, Fall of Day (1869) by William Rimmer, which depicts Apollo. This logo was printed on many fan items.
Their first double album, Physical Graffiti, was recorded by the four musicians in 1974. The album was released in the spring of 1975 and contains, in addition to new songs, also pieces that had been written earlier and had remained from the sessions for the last three albums. One of the best-known and most popular songs with the live audience is Kashmir, a piece in which the musicians processed oriental influences. According to his own words, the fifth track, Trampled Under Foot, is Plant’s favorite song by Led Zeppelin.
Further Tours
At the beginning of 1975, they first undertook another US tour. After two years of stage abstinence in the UK, the band also gave five concerts in front of a total of 85,000 spectators at the London Earls Court Exhibition Center, from which recordings were later released on a DVD.
In August of that year, shortly before the start of a planned stadium tour of the USA, Plant and his wife were involved in a car accident in Rhodes, in which Plant broke his ankle. As it was impossible to go on tour, the band decided to start work on a new album. During the recording of their seventh studio album, Presence, at the Musicland Studios in Munich, Plant was forced to sit in a wheelchair or a chair.
In late autumn 1976, The Song Remains the Same, along with its soundtrack, was finally released. Although the concert footage was filmed in 1973, the film remained the only document of Led Zeppelin’s live performances for over 20 years. The live recordings are interspersed with psychedelic feature film sequences and scenes from the backstage area.
In 1977, another extensive US tour followed, which was also sold out within a few days of its announcement. On this tour, the band played six sold-out concerts in a row at New York’s Madison Square Garden, each in front of approximately 20,000 spectators. Shortly before the end of the tour – the band still had seven completely sold-out concerts ahead of them – Plant received the news that his five-year-old son Karac had died of a viral infection on July 26. The tour was subsequently canceled.
After this incident in the summer of 1977, the band only came together for rehearsals in Wales again in May 1978, where they began working on a new album. In Thru the Out Door, the band’s eighth album, was recorded in November at the Polar Studios in Stockholm. It was released in August 1979, after two performances in front of over 100,000 fans at the Knebworth Festival in Stevenage.
Even during the festival, there were tensions between Peter Grant and festival promoter Freddy Banister regarding the actual number of attendees, which, according to the contractual agreements, was a factor in calculating the due licensing fees. The license was for 100,000 people at a time. Due to the starkly contradictory figures given by Banister and the local authorities in Stevenage after the first day of the festival, Grant stationed his own staff at the entrances before the second concert to determine the actual number of attendees. After the festival, Grant commissioned an independent firm in Nassau to determine the attendance figures from aerial photographs. So, in the end, Bannister’s figures (104,000 on August 4 and 40,000 on August 11) were compared with Grant’s (218,000 on August 4 and 187,000 on August 11). The dispute ended with Freddy Banister withdrawing from the promotion business and his company Tedoar Ltd going bankrupt.
Death of John Bonham and dissolution of the band
In 1980, Led Zeppelin undertook a European tour that included 14 cities in the German-speaking region as well as in Belgium and the Netherlands, including Dortmund, Cologne, Brussels, Rotterdam, Bremen, and Hanover. During the performance on June 26, 1980, at the Vienna Stadthalle, Page was hit by a firework. The band then left the stage and only returned after the perpetrator, a student, had been identified. The concert in the Nuremberg Exhibition Hall A on June 27, 1980, also had to be cut short after just three songs because drummer Bonham collapsed while playing. There followed six more concerts in Zurich, Frankfurt, twice in Mannheim, Munich and Berlin. The performance at the Berlin Ice Sports Hall on July 7 was to be the last Led Zeppelin concert for 27 years.
On September 25, John Bonham was found dead in his bed at Page’s house in Windsor. He had choked on his vomit in his sleep, which was generally attributed to excessive alcohol consumption. The remaining band members then decided to disband Led Zeppelin. In a press release on December 4, 1980, they made it clear that it was not possible for them to play without Bonham.
