The story behind Led Zeppelin’s name is known by hardcore rock fans and your uncle who had an ear piercing in the 70s, but many more casual fans have never stopped to think about the bizarre epithet.
In fact, the source and reason behind the name is often a subject of hot debate on Reddit, with many believing that Jimmy Page came up with the name on his own while other’s claim that The Who’s Keith Moon was responsible.
User @Wuzzy_Gee wrote, ‘I would say Keith Moon inspired the name,’ a claim thatwas rebutted by user @smashthehandcock who posted: ‘My grandfather used to say, “Well that went down like a led zeppelin or balloon.”‘
Another user, @smurf_cherries, agreed: ‘”That went over like a lead balloon” is a very old saying. They just turned a common idiom into a band name.’
In reality, the story of the iconic name is a combination of these factors and features appearances by an array of famous rockers, making it one of the most legendary origin stories in music history.
The tale of the band’s creation begins in 1966, when The Who’s Keith Moon and his bandmate, bassist John Entwistle, recorded the track Beck’s Bolero with Jimmy Page, multi-instrumentalist John Paul Jones, and The Yardbirds’ Jeff Beck.
The musicians were so pleased with the track that they considered forming a brand new band.
According to legend, Moon joked that the band would never work, in fact, it would go down ‘like a lead balloon,’ a quip that stuck with Page through the years.
The band we know as Led Zeppelin today began to emerge from the marble in August of 1968 when Page invited vocalist Robert Plant and drummer John Bonham to join him and Jones on their new project.
In September of that year, the group played a tour of Scandinavia – funded out of Page’s own pocket – under the name the New Yardbirds.
The band was soon forced to change their name after Chris Dreja, one of the founding members of the Yardbirds, issued a cease and desist letter, stating that Page was only allowed to use the New Yardbirds title for the Scandinavian tour.
Inspired by Keith Moon’s comment about the band going down like a lead balloon, Page had landed on the name Led Zeppelin for his new group. It was obviously meant as a tongue-in-cheek reference to the astronomical odds stacked against a new band. But in reclaiming an idiom that means something is unpopular, the group found their identity.
Page upgraded the idiom from balloon to the largest inflatable of all: a zeppelin, which is an airship similar to a blimp.At the suggestion of music manager Peter Grant, the guitarist decided to drop the ‘a’ in lead so that the uninitiated wouldn’t pronounce it ‘leed.’Page told Ultimate Guitar of the name: ‘It was a name that Keith Moon had mentioned back then…And I asked him if we could use the name because I was gonna be in this band Led Zeppelin with Keith Moon, so was Jeff Beck.’
