Fact #89695

The Early Days of Led Zeppelin by Johnny Black

You'd have been forgiven for not noticing the birth announcement for Led Zeppelin in September 1968.

It appeared as a tiny entry tucked away on the back page of NME, which said "Newcomers to Yardbirds group include John Paul Jones and vocalist Bob Plante."

Even if you had noticed it, the fact that future sex god Robert Plant's surname was mis-spelled would have entirely escaped your attention because, until then, his name was all but unknown outside a few small venues in Birmingham. He was also far from being first choice for the job. Yardbirds guitarist Jimmy Page had his eye on Steve Marriott of The Small Facesand Steve Winwood of Traffic but neither was interested in joining a band whose career seemed obviously at an end. Page then sought out up and coming Terry Reid but even he wouldn't take the chance.

Reid, however, was good enough to suggest that Page should check out the vocalist in a thoroughly obscure Birmingham band that went by the name of Hobbstweedle. Undeterred by their patently daft monicker, Page drove north to see Hobbstweedle playing at a teachers' training college where, to his surprise and delight he was blown away by the raw, dynamic and gutsy Robert Plant.

"I'd originally thought of getting Terry Reid in as lead singer and second guitarist," says Jimmy Page, "but he had just signed with Mickie Most as a solo artist in a quirk of fate. He suggested I get in touch with Robert Plant, who was then in a band called Hobbstweedle."

According to Plant, "The only reason I got the job in 'Obstweedle, which always gets spelt wrong, is because the original singer got food poisoning. They were a rock band playing Moby Grape and Buffalo Springfield stuff. I stood in for the stricken singer, and wasn't there for long. It was at the last 'Obstweedle gig that Jimmy Page came along and waved his wand at me. He said, 'Are you the roadie?' I said, 'We can't afford roadies.' He said, 'I'm looking for Robert Plant.' I said, 'So am I.' "

"When I auditioned him and heard him sing," adds Page, "I immediately thought there must be something wrong with him personality-wise or that he had to be impossible to work with, because I just could not understand why, singing for a few years already, he hadn't become a big name yet.

"So I had him down to my place for a little while, just to sort of check him out, and we got along great. No problems.

"We talked about the possibilities of various types of things, Dazed And Confused, for example. Then I played him a version of Babe I'm Gonna Leave You. It was the version by Joan Baez, the song is traditional, and I said, Fancy doing this? He sort of looked at me with wonder and I said, "Well, I've got an idea for an arrangement," and started playing it on acoustic guitar. That's indicative of the way I was thinking with regards to direction. It was very easy-going."

"So we got in Robert Plant to sing," remembers Led Zeppelin's manager Peter Grant, "the only missing link was the drummer."

Clem Cattini, formerly with The Tornadoes and, by this time, a noted session drummer, was one of those in the running for the Zeppelin drumstool. "I turned down the Zeppelin job," he says. "I didn't know at the time that I'd turned it down. Not until a few years later. I'd just come off the road with Johnny Kidd And The Pirates and The Tornados, and I suddenly found myself in a situation where I was sleeping in my own bed every night. Then (Led Zeppelin manager) Peter Grant phoned me and asked me out to lunch. He said he had a project for me, but I never took up the offer. A few years later, when Zeppelin were huge, I asked Peter if that was the offer and he said, 'Yes,' So I might have been in Led Zeppelin. I knew Jimmy Page really well too…"

Also in the running was Mac Poole, who remembers, "I went to see a Joe Cocker show where Robert Plant told me he was putting a band together with Jimmy Page. He said they had a bass player called John Paul Jones, and they were going to call themselves The New Yardbirds. They just needed a drummer. This was Robert's way of seeing if I was available. But I had my own band and didn't want to let the other boys down, so I backed away. The conversation was curtailed when Joe Cocker started on-stage. At the end of the show I said to Robert, 'Do you think you'll ever be as big as him?' Of course, a few years down the line, I was thinking, 'I've done a wrong 'un here.'

But Page was still casting his net around. "At this time a number of drummers had approached me and wanted to work with us," he recalls. "Robert suggested I go hear John Bonham, whom I'd heard of because he had a reputation, but had never seen. I asked Robert if he knew him and he told me they'd worked together in this group called Band Of Joy."

As Peter Grant recalls, "Jimmy called me up and said he'd seen this fantastic drummer who was so loud no club in his native Birmingham would book the band he was with, The Band Of Joy. It was Bonzo. Jimmy just had to have him in the band. I sent him loads of telegrams and messages, none of which he responded to, but we persisted and eventually got him in."

So it was that Plant roped in his old mate, drummer John Bonham, although he was initially very reluctant indeed to quit a lucrative gig earning him £40 a week playing behind American folkie Tim Rose. Still, with Bonham finally on board, the, er, New Yardbirds were complete and that was the name under which they set off on their first tour - a whirlwind jaunt around Scandanavia.

Peter Grant : Robert and John were on retainers, whilst Jimmy and Jonesy were being paid more because they'd been used to higher fees from session work. In fact, the first time I met John, he offered to drive the truck for an extra £50 a week. He was a great character.

We couldn't get any interest under the name Led Zeppelin so we were forced to use the other handle. England just didn't wanna know at the time.

Jimmy Page : "We had these dates that The Yardbirds were supposed to fulfill, so we went as The Yardbirds. They were already being advertised as The New Yardbirds featuring Jimmy Page, so there wasn't much we could do about it right then. We had every intention of changing the name of the group from the very beginning, though. The tour went fantastically for us, we left them stomping the floors after every show."

Robert Plant, however, reckoned that "In Scandanavia, we were pretty green; it was very early days and we were tip-toeing with each other. We didn't have the recklessness that became for me the whole joy of Led Zeppelin." In Copenhagen, for example, the fledgling band had to overcome stage nerves, equipment problems and a couple of false starts on songs before they could eventually leave the hall quaking.

Page, nevertheless, was now convinced that what he'd pulled together out of the ashes of The Yardbirds was much more than just a marriage of convenience that could cash in on a successful name - it was a totally different band that deserved it's own identity. Former Yardbirds roadie Richard Cole reckons he handed them the name that propelled them to mega-stardom. "It emerged from a conversation I had months earlier with Keith Moon and John Entwistle who were growing weary of The Who, and were kidding about starting a new band with Jimmy Page." During the conversation, Moon quipped, "I've got a good name for it. Let's call it Lead Zeppelin, 'cause it'll go over like a lead balloon."

Cole now told that story to Plant who was sufficiently impressed to accept the new name with a minor spelling change to avoid any possibility of mis-pronunciation.

Jimmy Page : It was Moon, I'm sure, despite anything Entwistle may have said. In fact, I'm quite certain Richard Cole asked Moon for his permission when we decided to use the name. Entwistle must have just been upset that the original Led Zeppelin never took off.

The New Yardbirds played their last contractually obligated gig at Liverpool University on October 19th. Four days earlier, however, the quartet had appeared for the first time under the name Led Zeppelin at Surrey University. It was not an auspicious start. "What are we doing wrong?" bewailed Page, when that first British audience failed to respond with more than polite applause. "Why don't they like us?" he asked.

The others, equally baffled, shook their heads in dismay. By the end of the year however, salvation came in the shape of a massive deal from Atlantic Records in New York and before long it became obvious that Page's new band was never born for student union dives. Stadium rock was just coming into its own and with their swaggering bragadoccio, gigantic gestures and even bigger amplifiers, Led Zeppelin were tailor made for it.