Projects 1980–1990
Due to contractual obligations to Atlantic Records, the band’s own label Swan Song Records had to release one more studio album. Jimmy Page then compiled the last Led Zeppelin album, Coda, from previously unreleased live and studio recordings from the period 1969 to 1978. It was released in November 1982.
In 1981, a short-term collaboration between Page and Plant with Chris Squire and Alan White from Yes emerged under the name XYZ (Ex Yes Zeppelin), but it did not develop into a long-term commitment. Some of the song ideas later appeared as bootlegs and on albums by The Firm and Yes.
In 1984, The Honeydrippers, Vol. 1, the only album by the band of the same name, which was founded in 1981 as a project by Robert Plant, was released. The aim was to return to his musical roots before Led Zeppelin: blues, rock ‘n’ roll and R&B. Among the members were, in addition to Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Nile Rodgers (Chic), Robbie Blunt, Andy Sylvester (Savoy Brown), and others.
In 1985, the remaining Led Zeppelin band members performed as “Plant, Page and Jones” with Phil Collins on drums at Live Aid. The performance was a disaster. John Paul Jones arrived so late that the band only had an hour to rehearse. In addition, Robert Plant had vocal problems due to overexertion. The band was so dissatisfied with the quality of their performance that they refused to allow the footage to be included in the official 2004 4-DVD set Live Aid. Instead, they donated out of their own pockets for Sudan relief.
Plant said in 1988:
“It was horrific. … I was hoarse, I had three gigs just before Live Aid. We were rehearsing in the afternoon, and by the time I went on stage, my voice was long gone.”
– Robert Plant
Phil Collins described the performance as a “disaster” in November 2014:
“Robert was happy to see me, but Jimmy wasn’t. … You could feel I wasn’t welcome. If I could have, I would have left. … It was a disaster, really. Robert was out of voice and Jimmy was completely out of it. It wasn’t my fault, it was rubbish.”
– Phil Collins
In May 1988, they then performed with John Bonham’s son, Jason Bonham, at the 40th anniversary of their former record label, Atlantic Records.
The 1990s
At the beginning of the 1990s, Jimmy Page went back into the studio and gradually remixed all the old albums digitally.
In the summer of 1994, Page and Plant came together for a television appearance as part of the MTV Unplugged series in London. They re-recorded old Led Zeppelin songs with Arabic musicians and the London Metropolitan Orchestra. The general response to the broadcast of the corresponding MTV show, entitled No Quarter – Unledded, was so positive that an official CD (Jimmy Page & Robert Plant – No Quarter) was released from the MTV recordings. In 2004, the DVD Jimmy Page & Robert Plant – No Quarter Unledded was released.
A further collaboration developed between the two former Led Zeppelin band members, during which a successful year-long world tour with 115 concerts took place in 1995/1996, including performances at the Munich Olympic Stadium and on July 26, 1995, at the London Wembley Arena, where the band’s former manager, Peter Grant, was in the audience. The following November, Peter Grant died.
At their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, also in 1995, Jason Bonham played the drums again.
In 1997, they recorded the studio album “Walking Into Clarksdale” (Page & Plant) together, but it did not become a commercial success. In addition, the album BBC Sessions was released, which contains recordings made in the BBC studios in 1969 and the recording of a concert at the Paris Theater in London on April 1, 1971, where the very first live performance of Stairway to Heaven recorded on tape can also be heard.
After another world tour in 1998 with 89 concerts, the collaboration ended due to Robert Plant’s desire for a musical reorientation. In 1998, the song Kashmir was re-released by Puff Daddy for the film Godzilla under the title Come With Me, with the assistance of Jimmy Page.
In 1999 and 2000, Page played several concerts together with the American (blues) rock band The Black Crowes, whose setlists predominantly consisted of Led Zeppelin pieces. The double CD Live at the Greek, released in 2000, documents this collaboration.
After 2000
In 2001, Page and Plant once again shared the stage at the Montreux Jazz Festival. In 2003, the triple CD How the West Was Won, a documentation of the band’s live performances, was finally released. It features concert recordings from the LA Forum on June 25, 1972, and the Long Beach Arena two days later.
