Led Zeppelin formed out of the ashes of The Yardbirds. Jimmy Page had joined the band in its final days, playing a pivotal role on their final album, 1967's "Little Games", which also featured string arrangements from John Paul Jones, a musical arranger, bassist, and keyboard player. During 1967, The Yardbirds were fairly inactive, and while they decided their future, Page returned to session work. In the Spring of 1968, he played on Jones' arrangement of Donovan's "Hurdy Gurdy Man". During the sessions, Jones requested to be part of any future project Page would develop. Page and Jones, were already big names on the session circuit. They had worked on tracks by stars such as The Kinks, Dusty Springfield and Van Morrison. Page would have to assemble a band sooner than he had planned. In the Summer of 1968, The Yardbirds' Keith Relf and James McCarty left the band, leaving Page and bassist Chris Dreja with the rights to the name, as well as the obligation of fulfilling an upcoming Fall tour. Page set out to find a replacement vocalist and drummer. Initially, he wanted to enlist singer Terry Reid and The Who's drummer, Keith Moom, but both declined. Reid suggested that Page contact Robert Plant, who was singing with a band called Hobbstweedle.
As soon as he heard his powerful voice, Page asked Plant to join the band in August of 1968, the same month Chris Dreja dropped out of the new project. Following Dreja's departure, John Paul Jones joined the group as its bassist. Plant recommended that Page hire John Bonham, the drummer for Plant's old band, The Band of Joy. Bonham had to be persuaded to join the group, as he was being courted by other artists who offered the drummer considerably more money. By September, Bonham agreed to sign on. The quartet gelled immediately and having completed outstanding commitments under the name The New Yardbirds, became Led Zeppelin, following a quip by The Who's Keith Moon, who, when assessing their prospects, remarked that they would probably 'go down like a lead Zeppelin.'
The following month, they recorded their debut album in just under 30 hours and secured a contract with Atlantic Records in the United States before the end of the year. Early in 1969, Led Zeppelin set out on their first American tour, opening for Vanilla Fudge, and helped set the stage for the January release of their first album. Two months later, "Led Zeppelin" had climbed into the U.S. Top Ten. Throughout 1969, the band toured relentlessly, playing dates in America and England. While they were on the road, they recorded their second album, "Led Zeppelin II", which was released in October of 1969. Like its predecessor, "Led Zeppelin II" was an immediate hit, topping the American charts two months after its release and spending seven weeks at number one. The introductory track, "Whole Lotta Love", a thinly veiled rewrite of Willie Dixon's "You Need Love", has since become a classic, while "Livin' Lovin' Maid (She's Just A Woman)" and "Moby Dick", were a staple part of the quartet's early repertoire. The album helped establish Led Zeppelin as an international concert attraction, and for the next year the group continued to tour.
Led Zeppelin's sound began to deepen with Led "Zeppelin III". Released in October of 1970, the album featured an overt British Folk influence. The group's infatuation with Folk and mythology would reach a fruition on their untitled fourth album, which was released in November of 1971. "Led Zeppelin IV" was the band's most musically diverse effort to date, featuring everything from the crunching Rock of "Black Dog" to the Folk of "The Battle of Evermore", as well as "Stairway to Heaven", which found the bridge between the two genres. "Stairway to Heaven" was an immediate radio hit, eventually becoming the most played song in the history of album-oriented radio, although the song was never released as a single. Despite the fact that the album never reached number one in America, "Led Zeppelin IV" was their biggest album ever, selling well over 16 million copies over the next two and a half decades.
Led Zeppelin did tour to support both "Led Zeppelin III" and "Led Zeppelin IV", but they played fewer shows than they did on their previous outings. Instead, they concentrated on only playing larger venues. After completing their 1972 tour, the band retreated from the spotlight and recorded their fifth album. Released in the Spring of 1973, "Houses of the Holy" continued the band's musical experimentation, featuring touches of Funk and Reggae among their trademark Rock and Folk. "Houses of the Holy" debuted at number one in both America and Britain, setting the stage for a record-breaking American tour. Throughout their 1973 tour, Led Zeppelin broke box-office records, most of which were previously held by The Beatles, across America. The group's concert at Madison Square Garden in July was filmed for use in the feature film, The Song Remains the Same, which was released three years later. After their 1973 tour, Led Zeppelin spent a quiet year during 1974, releasing no new material and performing no concerts. They did, however, establish their own record label, Swan Song, which released all of Led Zeppelin's subsequent albums, as well as records by Dave Edmunds, Bad Company, The Pretty Things, and several others.
