Comments: 8

• Ken from Philadelphia, PaAs a dopey 14-year-old, I was pretty sure the keys to the universe were in this song rather than the engine of an old parked car. But, yeah, with some perspective, the lyrics are somewhere in the range of passable and dreadful. That aside (and, really, a proto- psychedelia song isn’t really about the lyrics anyway), this is a heck of a good song... I mean like amazing. I realize there was a lot happening musically at this point in time, but it still seems like this one should have been huge....
  and if you are into counterfactual history, what happens if this does become a smash hit? Do the Yardbirds remain a going concern to take advantage? If not, does Jimmy stick with the New Yardbirds identity to take advantage of the money to be made touring behind a huge hit. His nickname wasn’t “Led Wallet” for nothing so it is hard to see him passing on the chance for such easy money for a pig-in-a-poke like Led Zeppelin must have seemed like. And suppose he does spend a year as front man for the New Yardbirds touring behind this song, getting rich, and banging groupies, do the New Yardbirds still morph into Led Zeppelin, if not in name then at least musically?
  That last one really got me thinking. Obviously, the first Led Zeppelin album was what the next Yardbirds album was going to sound like. Bonzo’s drumming, of course, kicked everything up a notch and Robert Plant’s vocal ability kicked it all up another notch. Still, the sound was absolutely a logical and incremental step from “Happenings...”. Heck, “Dazed...” was stolen and workshopped most of the way to its final form during the final year of the Yardbirds existence. So I think it’s a given that whether it happened under the name The New Yardbirds or still eventually gave way to Led Zeppelin, they would still be the godfathers of hard rock and metal as we know it. My question is whether a detour making money as the New Yardbirds would have kept Led Zeppelin from all the other things that made so much more than a blues rock band. It is the forays into folk, electronica, reggae, and even the pseudo-deep-but-really-not tripe like “Stairway” are all part of the mixing pot that made Led Zeppelin Led Zeppelin. Would that have all happened if Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham had spent a year cashing paychecks as, essentially, a nostalgia act? Who knows? Maybe there would have been so much pressure to keep making coin as the New Yardbirds that the breaks Led Zeppelin took in the country between tours to recharge and write might never have happened.. and maybe the pressure to use the short breaks they had to get some new music in the can might have forced into an over reliance on the same formula they used to fill out the first album: stealing relatively obscure electric blues songs and tweaking them enough to keep the lawyers away. Had that been what happened, they’d have been played out after a couple of albums.
• Johann from Cucamonga, CaJimmy's concept for the band included a mix of acoustic and electric instruments... the famous "hard/soft" concept. He was influenced by acts like Fairport Convention (Richard Thompson's brilliant outfit), and Iron Butterfly. Get it? Iron - Lead. Butterfly - Zeppelin. The Moon story has not, to my knowledgge, been verified, but Jimmy talked about the hard/soft concept a lot.
• Matt from San Antonio, TxThe name "Led Zeppelin" came from that "bad idea" and was originally "Lead Zeppelin" but Jimmy Page feared that "those damn Americans" would mispronounce it.
• David from Youngstown, OhKeith Moon actually said the idea would go over like a lead balloon and then said that it would be even worse. It would go over like a lead zeppelin. Also, Don is correct that they played a few shows as the New Yardbirds.
• Don from Rapid City, SdLed Zeppelin actually played their first two or three shows as The New Yardbirds.
• Gary from Seattle, WaBeck also teamed with Page and Keith Moon on "Beck's Bolero," the only time those three ever recorded together.
• Kendall from Thomasville, GaI love this song, but the lyrics are terrible... I think I'll go on and submit them for anyone who cares
• Dustin from My Home, Inpage was going to call the band the new yardbirds but then changed it to the name led zeppelin after a comment made by drummer for the who, keith moon about the band sinking like a led ballon

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