In the same year, the Led Zeppelin DVD was released, a retrospective on two DVDs with 5½ hours of material, which includes concert recordings of performances at the Royal Albert Hall (1970), Madison Square Garden (1973), Earls Court (1975), and Knebworth (1979). In addition, interviews with the musicians are shown.
Concert 2007
In 2007, rumors emerged about plans for Led Zeppelin to embark on a reunion tour with the original lineup. At a press conference on September 12, 2007, a one-off concert in London was announced. For the band’s live comeback on 10 December 2007 at the O₂ Arena in London, in honor of the founder of the record label Atlantic Records and co-discoverer of Led Zeppelin, Ahmet Ertegün, who died in 2006, more than 20 million people had registered for tickets, according to the organizers. The allocation of tickets was decided by lottery. In total, around 20,000 tickets were issued, each costing £125 (approx. €183). Alongside Plant, Page and Jones, John Bonham’s son Jason Bonham was on stage as drummer. At the benefit concert for Ertegun’s foundation, in addition to Led Zeppelin, who took the stage under this name for the first time since 1980, other musicians such as Paolo Nutini, Paul Rodgers, Foreigner, and Bill Wyman also performed.
At a press event in Tokyo in January 2008 to present the album Mothership, Jimmy Page announced that he was ready to go on a world tour with Led Zeppelin. However, Robert Plant was not interested in a reunion. Since the band did not find a new suitable singer, according to the band’s manager, there will be no reunion. Candidates for this were Steven Tyler, Chris Cornell and Myles Kennedy.
The concert recorded in 2007 was screened on October 17, 2012, in sixteen German Cinemaxx chain cinemas under the title Led Zeppelin: Celebration Day and was released as a video and an album a month later. At the 2014 Grammy Awards, it won the award for Best Rock Album.
Style and Effect
Musical elements
In addition to rock ‘n’ roll, blues, and folk music, which shaped the style of many rock bands, Led Zeppelin also used elements from many other genres. The atonal interlude from Whole Lotta Love is a prime example of psychedelic elements.
Jimmy Page and Robert Plant were musically influenced by the blues. This influence is evident in Led Zeppelin’s hit Whole Lotta Love (based on the song You Need Love by Willie Dixon) and The Lemon Song (based on the song Killing Floor by Howlin’ Wolf). The band was also taken with American rock ‘n’ roll and played songs by Elvis Presley (A Mess of Blues) and Eddie Cochran (Something Else, C’mon Everybody). Other examples of songs by other artists that Led Zeppelin reinterpreted include Joan Baez’s Babe I’m Gonna Leave You, Black Mountain Side (Bert Jansch, originally Blackwaterside), Dazed and Confused (Jake Holmes) and I Can’t Quit You Baby (Otis Rush).
Jimmy Page’s guitar playing is particularly distinctive. Instead of the classic electric guitar in rock music, he used an acoustic guitar in many songs. He often used the DADGAD tuning, which is almost exclusively used in folk music. His style was often experimental: in The Battle of Evermore he plays the mandolin, in Whole Lotta Love the theremin. He is also known for his use of double-neck guitars, usually a Gibson EDS-1275.
Most of the lyrics were written by Plant. They often contain mystical elements, such as in Stairway to Heaven. The song Ramble On makes thematic reference to J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings:
“T’was in the darkest depth of Mordor I met a girl so fair, But Gollum, and the evil one crept up And slipped away with her.”
– Text from Ramble On
Led Zeppelin’s stage shows could last over three hours; sprawling and improvised live versions of their song repertoire often featured arrangements of John Lee Hooker, James Brown, Stax, and Motown-influenced funk and soul music.
The most distinctive piece of the fourth album and probably the most famous song by Led Zeppelin is the over eight-minute-long rock ballad “Stairway to Heaven.” It has often been suggested that Jimmy Page incorporated or allowed a satanic message to be included in this song, which can be heard if the refrain is played backward – there are several versions of the wording of this supposed message. The band had to deal with such press campaigns throughout its entire history, mainly due to Jimmy Page’s well-known interest in the occult.
