The Two-Sided Story of How Led Zeppelin Got Their Name

The ’60s produced some of the most influential and spell-binding music of all time. One other thing it produced was a foggy memory. Now, you can put two and two together and guess why that is. Thanks to this foggy memory, rock ‘n’ roll stories have been misconstrued, re-told, and lost in translation throughout the years. It’s just the name of the game, simple as that. One story that helped create this game is the naming of Led Zeppelin.

Like many stories of this nature, its validity boils down to complete hearsay. So, it’s always taken with a grain of salt and admired in a type of fictitious fashion. This is exactly how many have and should view the origin story behind Led Zeppelin’s name. The reason for that is that there are allegedly two different creators who take credit for the name, Keith Moon and John Entwistle. To this day, nobody knows the true author of the name, and frankly, we’re better off for it, as it creates a far better story.

Led Zeppelin & The New Yardbirds

Prior to Led Zeppelin’s start, Jimmy Page was already an established musician playing with bands such as The Yardbirds and The Firm. However, upon his departure from the Yardbirds in 1968, he created a new super-group called The New Yardbirds.

The idea for the new band came when Page, Jeff Beck, John Paul Jones, and Keith Moon recorded “Beck’s Bolero” in 1966. This is when Page suggested the dreaded name for the group and actually put it into practice, as Led Zeppelin’s original name was in fact The New Yardbirds. Regardless, when the idea came up in that 1966 recording, Moon being Moon, seemingly criticized both the name and the idea of a new band.

According to Rolling Stone, Moon stated that the band, when started, would go down like a Zeppelin balloon. This is of course a reference to the 1937 explosion of the German Zeppelin balloon, the Hindenburg. Nonetheless, Page remembered the joke, and years later when he teamed up with Robert Plant and John Bonham, they changed their name from The Newyardbirds to Led Zeppelin.

Entwistle’s story is the same. However, there is one major difference—He was the one who cracked the joke and gave Page inspiration for the name. Again, it’s a possibility this conversation and the joke never even happened. Furthermore, it’s seemingly impossible to truly discover who inspired who. But, that’s rock ‘n’ roll and the reason why we love it so much. Everything is up to interpretation.

Photo by Dick Barnatt/Redferns