Led Zeppelin information

Led Zeppelin
Clockwise from upper left: Jimmy Page, John Bonham, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones.
Background information
Origin	London, England
Genres	Hard rock blues rock folk rock heavy metal
Years active	1968–1980[nb 1]
Labels	Atlantic Swan Song
Spinoffs	The Honeydrippers
Spinoff of	The Yardbirds[1]
Past members	Jimmy Page Robert Plant John Bonham John Paul Jones
Website	ledzeppelin.com

Led Zeppelin were an English rock band formed in London in 1968. The group comprised vocalist Robert Plant, guitarist Jimmy Page, bassist and keyboardist John Paul Jones, and drummer John Bonham. With a heavy, guitar-driven sound, they are cited as one of the progenitors of hard rock and heavy metal, although their style drew from a variety of influences, including blues and folk music. Led Zeppelin have been credited as significantly impacting the nature of the music industry, particularly in the development of album-oriented rock (AOR) and stadium rock.

Evolving from the Yardbirds where Page was lead guitarist, and originally named the New Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin signed a deal with Atlantic Records that gave them considerable artistic freedom. Initially unpopular with critics, they achieved significant commercial success with eight studio albums over ten years. Their 1969 debut, Led Zeppelin, was a top-ten album in several countries and featured such tracks as "Good Times Bad Times", "Dazed and Confused" and "Communication Breakdown". Led Zeppelin II (1969), their first number-one album, included "Whole Lotta Love" and "Ramble On". In 1970, they released Led Zeppelin III which opened with "Immigrant Song". Their untitled fourth album, commonly known as Led Zeppelin IV (1971), is one of the best-selling albums in history with 37 million copies sold. The album includes "Black Dog", "Rock and Roll" and "Stairway to Heaven", with the latter being among the most popular and influential works in rock history. Houses of the Holy (1973) yielded "The Song Remains the Same" and "Over the Hills and Far Away". Physical Graffiti (1975), a double album, featured "The Rover" and "Kashmir".

Page composed most of Led Zeppelin's music, having a writing credit on every song apart from three tracks on the band's final album, In Through the Out Door (1979), while Plant wrote most of the lyrics. Jones occasionally added keyboard-focused contributions to compositions, particularly on the final album. The latter half of their career saw a series of record-breaking tours that earned the group a reputation for excess and debauchery. Although they remained commercially and critically successful, their touring and output, which included Presence (1976) and In Through the Out Door, declined in the late 1970s. After Bonham's death in 1980, the group disbanded, feeling that they would not be "Led Zeppelin" without him. Since then, the surviving former members have sporadically collaborated and participated in one-off concerts. The most successful of these was the 2007 Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert in London, with Bonham's son Jason Bonham on drums.

Led Zeppelin are one of the best-selling music artists of all time; their total record sales are estimated to be between 200 and 300 million units worldwide. They achieved eight consecutive UK number-one albums and six number-one albums on the US Billboard 200, with five of their albums certified Diamond in the US by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Rolling Stone magazine described them as "the heaviest band of all time", "the biggest band of the Seventies", and "unquestionably one of the most enduring bands in rock history".^[2] They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995; the museum's biography of the band states that they were "as influential" during the 1970s as the Beatles were during the 1960s.^[3]

Cite error: There are <ref group=nb> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=nb}} template (see the help page).