(Plant believed in psychic phenomena, and Page, whose interest in the occult was well known, once resided in Boleskine House, the former home of infamous satanist Aleister Crowley.) That and speculation among fans that supernatural forces may have come into play also heightened the Zeppelin mystique. As a result, the group toured even less frequently. On August 4, 1975, Plant and his family were seriously injured in a car crash while vacationing on the Greek island of Rhodes. The label's first release was Physical Graffiti (Number One, 1975), the band's first double-album set, which sold 4 million copies. In 1974 the quartet established its own label, Swan Song.
tour broke box-office records throughout the country (many of which had been set by the Beatles), and by 1975 its immense ticket and album sales had made Led Zeppelin the most popular rock & roll group in the world. After touring almost incessantly during its first two years together, Zeppelin began limiting its appearances to alternating years. Led Zeppelin II reached Number One two months after its release, and since then every album of new material has gone platinum five of the group's LPs have reached Number One. Their first album was released in February within two months it had reached Billboard's Top 10. in early 1969, opening for Vanilla Fudge. sales of more than 100 million records.Īdopting the name Led Zeppelin (allegedly coined by Keith Moon), they toured the U.S.
Though sometimes critically derided during their lifespan, Led Zeppelin was unquestionably one of the most enduring bands in rock history, with U.S. A song that builds from a folk-baroque acoustic setting to screaming heavy metal, "Stairway to Heaven," fittingly became the best-known Led Zeppelin song and a staple of FM airplay, although like most of the group's "hits," it was never released as a single. Page and Robert Plant were also grounded in British folk music and fascinated by mythology, Middle Earth fantasy, and the occult, as became increasingly evident from the band's later albums (the fourth LP's title is comprised of four runic characters). Few of the many acts that try to imitate Led Zeppelin can make the same claim. Like its ancestors the Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin used a guitar style that drew heavily on the blues its early repertoire included remakes of songs by Howlin' Wolf, Albert King, and Willie Dixon (who later won a sizable settlement from the band in a suit in which he alleged copyright infringement).īut Jimmy Page blessed the group with a unique understanding of the guitar and the recording studio as electronic instruments, and of rock as sculptured sound like Jimi Hendrix, Page had a reason for every bit of distortion, feedback, reverberation, and out-and-out noise that he incorporated. It wasn't just Led Zeppelin's thunderous volume, sledgehammer beat, and edge-of-mayhem arrangements that made it the most influential and successful heavy-metal pioneer.
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