Reception and Significance
In the contemporary music press, the band’s unconventional style generally met with rejection. The renowned Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung described the concert in Frankfurt on July 18, 1970, as “boring mumbling of undifferentiated effects”:
“Plant is quite a screamer, who, although black blues singers are among his idols, has learned little from black vocal artistry.” He is unable to turn his bellowing into music or fill it with “soul.”
– Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
In particular, the band had a very poor relationship with Rolling Stone. The magazine had published a college student’s letter as a review of the first and second LPs, in which the student certified the band with low musical quality; this ruined the relationship between the band and the magazine for years. It was not until 1975 that the band gave an interview to Rolling Stone, which was conducted by Cameron Crowe, who later became known as a director, and who later used this experience in his film Almost Famous.
The band members rarely gave interviews and focused more on their albums and tours than on television appearances. They sometimes refused to conform to the music industry’s conventions. For example, the fourth album did not get a name, but was marked with four symbols to emphasize the importance of the music.
“Names, titles and things like that do not mean a thing.”
“Names, titles, and such things mean nothing.”
– Jimmy Page
The release of profitable singles usually only happened under pressure from their record label, Atlantic Records. Thus, their most famous song, “Stairway to Heaven,” which significantly contributed to the band’s popularity, was never released as a single. In Great Britain, not a single single was released until 1997.
Led Zeppelin, along with Deep Purple and Black Sabbath, is considered one of the first and most significant bands of hard rock and is now regarded as pioneering for the later development of heavy metal.
Along with many other musicians, the members of the group Guns N’ Roses also openly admitted to having taken Led Zeppelin as a model. For example, guitarist Slash contributed to a tribute album in 1997. In addition, there is a prevailing opinion that the heavy, typical “Led Zeppelin sound” paved the way for grunge. For example, members of the band Nirvana, particularly Dave Grohl, said that they were big fans of the band. Musicians from the pop scene also point out:
“I was born in Colombia, but influenced by bands like Led Zeppelin, The Cure, […] […] I loved that rock sound a lot.”
– Shakira
The songs have been covered numerous times by musicians of various genres. Numerous significant artists also performed Led Zeppelin songs live or recorded them in the studio, including musicians like Frank Zappa and Joe Bonamassa, the progressive metal bands Dream Theater and Tool, as well as other renowned bands like Iron Maiden, Van Halen, Zakk Wylde, Pearl Jam, and the German bands Grave Digger and Puhdys.
Since Robert Plant established the vocal and clothing style of a stereotypical hard rock singer, Jimmy Page’s guitar solos were very popular and frequently covered, and John Bonham had a significant influence on the style and technique of many drummers after him, Led Zeppelin can still be seen today as the prototypical hard rock band. The band’s significance can still be seen in sales figures: since 1990, more than ten years after their break-up, over twenty million albums have been sold. 38% of purchases in the years 2002-2006 were made by fans under 25, which indicates that even younger people still listen to Led Zeppelin’s music.
Despite initial disdain, Rolling Stone ranked Led Zeppelin 14th in its 2004 list of the 100 greatest artists of all time.
Allegations of plagiarism
The band has been sued multiple times for copyright infringement. In most cases, a settlement was reached with the plaintiffs. In other cases, the band agreed to name the actual authors. A case that has been much discussed in musical circles concerns the song Whole Lotta Love, an important step on the way to world fame. The band was sued by Willie Dixon, whose song You Need Love was clearly the inspiration for the lyrics. However, the direct musical model for “Whole Lotta Love” was “You Need Loving” by the Small Faces. Their singer Steve Marriott later said that Plant had completely copied his interpretation. There were also allegations of plagiarism with Stairway to Heaven. The bassist of the band Spirit, Mark Andes, sued Led Zeppelin in court, claiming that the beginning of Stairway to Heaven was stolen from the Spirit song Taurus. Led Zeppelin won the case.
Trivia
The band was also accused of hiding satanic backward messages in the song “Stairway to Heaven.” Robert Plant denied this in interviews.