"Physical Graffiti", a double album released in February of 1975, was the band's first release on Swan Song. The album was an immediate success, topping the charts in both America and England. Led Zeppelin was preparing to launch a large American tour in the late Summer of 1975 when Robert Plant and his wife were involved in a serious car crash while vacationing in Greece. Plans for the tour were canceled and Plant spent the rest of the year recuperating from the accident.
The band returned to action in the Spring of 1976 with "Presence". Although the album debuted at number one in both America and England, the reviews for it were lukewarm. The band finally returned to tour America in the Spring of 1977, but a couple of months into the trek, Robert Plant's six-year-old son Karac died of a stomach infection. Led Zeppelin immediately canceled the tour and offered no word whether or not it would be rescheduled, causing widespread speculation about the band's future. For a while, it did appear that Led Zeppelin was finished. Robert Plant spent the latter half of 1977 and the better part of 1978 in seclusion. The group didn't begin work on a new album until late in the Summer of 1978 when they began recording at ABBA's Polar studios in Sweden. A year later, the band played a short European tour, performing in Switzerland, Germany, Holland, Belgium, and Austria. In August of 1979, Led Zeppelin played two large concerts at Knebworth. The shows would be their last English performances.
"In Through the Out Door", the band's much-delayed eighth studio album, was finally released in September of 1979. The album entered the charts at number one in both America and England and in May of 1980, Led Zeppelin embarked on their final European tour. In September, Led Zeppelin was rehearsing at Jimmy Page's house in preparation for an American tour, when on September 25th, John Bonham was found dead in his bed, following an all-day drinking binge. He had passed out and choked on his own vomit. In December of 1980, Led Zeppelin announced they were disbanding, saying they could not continue without Bonham.
Following the break-up, the remaining members all began solo careers. John Paul Jones never released a solo album. Instead, he returned to producing and arranging. After recording the soundtrack for the film Death Wish II, Jimmy Page compiled the Zeppelin out-takes collection, "Coda", which was released at the end of 1982. That same year, Robert Plant began a solo career with the "Pictures At Eleven" album. In 1984, Plant and Page briefly reunited in the all-star oldies band, The Honeydrippers. After recording one EP with The Honeydrippers, Plant returned to his solo career and Page formed The Firm with former Bad Company singer Paul Rogers. In 1985, Led Zeppelin reunited to play Live Aid, sparking off a flurry of reunion rumors. That reunion never materialized, although in 1988 the band re-formed to play Atlantic's 25th Anniversary Concert. During 1989, Page re-mastered the band's catalogue for release on the 1990 box set, "Led Zeppelin". The four-disc set became the biggest selling multi-disc box set of all time.
Page and Plant went two-thirds of the way to a re-formation in 1994 with their ironically titled "Unledded" album, though John Paul Jones was conspicuous by his absence (for want of an invitation). The duo cemented the relationship with an album of new Page And Plant material in 1998. The Summer of 2003 saw the release of "How The West Was Won", a triple CD of live performances at the Los Angeles Forum and Long Beach Arena in June, 1972, melded together and sequenced to replicate a single concert from beginning to end. Also issued at the same time was a Led Zeppelin DVD, featuring concert footage taken from the few performances which were ever filmed during the band's lifetime.
A full scale Led Zeppelin reunion finally took place on December 10th, 2007 when Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones were joined by John Bonham's son, Jason for a 16-song set at London's O2 Arena as a part of a benefit concert for the Ahmet Ertegun Education Fund, which provides scholarships for gifted children. Page, Jones and Jason Bonham were reported to be willing to tour, but Plant still had touring commitments with Alison Krauss starting in September, 2008. The trio looked for a replacement for singer and considered Aerosmith's Steven Tyler and Myles Kennedy of Alter Bridge, but in January 2009 it was confirmed that the project had been abandoned.
In May, 2014, Nonesuch Records announced that they had signed a deal with Robert Plant to record his tenth solo album and in November, Jimmy Page revealed plans to tour in 2015. Led Zeppelin was still being fondly remembered when a panel from BBC Radio 2, music DJs, critics and record producers voted the guitar intro to "Whole Lotta Love" as The Best Guitar Riff Of All Time in August 2014. The band was in the news again in November, 2014 when reports surfaced that they had been offered $800 million to reform by business tycoon Sir Richard Branson. The story was quickly dismissed as "rubbish" by Robert Plant.
In the Summer of 2015 Robert Plant was touring as a solo act, as was John Paul Jones. Jimmy Page was laying the groundwork for what he called, "a new project." The last of a series of reissued albums, which began sequentially in early 2014, concluded with beefed-up editions of "Presence", "In Through the Out Door" and "Coda", all of which headed back to the Top Ten on Billboard's album chart. Commenting on the final reissues, Page seemed to put to rest any Led Zeppelin reunion hopes when he said, "This is closure, if you want to use that word, on the recording world, the studio world of Led Zeppelin." In November, 2015, Page announced that his first solo album in thirty years would be issued in 2016. He was also busy assembling a band that he said would be "totally different" from Led Zeppelin, and planning a tour of the Southern US in March, 2016.
