Many rock and roll aficionados and historians often cite Led Zeppelin as the greatest rock band ever. Yes, there are other great rock bands out there and opinions are the lowest form of knowledge, but "Led Zeppelin IV" is an amazing album. The legendary band not only packed stadiums and gave us "Stairway To Heaven," but during their active years they constantly pushed the boundaries of the genre and music. They were pioneers of many of the rock and roll sounds we hear today. But what else is there to know about this legendary band? We've made a video that unveils the untold truth about Led Zeppelin. To find out a whole lotta Led Zep, you know what to do.
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00:00As one of the greatest rock and roll bands of all time, Led Zeppelin's history has been
00:04well-documented.
00:05You might think you know everything about the 70s rock gods, but there's still a couple
00:09of things out there that will surprise you.
00:11What is and what should never be
00:13It's hard to imagine Led Zeppelin being fronted by anyone other than Robert Plant, but had
00:17Jimmy Page's first choice for Led Zeppelin's lead singer worked out, the history of rock
00:21music would be drastically different.
00:23Singer Terry, Super Lungs Reed, was one of Page's first choices to front his band, which
00:28was then called the New Yardbirds, but Reed had already signed with high-profile producer
00:32Mickey Most.
00:33The sweet-voiced rock prodigy had to turn down Page's offer, but suggested the guitarist
00:37take a look at Robert Plant, who he described as a Greek god.
00:41Page obviously liked what he saw in Plant, who brought along his buddy John Bonham to
00:44play the drums, and the rest is rock and roll history.
00:47Reed's career certainly wasn't a failure, but turning down Page's offer to front Led
00:51Zeppelin was the biggest mistake of anyone's career, ever.
00:54Reed wasn't the only one to be offered the gig.
00:57Page also considered Steve Marriott, singer for British rock band The Small Faces.
01:01So why didn't it happen?
01:03Marriott's manager was Don Arden, Sharon Osbourne's terrifying father, and a guy who called himself
01:07the Al Capone of pop.
01:09"...Don Arden, he was a dun-dun-dun."
01:13Page received a message from Arden, saying,
01:14"...how would you like to play guitar with broken fingers?"
01:17The violent rejection took the wind out of Page's sails.
01:20Everybody went back to their respective bands, and no fingers were broken.
01:24The knobs
01:25Led Zeppelin and the New Yardbirds weren't the only names that Zepp have used on stage.
01:29Once the band played a show in Copenhagen as The Knobs.
01:32Why the name change?
01:33The name was Led Zeppelin's response to Eva von Zeppelin, the granddaughter of Ferdinand
01:37von Zeppelin, founder of the Zeppelin Airship Company, who would threaten legal action if
01:41they ever performed as Led Zeppelin in Denmark.
01:44In response, Page decided the band would change its name to The Knobs for its show in Copenhagen,
01:49calling the whole ordeal absurd.
01:51The group even tried to pacify the outraged noblewoman in person.
01:54Page recalled,
01:55"...the first time we played, we invited her backstage to meet us, to see how we were nice
01:58young lads.
01:59We calmed her down, but on leaving the studio, she saw our LP cover of An Airship in Flames
02:03and she exploded.
02:04I had to run and hide.
02:05She just blew her top."
02:06Oh, the humanity.
02:09Good times, bad times
02:10Led Zeppelin wasn't always the well-loved band it is today.
02:13Early on, some very influential critics saw the future rock icons as nothing but loud,
02:18unoriginal, overtly sexual, bombastic blowhards.
02:21In particular, Rolling Stone absolutely despised them, calling their debut album weak and unimaginative,
02:26saying that Robert Plant's vocals were prissy, and concluding that Led Zeppelin wasn't nearly
02:31as good as Cream, which had just broken up.
02:33Criticism got so bad that Zepp intentionally named the fourth album nothing at all, provided
02:37no band info, no photos of the group, and gave no interviews to promote it.
02:41They also made one of the greatest albums of all time, which probably helped ward off
02:45the critics for good.
02:46Jimmy Page wanted to cure cancer
02:48Jimmy Page always exhibited a God-given talent on the six-string, but playing guitar in the
02:53world's greatest rock and roll band wasn't his original goal.
02:55In April 1958, a 14-year-old Page appeared on BBC's television show All Your Own, where
03:01the prodigy demonstrated his guitar prowess in a group of skiffle musicians.
03:05After the performance, the host asked Page about his future aspirations.
03:08What are you going to do when you leave school, take up skiffle?
03:11No, I want to do, uh, well, biological research.
03:14In an interview with iTV five years later, a 19-year-old Page spoke of different professional
03:18goals, telling the interviewer he hoped to become an accomplished artist, which seems
03:22to have worked out.
03:24Houses of the unholy
03:25While not a master of the actual dark arts, Jimmy Page was certainly interested in them
03:29— enough to buy what some might call the most evil house in Great Britain.
03:33That would be Alistair Crowley's Boleskine House, which the occultist-magician bought
03:36in 1899.
03:38Page bought the house in the 1970s, and though he never really lived there, he visited enough
03:42to be permanently tied to it in the public eye, being filmed in and around the house
03:46with glowing red eyes in the Zeppelin concert film The Song Remains the Same.
03:50Legend maintains that Crowley was called away in the middle of a ritual that had summoned
03:53demons to the residence, and he just never cleaned the place up.
03:56The person who actually lived there, Page's childhood friend Malcolm Dent, stayed there
04:00for 20 years before Page sold the place.
04:02As he told the Inverness Courier in a 2006 interview,
04:05"...doors would be slamming all night.
04:06You'd go into a room and carpets and rugs would be piled up."
04:09Even though he's a self-described skeptic, Dent couldn't explain why any of this was
04:13happening.
04:14It's kind of surprising he never called anyone about it.
04:16"...we're ready to believe you!"