On August 12, 50 years ago, in the basement of a record store in London, one of the bands that would later revolutionize the history of world music was taking shape: Led Zeppelin. Letās retrace their career and share an anecdote about the founding of the band formed by Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, and John "Bonzo" Bonham.
Whole Lotta Love, Stairway to Heaven, Immigrant Song, Good Times Bad Times, are just a few of the most famous songs by Led Zeppelin, the legendary British band that "saw the light" 50 years ago in the basement of a record store in London, and from that moment began to write the history of music, influencing the rock imagery of the '70s. The music of Led Zeppelin is rooted in American blues, and from their early folk-influenced albums, they transitioned to a faster and more powerful genre, with hard rock and heavy metal connotations. Their discography consists of 13 albums, nine studio albums and four live albums, nine compilations (released between 1969 and 2012), and fifteen singles, totaling approximately 300 million records sold worldwide, of which 112 million were sold in the United States alone. Their first four albums, released over two years from 1969 to 1971, bear the band's name, and what distinguishes them in the title is the numbering: it starts with Led Zeppelin and goes up to Led Zeppelin IV.
Originally, the name of Led Zeppelin was Yardbirds, the old band of Jimmy Page, which had disbanded and was then reformed by him with the other three members, Plant, Jones, and Bonham. Hereās a little anecdote about their founding, reported by ANSA: āAugust 12, '68. The basement room on Gerrard Street is small and too hot. The four can barely fit inside, and the amplifiers are bulky. But Robert Plant knows that song. And Bonzo doesn't hold back and keeps the beat. 'Aboard a train ā I met a dame' starts Plant, and the piece flows and transforms: itās not the jump blues that Tiny Bradshaw recorded in 1951, nor the rockabilly piece by Johnny Burnetteās trio from '56. It's also no longer the Yardbirds' rock piece, marked by Beck's roaring fuzz guitar. What happens on Gerrard Street is a blues full of anger and rhythm, explosive. 'It was so powerful that I donāt remember what we played afterward,' Page says to biographer Mick Wall, 'it was like lightning, like a flash.' Like a lead zeppelin, in hindsight." The rest is history.
On January 12, 1995, the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, while in a ranking compiled in 2003 by Rolling Stone magazine, Led Zeppelin ranked fourteenth among the 100 greatest artists of all time. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame stated that their influence in the '70s was as significant as that of the Beatles during the previous decade. The period of activity for Led Zeppelin spanned from 1968 to 1980, the year of drummer John Bonham's death.
