Led Zeppelin is one of the most iconic Rock & Roll bands, but their name has eluded music fans for generations.
The legend of the name goes back to when guitarist Jimmy Page pitched a new group to Keith Moon, the drummer for The Who.
He suggested that the two join forces with Robert Plant, John Bonham, and John Paul Jones.
Moon quipped that the band would, ‘go over like a lead balloon’, joking that the group would fail.
The phrase inspired the iconic name, except Page opted to spell ‘lead’ like ‘led’ so that it wouldn’t be mispronounced.
A ‘zeppelin’ is a type of cylindrical gas-filled aircraft named after its German inventor, Ferdinand Zon Zeppelin.
Alas, the name was born and the band soared to become the opposite of what their name suggested.
Before they became Led Zeppelin, Page, Plant, Bonham, and Jones toured under the name, New Yardbirds.
People are just now realizing that the band, Led Zeppelin, is named after a lead balloon, inspired by a comment made by The Who’s Keith Moon
Keith Moon told Jimmy Page that the band would ‘go over like a lead balloon,’ inspiring the iconic name
The band first performed under the name New Yardbirds before becoming Led Zeppelin
They performed their first show at a converted gym used as a ‘teen club’ in Denmark on September 7, 1968.
They took their name at the time from a popular British blues band called the Yardbirds.
Page toured with the Yardbirds, and recruited the other three members when his first band fell through.
He funded the band’s first tour in Scandinavia, and after performing their last show in Oslo, Norway, they jetted back to London to record an album.
Page revealed in a book titled, Conversations with Jimmy Page, that they arrived at the Atlantic record label with a tape in hand.
‘We recorded the whole first album in a matter of thirty hours. That’s the truth. I know, because I paid the bill,’ he said in the book.
The band dropped their debut self-titled album the following year, which fittingly featured a black and white photo of a zeppelin balloon on the cover.
Led Zeppelin went on to become a ginormous commercial success, dropping their quintessential song, Stairway to Heaven, in 1971.
The eight-minute rock ballad became known to be one of the most popular songs of all time and The Rolling Stone ranked it 61 on its list of 500 Greatest Songs.
Led Zeppelin became one of the most iconic Rock & Roll bands of all time, winning multiple Grammy Awards and being inducted into the Hall of Fame
The band tragically broke up in 1980 after their drummer John Bonham suddenly died, but their iconic song, Stairway to Heaven, has gone down in history as one of the most popular rock ballads
The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995 and was bestowed the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammys in 2005.
Tragically, Led Zeppelin announced they were breaking up in December 1980, after Bonham died.
The group was set to embark on a tour when Bonham died from asphyxiation after he had choked on vomit while asleep.
‘We wish it to be known, that the loss of our dear friend and the deep respect we have for his family, together with the deep sense of undivided harmony felt by ourselves and our manager, have led us to decide that we could not continue as we were,’ the band said at the time.
Led Zeppelin was honored by the Kennedy Center in 2012 and the surviving members sat for tribute performances by The Foo Fighters, Kid Rock, Lenny Kravitz, and Heart.
