Eventually, they took their name from a flippant remark made by Who bass player John Entwistle concerning supergroups. In the fall of 1966, Entwistle and the Who's drummer Keith Moon had been involved in a recording session with Yardbirds guitarists Page and Jeff Beck and session pianist Nicky Hopkins that produced the song "Beck's Bolero." At the time, there was a discussion of forming a group, which never came to fruition. Later, however, Entwistle and Moon were still unhappy about being in the Who, and Entwistle, speaking to Yardbirds tour manager Richard Cole, brought up the idea of the supergroup again, saying they should call it Lead Zeppelin because it would go over like a lead balloon. Page, of course, heard about the name from Cole, and eventually used it for the new group (with a slight spelling change).
Led Zeppelin toured the US in early 1969 opening for the hippie psychedelic-flavored San Francisco band, Vanilla Fudge. Their first album (Led Zeppelin) was released in February; within two months it had reached Billboard's Top Ten. It was an amalgam of various styles. According to Jimmy Page: "The music that influenced the first Led Zeppelin album was Muddy Waters, [Pete] Townshend, [Joan] Baez, a lot of rockabilly. "
Their second album (Led Zeppelin II) reached #1 two months after its release, and after that every Led Zeppelin album ever released went platinum (one million records sold in the US). By 1975 their immense ticket and album sales had made Led Zeppelin the most popular rock'n'roll group in the world. In 1974, they established their own record label, Swan Song.
On August 4, 1975, Plant and his family were seriously injured in a car crash while vacationing on the Greek island of Rhodes. As a result, the group toured very infrequently. That, and speculation among fans that supernatural forces may have come into play also heightened the Zeppelin mystique. (Plant believed in psychic phenomena, and Page, whose interest in the occult was well known, resides in the former home of infamous satanist Aleister Crowley).
In 1976, Led Zeppelin released Presence. They toured America in 1977, but the tour was cut short by the sudden death of Plant's young son, Karac. The abrupt end of the tour would also mark the end of an era for the band. When Zeppelin re-emerged in September, 1979 with In Through The Out Door and played their first concert dates in years, they were clearly not the cocky heavy metal heroes who had once ruled stages and album charts for a decade.
In 1980 tragedy struck again. On September 25, drummer John Bonham died at Jimmy Page's Windsor home of what was described as asphyxiation; he had inhaled his own vomit after having consumed alcohol and fallen asleep. That December, Zeppelin released a cryptic statement to the effect that they could no longer continue as they were. Soon thereafter, it was rumored that Plant and Page were going to form a band called XYZ with Alan White and Chris Squire of Yes, but the group never materialized.
Aside from recording the soundtrack to the film Death Wish II in 1983 and appearing in the brief ARMS tour (to benefit former Small-Faces member Ronnie Lane, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, Jimmy Page was barely heard from in the first few years of the 1980s. He finally saw the light of day at the beginning of 1985 with a new band called The Firm. In 1988 he issued the mostly instrumental Outrider LP as a solo effort, but so far he has been unable to rekindle the flame of his Zeppelin past.
Led Zeppelin was a magic combination of artists in just the right place at just the right time. To have held the band together so successfully for so long is a rare achievement in itself. But the amount of influence they have had on the course of rock'n'roll puts them in a class of a very select few, now and forever.
Looking back is an odd phenomenon for those who lived those heady times. Jimmy Page feels now that "whatever happened, happened. When you look back, you become analytical. And when you analyze an entire piece it has something to do with the mood you're in or the condition you work under. And I was very intimidated. I don't know, maybe I had a complex or maybe I was neurotic, but I always thought, 'This is all too much. Am I really here?'"
As for their feelings about the band now, Plant wants "to maintain the dignity of the group. I think that the way that it is now, whatever it was that people loved, is not going to be spoiled. I think the active Led Zeppelin was bold and brave and honest, and it took risks and chances which are no longer possible if you start from scratch. It captured all of the wonderful elements of music to which we'd been exposed. We begged, borrowed and stole and then made something that was particularly original, and by which a lot of other music has been measured. And I'm very proud of people being so enchanted by it."
Interview with Robert Plant
Backstage with Robert Plant