Led Zeppelin Triva

[ReCycled]

I don't spend a lot of time adoring Led Zeppelin, but this trivia I found was kind of interesting. I knew Page was a prominent studio musician in the mid-60s before joining the Yardbirds, but I never realized the massive scope of his work on hit records of the day. It's estimated he did 50%--> 90% of the popular chart songs during a 2 year period.

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Led Zeppelin Trivia

1. It was Keith Moon who inspired the Led Zeppelin name. The "a" was left out of the "Led" so that Americans wouldn't mispronounce the name (ie "Leed" Zeppelin).

3. Jimmy Page financed an occult bookstore in London called Equinox in the '70s. He also bought occult legend Aleister Crowley's haunted house on the shores of Loch Ness in Scotland. Page collected a lot of Crowley memorabilia too.

4. Robert Plant did not receive any songwriting credits on Led Zeppelin I as he was still under contract to CBS at the time.

6. On Nov 21st 1995, Led Zep's manager Peter Grant died of a heart attack at the age of 60. He is known as being one of the shrewdest and most ruthless managers in rock history. He secured 90% of concert gate money and intimidated record store owners who dealt in bootlegs. He was a wrestler before managing the band.

7. John Paul Jones was actually christened John Baldwin. Andrew Loog Oldham, The Rolling Stones manager, contacted him when he was doing some production in the mid-'60s. He convinced Baldwin (who was then a popular arranger) to take on a more artistic name. There was an American film starring Robert Stack around at that time titled John Paul Jones. Oldham suggested that.

8. In Through The Out Door was recorded at Abba's studio in Stockholm.

9. Robert Plant suffered a serious car accident in Greece on the Isle Of Rhodes in 1975. They had to cancel their world tour that year. Two years later, in July 77, his son Karac died of a viral stomach infection.

10. The title of the song Black Dog was inspired by a stray labradour that wandered in and out of the Headley Grange studio where the band was recording Led Zeppelin IV at the time.

11. John Paul Jones did the string arrangements on REM's '92 album Automatic For The People.

13. The 40 measures of vodka which killed John Bonham on Sept 25th 1980 equals more than 2 one litre bottles.

15. Since 1990, Babe I'm Gonna Leave You off their first album, has seen a song writing credit added for Anne Bredon, an obscure folk musician who wrote and recorded the original song in the 1950s. Back in the '80s, her son was intrigued to hear his mother playing what he and the rest of the world thought was a Led Zeppelin song. After asking her why she was doing this, a quick trip to a solicitor saw her name added and her contribution recognised. Led Zeppelin's version is not that reminiscent of Bredon's original. Their version borrows from Joan Baez's cover of the song.

16. The Lemon Song is an amalgam of Led Zeppelin's blues influences. The major influence was Howlin' Wolf's Killing Floor. With lyrics and an instrumental section borrowed from it, it is not surprising the band was sued. The suit was settled out of court. The "squeeze my lemon" sequence comes from Robert Johnson's Travelling Riverside Blues. It is likely that Johnson borrowed this himself, from a song recorded in the same year (1937) called She Squeezed My Lemon.

17. Whole Lotta Love is Jimmy Page's riff, but the lyrics are taken from Willie Dixon's You Need Love. Plant said: "Page's riff was Page's riff. It was there before anything else. I just thought, 'well, what am I going to sing?' That was it, a nick. Now happily paid for. At the time, there was a lot of conversation about what to do. It was decided that it was so far away in time (it was in fact 7 years) and influence that...well, you only get caught when you're successful. That's the game." In 1985 Willie Dixon sued the band over their use of his lyrics.

19. Stairway To Heaven is the biggest selling piece of sheet music in rock history. It sells about 15,000 copies every year. In total, over one million copies have been sold. The song has been broadcast on radio over three million times.

21. Plant sold his rights to the Led Zeppelin material in the early 1980's, although he still maintains 1/3 creative control. As he doesn't get any royalties from the sales of Led Zeppelin albums, he made the comment when being interviewed by David Letterman that Zeppelin was more rewarding for Jimmy these days. Robert has used this control to veto the 20th anniversary single of Stairway to Heaven and the use of any Zeppelin material in the film Dazed and Confused.

22. When recording Presence, Plant was confined to a wheelchair. He had a broken heel amongst other injuries. Perhaps that explains the title of the opening track, Achilles Last Stand.

23. Jimmy was a session guitarist for about three years in the '60s. He played on literally hundreds of recordings. When questioned about which songs he played on, especially ones where some controversy as to what his exact role was, Jimmy usually pleads ignorance and points out that it is hard to remember exactly what he did given the huge amount of sessions he was playing at the time. Various estimates have him playing on anything from 50% to 90% of the records that were recorded in England between 1963 and 1965. Page was the favoured session guitarist of producer Shel Talmy, and therefore he ended up doing session work on songs for The Who and The Kinks as a direct result of the Talmy connection.

24. Page supplied the rhythm guitar for The Kink's You Really Got Me and All Day And All Of The Night, which has not really been contested by Dave Davies. This has prompted Guitar World magazine to say that if he did play the riff in You Really Got Me, then he invented heavy metal there and then.

25. Jimmy was not the first person to use a violin bow with a guitar. That honour goes to Eddie Phillips of the UK band Creation, one of the bands managed by Shel Talmy, whom Page worked for.

27. Jimmy has said that Bonzo was the reason the band had to buy bigger amps. The drumbeat from When The Levee Breaks is one of the most frequently used samples in dance music, featuring for instance in Relax by Frankie Goes To Hollywood. At one time the remaining Led Zep members took legal action against The Beastie Boys for their use of this drum sample on their first album. They also sampled the drums from The Ocean on that first album of theirs.

28. On February 21, 1970, Led Zep did a gig in Copenhagen, Denmark. The band was billed as The Nobs because of a threat of legal action from aristocrat Eva von Zeppelin. She is reported to have said: "They may be world famous, but a couple of shrieking monkeys are not going to use a priveleged family name without my permission".

30. Led Zeppelin are the only band to have had all their albums reach the U.S. Billboard Top 10. Of these ten albums, six went to number one.


 

[|iR|Focalor]

Good stuff.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eIwfym0TbY

[Chocobo Joe]

Although I usually find it extremely hard to find a favorite song from a band this good, but I've settled on this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JybkqBGrVs

[Th0m@s29]

I have been listening to Led Zepplin allot lately .