Led Zeppelin colorized

Led Zeppelin 1968

Led Zeppelin formed in September 1968. Led Zeppelin consisted of Jimmy Page (guitar), Robert Plant (vocals), John Paul Jones (bass guitar/keyboards) and John Bonham (drums).

Keith Moon and John Entwistle suggested that a possible supergroup containing themselves, Jimmy Page, and Jeff Beck would go down like a lead zeppelin, a term Entwistle used to describe a bad gig. The group deliberately dropped the ‘a’ in Lead to aid pronunciation. Jimmy Page had already been a bassist and guitarist in the Yardbirds, John Paul Jones was a session musician, John Bonham and Robert Plant were musicians from the Birmingham area. They came together through mutual connections.

Their manager, Peter Grant, secured an advance deal of $200,000 from Atlantic Records in November 1968, then the biggest deal of its kind for a new band. Atlantic signed Led Zeppelin without having ever seen them, largely on the recommendation of Dusty Springfield. Under the terms of the contract, the band alone would decide when they would release albums and tour, and had final say over the contents and design of each album. They also would decide which (if any) tracks to select as singles. “Stairway to Heaven” was never released as a single, although others were without the band’s consent.

Led Zeppelin I, the band’s first album, cost £1,750 to produce (including artwork) and by 1975, it had grossed $7,000,000.

During much of the seventies the group was considered the biggest and best rock group around.

On 10 December 2007 the surviving members of Led Zeppelin reunited for a one-off concert in memory of Ahmet Ertegün, with Jason Bonham (the late John Bonham’s son) on drums. The concert was to help raise money for the Ahmet Ertegün Education Fund, which pays for university scholarships in the UK, US and Turkey.

Recently both Robert Plant and Jimmy Page have both revealed that they are prepared to embark upon a world tour with Led Zeppelin or at least the odd gig, however due to Robert Plant’s tour commitments with Alison Krauss, such plans will not be announced until at least September 2008.

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