Led Zeppelin
Rock band from the 70's

Led Zepplin made the music your parents used to get high to. They - Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and the wonderfully excessive, and deceased, John Bohnam - rocked harder than just about anybody and you can hear their samples today in anything from P. Diddy to Weird Al (that's true, get his new CD). They're also infamous for their supposedly mad partying back in the 70's which ultimately lead to the death of the great Bonzo himself. But all that aside, how did they come up with the name Led Zeppelin?

First off, you need to understand that Zep wasn't just some startup rock n' roll band; they were formed from the rubble of another band. Jimmy Page had been the lead guitarist for the Yardbirds, a popular 60's band. When they were in the process of falling apart, Page talked with some other musicians about forming a super group. All of the other musicians dropped out and what eventually did come together was Led Zeppelin: three virtually unknown musicians and the guitarist from The Yardbirds...not exactly the super group Page had hoped for. In fact, the groups prospects looked so frim that Who drummer Keith Moon - also a lunatic, by the way - suggested that they would go down faster than a "lead zeppelin." That also happened to be a term for a bad gig. The name was catchy but their manager suggested dropping the "a" from "lead" so as not to confuse people into pronouncing it "leed." There you have it, the fathers of heavy metal came from a joke told at their expense.  ¶ 8:17 AM