As one of the greatest rock and roll bands
of all time, Led Zeppelin's history has been
well documented.
You might think you know everything about the 70's rock gods, but there's still a couple of things out there that will surprise you
What Is and What Should Never Be
It's hard to imagine Led Zeppelin being fronted
by anyone other than Robert Plant.
But had Jimmy Page's first choice for Led
Zeppelin's lead singer worked out, the history
of rock music would be drastically different.
Singer Terry "Superlungs" Reid was one of
Page's first choices to front his band, which
was then called The New Yardbirds.
But Reid had already signed with high-profile
producer Mickie Most.
The sweet-voiced rock prodigy had to turn
down Page's offer, but suggested the guitarist
take a look at Robert Plant, who he described
as a "Greek god."
Page obviously liked what he saw in Plant,
who brought along his buddy John Bonham to
play the drums, and the rest is rock 'n' roll
history.
Reid's career certainly wasn't a failure,
but turning down Page's offer to front Led
Zeppelin was the biggest mistake of anyone's
career, ever.
Reid wasn't the only one to be offered the
gig.
Page also considered Steve Marriott, singer
for British rock band the Small Faces.
So, why didn't it happen?
Marriott's manager was Don Arden, Sharon Osbourne's
terrifying father, and a guy who called himself
the "Al Capone of Pop."
"Don Arden!
Dun dun DUNNN!"
Page received a message from Arden saying,
"How would you like to play guitar with broken
fingers?"
The violent rejection took the wind out of
Page's sails, everybody went back to their
respective bands, and no fingers were broken.
The Nobs
Led Zeppelin and The New Yardbirds weren't
the only names that Zep have used on stage.
Once, the band played a show in Copenhagen
as "The Nobs."
Why the name change?
The name was Led Zeppelin's response to Eva
von Zeppelin, the granddaughter of Ferdinand
von Zeppelin, founder of the Zeppelin airship
company, who had threatened legal action if
they ever performed as "Led Zeppelin" in Denmark.
In response, Page decided the band would change
its name to "The Nobs" for its show in Copenhagen,
calling the whole ordeal "absurd."
The group even tried to pacify the outraged
noblewoman in person.
Page recalled,
"The first time we played we invited her backstage
to meet us, to see how we were nice young
lads.
We calmed her down but on leaving the studio,
she saw our LP cover of an airship in flames
and she exploded!
I had to run and hide.
She just blew her top."
Oh, the humanity.
Good Times Bad Times
Led Zeppelin wasn't always the well-loved
band it is today.
Early on, some very influential critics saw
the future rock icons as nothing but loud,
unoriginal, overtly sexual, bombastic blowhards.
In particular, Rolling Stone absolutely despised
them, calling their debut album "weak" and
"unimaginative", saying that Robert Plant's
vocals "prissy", and concluding that Led Zeppelin
wasn't nearly as good as Cream, which had
just broken up.
Criticism got so bad that Zep intentionally
named the fourth album nothing at all, provided
no band info, no photos of the group, and
gave no interviews to promote it.
They also made it one of the greatest albums
of all time, which probably helped ward off
the critics for good.
Jimmy Page wanted to cure cancer
Jimmy Page always exhibited a God-given talent
on the six-string, but playing guitar in the
world's greatest rock 'n' roll band wasn't
his original goal.
In April 1958, a 14-year-old Page appeared
on BBC's television show All Your Own, where
the prodigy demonstrated his guitar prowess
in a group of skiffle musicians.
After the performance, the host asked Page
about his future aspirations.
"What do you want to do when you leave school?
take up skiffle?
"No, I want to do biological research."
In an interview with ITV five years later,
a 19-year-old Page spoke of different professional
goals, telling the interviewer he hoped to
become an accomplished artist...which seems
to have worked out.
Houses of the unholy
While not a master of the actual dark arts,
Jimmy Page was certainly interested in them,
enough to buy what some might call the most
evil house in Great Britain.
That would be Aleister Crowley's Boleskine
House, which the occultist-magician bought
in 1899.
Page bought the house in the 1970s, and though
he never really lived there, he visited enough
to be permanently tied to it in the public
eye, being filmed in and around the house
with glowing red eyes in the Zeppelin concert
film The Song Remains The Same.
Legend maintains that Crowley was called away
in the middle of a ritual that had summoned
demons to the residence, and he just never
cleaned the place up.
The person who actually lived there, Page's
childhood friend Malcolm Dent, stayed there
for 20 years before Page sold the place.
As he told the Inverness Courier in a 2006
interview,
"Doors would be slamming all night; you'd
go into a room and carpets and rugs would
be piled up."
Even though he's a self-described skeptic,
Dent couldn't explain why any of this was
happening.
Still, it's kinda surprising he never called
anyone about it.
"We're ready to believe you!"
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