In the age of pop culture, you’ve got to be the complete package. After a pre-fame spell working in advertising, a young Frank Zappa came to realise that music had become ‘exactly 50%’ about image. While he might have overstated that a little, it no doubt helped Led Zeppelin that they had a name fit for main stages. Granted, they also had an assortment of the finest musicians in the world, but if they were dressed like Cliff Richard and went by the name Sixpence None The Richer, then they may well have never taken off.
As it happens, their name arrived via happenstance. It all came about one sunny May in 1966. Jeff Beck was in the Yardbirds at the time, but he was seeking the chance of a side project. So, he summoned his pal Jimmy Page to IBC Studios in London. A song began to take shape as the duo shared ideas, and a full band was called upon. Beck wanted to assemble the greats, so he contacted his favourite drummer, Keith Moon.
At the time, Moon was disgruntled with the way things were going in The Who but not disgruntled enough to forgo a disguise, so when he did arrive in the studio to work with Beck, he did so in black-out shades and a Russian cossack hat, creating perhaps the most conspicuous, cartoonish masquerade in history – an ‘I’m Not Keith Moon’ t-shit might have been more convincing. Nevertheless, he turned up all the same, which was more than you could say for his recommended bassist, John Entwistle, who had also been discontent with The Who but was seemingly not discontent enough.
To serve as replacements, studio musicians John Paul Jones and Nicky Hopkins were called in to play on bass and piano, respectively. As of yet, these were not the huge names they would soon go on to be. The song that this mind-boggling assortment eventually crafted was ‘Beck’s Bolero‘, even though Jimmy Page has claimed that he crafted the composition.
Regardless of the disputed writing credit that followed, and, in truth, has never fully gone away in the years since Beck and his esteemed cronies stood around impressed by their work. Suddenly, there were murmurings that they should form a group. Naturally, this wouldn’t have pleased the likes of Pete Townshend, who stood to lose his rhythm section, which prompted Moon to utter that the side project would “go down like a lead zeppelin”.
The rest is ancient history, but once again, it is very blurry. Beck’s manager, Peter Grant – who subsequently managed Led Zeppelin when the name was formalised and Page shacked up with Jones alongside John Bonham and Robert Plant – claims that the Moon actually used to more commonplace phrase “go down like a lead balloon” to which Entwistle, who suddenly appears in the tale out of nowhere – perhaps the pub after the session, added, “more like a lead zeppelin”, according to Chris Welch’s book, Peter Grant: The Man Who Led Zeppelin.
By any measure, Page noted it down and the band he soon formed under the moniker took off like the antithesis of their title. This makes those haphazard May sessions among the most fruitful in history, spawning one of rock’s greatest instrumentals and a band pivotal to its next chapter.