Led Zeppelin Biography

A very popular British band, Led Zeppelin is best known for the hit song ‘Stairway to Heaven’ along and their contribution in creating the music genre of heavy metal. They have recorded 9 albums between 1968 and 1979 and have sold over 300 million records.

The Beginning

Lead guitarist Jimmy Page originally started the band named ‘The New Yardbirds’ in 1968 to fulfill some prior performance commitments that were booked before the breakup of the original Yardbirds band. The members of this band were John Paul, Robert Plant, John Bonham and Jimmy himself. In October 1968, the band took the name ‘Led Zeppelin’ after a humorous discussion in which it was suggested that their chances of going down was as good as a lead balloon. But fortunately, around this time British bands were highly anticipated in the United States and Ahmet Ertegun, who was the founder of Atlantic Records signed the band without even meeting them.

Early Days

The band’s original album ‘Led Zeppelin’ was recorded and mixed in less than 36 hours in October 1968. The album was released on 12th January 1969 during their first tour to the United States. The album became of the pivotal records in the creation of heavy metal music as it contained a very interesting blend of blues, eastern influences and folk along with distorted amplification.

In this year, the group managed to complete four concert tours in US and UK each and also released their second album ‘Led Zeppelin II’. This album was a far greater hit than the first album and reached the number one position in both the US and UK. It has been suggested that this album was the road map for the 1970’s hard rock.

The third album ‘Led Zeppelin III’ was recorded from a remote cottage known as ‘Bron-Yr-Aur’ with no electricity in Wales during 1970. This resulted in a more acoustic sound that was strongly influenced by Celtic and Folk music. This album was initially received with mixed reactions as many people were surprised by the approach that the band took away from their primarily electric compositions that was seen in their first two albums. However, over a period of time, people came to appreciate this approach and the album is now famous for the acoustic variations.

Biggest Band in the World

The success that the band had enjoyed so far was very small when compared to the success that they the attained in early 1970’s.

The band released its fourth album on 8th November, 1971. The cover of the album contained no indication of the band name or the title of the album. This initiative was taken by the band because the media had labeled them as hyped and overrated and the band wanted to prove that their music was good enough to sell itself and did not require any label.

The band took a break from all the touring that it was doing in 1974 to launch their own record label ‘Swan Song’. They used this label to promote their own albums and also signed on artists like Bad Company, Maggie Bell and Wildlife.

The first double album of the band ‘Physical Graffiti’ was released under their new label on February 24, 1975 and consisted of 15 songs. The album received huge critical and financial success. The release of this album also brought back all previous albums of the band back into the top 200 album chart.

Towards the End

The next album, ‘Presence’ was released in March 1976 which marked a change in the traditional sounds used by the band like acoustic ballads and intricate arrangements towards straightforward guitar based jams. Although this album attained the status of a platinum seller, the album received a mixed response from fan and critics and many believed the work to be sloppy.

By late 1976, Led Zeppelin had attained world wide popularity and had outsold most of the bands including the Rolling Stones. Despite all the success, the members of the band had their own personal set of devastations including the death of Robert Plant’s son in 1977, heroin abuse of Jimmy Page and changing tastes of the people in music.

John Bonham’s death in 1980 led to the disbanding of Led Zeppelin.