About Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin were an English rock band formed in London in 1968. The band comprised Robert Plant , Jimmy Page , John Paul Jones and John Bonham . With a heavy, guitar-driven sound and drawing from influences including blues and folk music, Led Zeppelin are cited as a progenitor of hard rock and heavy metal. They significantly influenced the music industry, particularly in the development of album-oriented rock and stadium rock.
Led Zeppelin evolved from a previous band, the Yardbirds, and were originally named the New Yardbirds. They signed a deal with Atlantic Records that gave them considerable artistic freedom. Initially unpopular with critics, they achieved significant commercial success with eight studio albums over ten years. Their 1969 debut, Led Zeppelin, was a top-ten album in several countries and features such tracks as "Good Times Bad Times", "Dazed and Confused" and "Communication Breakdown". Led Zeppelin II , their first number-one album, includes "Whole Lotta Love" and "Ramble On". In 1970, they released Led Zeppelin III which opens with "Immigrant Song". Their untitled fourth album, commonly known as Led Zeppelin IV , is one of the best-selling albums in history, with 37 million copies sold. It includes "Black Dog", "Rock and Roll" and "Stairway to Heaven", with the latter among the most popular and influential works in rock. Houses of the Holy includes "The Song Remains the Same" and "Over the Hills and Far Away". Physical Graffiti , a double album, features "The Rover" and "Kashmir".
Page composed most of Led Zeppelin's music, while Plant wrote most of the lyrics. Jones occasionally contributed keyboard-focused parts, particularly on the band's final album. The latter half of their career saw a series of record-breaking tours that earned the group a reputation for excess and debauchery. Although they remained commercially and critically successful, their touring and output, which included Presence and In Through the Out Door , declined in the late 1970s. After Bonham's death in 1980, the group disbanded. The former members have sporadically collaborated and participated in one-off concerts, including the 2007 Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert in London, with Bonham's son Jason Bonham on drums.
Led Zeppelin are one of the best-selling music artists of all time, with estimated record sales of between 200 and 300 million units worldwide. They achieved eight consecutive UK number-one albums and six number-one albums on the US Billboard 200, with five of their albums certified Diamond in the US by the Recording Industry Association of America . Rolling Stone described them as "the heaviest band of all time", "the biggest band of the seventies", and "unquestionably one of the most enduring bands in rock history". They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995; the museum's biography states that they were "as influential" in the 1970s as the Beatles were in the 1960s.
In 1966, London-based session guitarist Jimmy Page joined the blues-influenced rock band the Yardbirds to replace bassist Paul Samwell-Smith. Page soon switched from bass to lead guitar, creating a dual lead guitar line-up with Jeff Beck. Following Beck's departure in October 1966, the Yardbirds became a four-piece with Page as the sole guitarist. This new line-up recorded an album, Little Games, in 1967, before embarking on a tour of the United States, during which they performed several songs which would later be part of Led Zeppelin's early repertoire, including covers of Johnny Burnette's "Train Kept A-Rollin'" and "Dazed and Confused", a song originally written and recorded by Jake Holmes. In early April 1968, the Yardbirds held a recording session at Columbia Studios in New York City, recording a number of tracks including a Page-Relf composition initially titled "Knowing That I'm Losing You", which would eventually be re-recorded by Led Zeppelin as "Tangerine".
The Yardbirds' 1968 tour proved to be exhausting for the band. Drummer Jim McCarty and vocalist Keith Relf aimed to embark in a more acoustic direction, forming a folk rock duo called Together, whereas Page wanted to continue the heavier blues-based sound of the Yardbirds. Page, with the support of the Yardbirds' new manager Peter Grant, planned to form a supergroup with Beck and himself on guitars, and the Who's Keith Moon and John Entwistle on drums and bass, respectively. Vocalists Steve Winwood and Steve Marriott were also considered for the project. The group never formed, although Page, Beck, and Moon did record a song together in 1966, "Beck's Bolero", in a session that also included bassist-keyboardist John Paul Jones.
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