19 October: Led Zeppelin

On this date in 1968 Jimmy Page's "New Yardbirds" renamed themselves "Led Zeppelin". 10 things you might not know about Led Zeppelin:

1. It all started with Jimmy Page, a member of a band called the Yardbirds. One member of the band left and the rest of them were all for winding the band down. Page, however, had aspirations to form a supergroup. The line-up which was to become Led Zeppelin was gathered together initially to fulfil a contractual obligation the original Yardbirds had to tour in Scandinavia.
2. During this tour, and for a few months afterwards, the band was known as The New Yardbirds. It was when Page raised the suggestion of a supergroup with John Entwhistle and Keith Moon of The Who, Moon allegedly commented, "that will go over like a Lead balloon." Entwistle allegedly added, “a lead zeppelin!” So why are they not called "Lead Zeppelin"? They dropped the letter "A" as they didn't want people mispronouncing it as "leed".
3. The name did go over like a lead balloon as far as one lady was concerned. Her name was Frau Eva von Zeppelin, and she was a direct descendant of Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin. She tried to get them to change it on the grounds it dishonoured her family name. They did change it, but only for one night, when they briefly appeared as "The Nobs". The public preferred the name Led Zeppelin so they continued to use it thereafter.
4. The band's members were: Robert Plant (lead vocals, harmonica), Jimmy Page (Guitar, Theremin, live backing vocals), John Paul Jones (bass, keyboards, occasional backing vocals) and John Bonham (Drums, percussion, occasional backing vocals).
5. Their fourth album is technically untitled. The band were getting sick of critics slating their music and wanted to be as anonymous as possible. Instead of their names, the cover showed a set of four symbols which each member had chosen to represent themselves. Jones chose a circle with three interlocking ovals which he got from a book of runes, which is supposed to represent a confident and competent person. Bonham chose his symbol from the same book. Plant’s symbol of a circle around a feather represents Ma’at, the Egyptian goddess of truth and justice. Page's symbol? Who knows? His symbol appeared to spell out the word “Zoso,” so fans referred to the album as that, even though Page claimed his mysterious symbol was not made up of letters at all.
6. In 1971, Page bought a house near Loch Ness which had been owned by the occultist Aleister Crowley, which Page claimed was haunted, not by Crowley but by people who'd met grisly ends there before Crowley was even born. It on the site of a church which had burned down with the congregation still inside, and a man had been beheaded there.
7. Were the group Satanists? Page's interest in Crowley and the fact he had Crowley’s motto “Do what thou wilt” inscribed in the run-off groove of Led Zeppelin III vinyl records led people to think so. There was a theory that if you play some of the tracks backwards, you can hear subliminal Satanic messages. Robert Plant debunked that by saying “You’ve got to have a lot of time on your hands to even consider that people would do that.” What you can hear, During The Ocean, is a telephone ringing, twice. The song was recorded in a private house, and nobody heard the phone ringing while they were recording.
8. They were JRR Tolkien fans, however, and there are numerous references to Lord of the Rings and its characters in their songs. Hence the cloaked figure with a lantern in the inside cover of their fourth album was assumed to be from Lord of the Rings as well, In fact, it's a figure from Tarot Cards, The Hermit.
9. The band had a custom made private plane which was the first Boeing 720-022 ever built. It included such features as a 30-foot long couch, a bar with an electronic organ built into it, a TV set, a video cassette player, and a bedroom with a white fur bedspread and a shower room. It set them back $30,000 and they named it “The Starship”. Bonham is said to have taken the controls at one occasion and flew the plane from New York to Los Angeles, despite not having a pilot's licence.
10. Jimmy Page appeared on TV when he was 13, and stated then that he wanted to become a scientist and find a cure for cancer. He didn't do that, but he did do charity work with poor Brazilian children. When he received an OBE in 2005, it was for that, not anything to do with Music.

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