On June 23rd, 2016, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant won a copyright lawsuit that claimed they had plagiarized the music to their most celebrated song, "Stairway to Heaven". A Los Angeles jury determined that the lawyer representing the estate of late guitarist Randy Wolfe, who played with the group Spirit, did not prove that the band lifted the song's intro from Spirit's 1968 instrumental "Taurus".
Some great news for fans came in December, 2017 when Jimmy Page announced that some unheard songs from the Led Zeppelin vault would be released in 2018 to help celebrate the band's 50th anniversary. Robert Plant was also slated to release a live DVD that features an eight-song performance with his current band, The Sensational Space Shifters. That news was dampened a bit in February, 2018 when Page told music magazine Planet Rock that he does not foresee any more live shows by the legendary band. "I very much doubt we'll do anything else. I really think the time has gone." He did, however talk about plans for some new Led Zeppelin products. "There's a lot of stuff to come out, a number of releases. I'd like to say that they'll be coming out over the next ten years. There's more to come for sure."
Robert Plant's plans for 2018 included a string of North American dates set to kick off in June. Just before that happened, Plant got together with Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones to announce Led Zeppelin by Led Zeppelin, the first and only official illustrated book to be produced in collaboration with the band. The collection was described as "A gold mine for diehard Zeppelin heads," that features previously unpublished photos, artwork from the Led Zeppelin archives and contributions from photographers around the world.
The band was back in the news again in late September, 2018 when a California appeals court overruled the 2016 case that said they did not steal the opening riff of "Stairway To Heaven" from "Taurus" by the band Spirit. The court cited a series of errors by the previous case's judge. As for new music, Jimmy Page announced in mid-December, 2018 that "new stuff" outside of Led Zeppelin would be coming in the following year. Robert Plant and The Sensational Space Shifters were scheduled to embark on a ten date North American tour on September 13th, 2019. In early March, 2020, Plant announced a seven date tour of the U.S. set to run in May, this time with a new band called Saving Grace.
On March 9th, 2020 the U.S. appeals court reinstated a jury's verdict that Led Zeppelin did not steal the opening guitar riff to "Stairway To Heaven" from a song called "Taurus", written by Randy Wolfe of the band Spirit. Wolfe, who used the stage name Randy California, drowned in 1997, and the lawsuit was brought by a trustee for his estate. Five months later, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case. In July of that year, Jimmy Page seemed to dash the hopes of fans everywhere when he remarked that it is "really unlikely" the band will be getting back together for another tour. He made the statement while appearing on the Zoe Ball Breakfast Show on BBC2. Meanwhile, Robert Plant kept busy with his hugely popular Digging Deep: The Robert Plant Podcast. He also made a return to the stage on July 19th, 2021 in Worthington, England with his new band, Saving Grace, which includes vocalist Suzy Dian, mandolinist and guitar player Tony Kelsey, banjo and guitar player Matt Worley and percussionist Oli Jefferson. The vocalist also announced a new album with Alison Krauss called "Raise The Roof" would be available on November 19 on Rounder Records.
In mid-October, 2021, Led Zeppelin launched their own official TikTok account (@ledzeppelin) that will feature the band's artwork and graphics, classic live performances, and other video content. Jimmy Page was back in the news again in April, 2022 when it was announced that he had turned down an offer to appear on Ozzy Osbourne's upcoming album. He explained that he was not comfortable recording alone and then sending in a track that would be mixed later in another studio. He also hinted that he was working on a new album, but would not give any details just yet.
Robert Plant was scheduled to appear with Alison Krauss during the summer months of 2022 before touring the UK with his band, Saving Grace.
Some great news for fans of Led Zeppelin came during the first week of September, 2022 when footage from the band's September 4, 1970 concert at the LA Forum was finally made available on YouTube. The footage was shot by a fan named Eddie Vincent, who snuck a Kodak Brownie 8mm camera into the arena. The camera could only capture 30 seconds at a time, but Vincent did manage to record snippets of "What is and What Should Never Be", "Whole Lotta Love", "Thank You" and several other tunes.
Meanwhile, Robert Plant was busy with plans to continue touring with Alison Krauss in venues across America in 2023.
Although their commercial success is unquestionable, Led Zeppelin are now rightly recognized as one of the most influential bands of the Rock era and their catalogue continues to provide inspiration to successive generations of musicians.
