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As a kid in England,

we were living in the shadows of the Second World War.

Your parents and your grandparents

had been through two World Wars.

And at the end of the Second World War,

there was this great feeling of hope towards the future.

In London,

there was lots of damaged buildings

and craters and...

I mean, it was an apres war zone.

There was rationing still. I remember...

getting eggs and milk and butter and stuff

with a little book with coupons.

People were recovering.

Outside of London,

in the West Midlands,

it was a post-war, sort of semi-suburban

quiet life.

So America was my dream...

because it was a totally different world

to the one that we were in.

I was listening to this marvelous rock and roll

coming in from America.

You're hearing all this electric guitar.

I mean, it was almost like it was coming from Mars,

even though it was coming from Memphis.

But here in Britain,

we were stuck with these musicians

who were really safe

until this force of nature called Lonnie Donegan arrived.

I was so mesmerized

by having seen Lonnie Donegan play.

It was like a portal.

It gave some access

to the sort of freedom that you hadn't witnessed in England.

Give it up, Jimmy!

So, one day I come to school and I see...

this fellow standing up in the field

with lots of people around him.

His name was Rod Wyatt,

and he's playing the Lonnie Donegan songs

on an acoustic guitar.

So I went up to him and said,

"I've got one of those at home."

And he said, "Bring it along. I'll show you how to tune it."

And then...

he showed me some chords as well.

I was absolutely inseparable from the guitar.

I'd play it before breakfast

and then play it on the way to school.

I'd go there and want to practice,

but it would be confiscated

and, uh, given back at the end of the day.

My father was like,

"Well, I don't really understand

all this guitar business, but...

I'm with you on it,

providing you keep all your schoolwork up."

But my mum was really supportive to the idea

of me carrying on and starting in a group and...

she really believed in me.

I mean, it was really a big deal.

My parents were in vaudeville.

Mum was the straight singer in the evening gown...

and my father was a comedian.

He would play the piano.

And so I used to travel around with them

to all the bases,

where they'd entertain the troops.

And there would be just one international act after another.

Accordion players and banjo players.

I took all this in.

So I was from that musical tradition.

And it was all the basis

for everything I ever did afterwards.

I grew up in the West Midlands.

My father's bloodline is from there,

and my mother's side of the family

are Romani Gypsy.

My childhood was very sheltered...

until my parents sent me to a big school

in a big town.

Studied to be a chartered accountant.

I mean, I'd really dug a lot of what was going on at school,

but when Little Richard appeared,

it was so provocative and all-consuming

and, uh, hypnotic

that it kinda knocked everything else out of the water.

I knew then that all I wanted to do was sing.

I mean, that was it.

The syringe was in the arm. Forever.

Oh, well, I'm John Bonham.

I always liked making drum sounds when I was a kid.

I got my first drum kit when I was ten.

And we went to see a film with Gene Krupa,

and it was just amazing.

Up here in the Midlands,

I used to buy completely different records, you know.

Johnny Kidd & the Pirates were a strong influence then.

You heard it on all the jukeboxes.

Of course, they've got those huge 15-inch speakers.

That's about all you could hear, was the bass.

I heard that and thought...

that's a sound I would really like to make.

When I told my father, he said,

"Bass guitar is a novelty instrument.

And in two years' time it will never be heard of again.

Get yourself a saxophone, you'll always work."

So I said, "No. I want a bass guitar, Dad."

He heard me practicing and went,

"Hmm. You're coming with me.

All you've got to do is watch my left hand."

On the piano. So, uh...

I learnt all the standards from that.

I had a little band.

We were playing at the youth club.

And I got talking to their very go-ahead young priest.

He went, "We'd really like an organist."

I said, "Well, I could be an organist for you if you like."

Not thinking anything of it.

He went, "Yeah. Okay."

In church music you have to improvise.

But as I wasn't very good at playing from music anyway,

I just improvised everything.

I learnt the hymns.

I could figure out what the hymns were.

I'm not particularly religious but it was a good gig.

All right? And he was a really cool priest.

And so I became organist and choirmaster at 14.

...which paid me the princely sum of £25 a year

which bought me a Fender bass.

I use to go and jam on Thursday night

at the Marquee Club.

And after a period of doing this,

this band called Carter Lewis and the Southerners

came up to me and asked me

if I'd like to play on their record.

I said, "Yeah, sure. That sounds really good."

So I went along with my kit.

The DeArmond foot pedal and the amplifier

and my brand new Gibson Les Paul.

And the band'd say,

"Well, just make something up for the solo."

By the second run-through, I've already got a part for it.

And the buzz must have gone around

about this young guitarist,

because I started to get calls for more studio dates.

When I got into this session world,

I was, like, seven years younger than anybody else.

And they didn't have somebody in the old guard,

or the current guard,

who really knew all the influences

and the points of reference that the younger bands had.

So, of course, I knew all of it,

whether it was, like, R&B or whether it was blues

or rock, whatever it was.

Everybody was getting these records

that originally came over

maybe with the American merchant vessels.

The R&B boom had kicked in.

I went to see Sonny Boy Williamson

at the American Folk Blues Festival.

It was around the time I was learning to play harmonica too.

It was just this amazing onslaught

of music from whence we had no idea.

Sonny Boy was almost everything

that's become my whole entire musical bloodstream really.

But in my own hometown, I had my own hero,

and it was Perry Foster.

And he had this kind of setup called the Delta Blues Band.

And somehow or another, I managed to blag my way

into this band.

I was prepared to be a mod or a rocker

or a beatnik or anything so long as I could sing

and gather these looks around me,

just trying to make it stick on the wall.

I used to play and used to have a job as well.

Used to be working with my father in the building trade.

Used to be good builders then.

But, you know, the job gradually gets less

and the music more. That's what seems to happen.

You know, we left school and we formed small groups,

and things like that,

and played locally and everything.

You know, for me, soul music was a strong influence then.

James Brown was a big favorite

because the drum sound was just amazing.

I thought, "I'm gonna get that sound."

When I was 16,

I went to see a group with Robert singing.

The gig went incredibly well because he was bloody great.

In the crowd watching this

was some larger-than-life guy with his beautiful girlfriend.

He got a hold of me afterwards and he said,

"Well, you're okay,

but you'd be a lot better with a proper drummer behind you."

And I thought, "Jesus Christ. Here we go."

The first time we played together

we were about 16.

And it was really good.

John was amazing.

He was a really powerful drummer.

I watched him with absolute amazement.

He was just...

fantastic.

But it's so competitive playing locally anyway.

You'd, like, have a time going on the road

and everything would be roses,

then all of a sudden, no more gigs, no more money.

You're back to where you started.

One time, we were running out of fuel

and I had to siphon the gasoline from another car

and I was caught by the police in the middle of the night,

sucking a piece of rubber into a can.

And him sitting in the back shivering,

thinking, "What the hell will Pat say?"

Pat became his wife and she used to say,

"Don't you dare play with that Planty.

He's a complete disaster."

I left school at 16.

I failed most of my exams

because I'd been playing all night in some club

the night before my O-Levels.

And my dad was saying,

"Well, I can get you a job as a clerk somewhere."

"No, no. I'll find a band, Dad. I'll find a band."

So there used to be a place in London

called Archer Street.

And every Monday morning,

all the local musicians would congregate for work.

And so I went there as a kid.

Every Monday morning, I was there.

And I started getting booked with bands

and in the session scene.

Here comes Jimmy Page

with his electric guitar.

That's my Les Paul, my Black Beauty.

And this guitar was the guitar

that I played most of my sessions on.

There we are. Going in there to see

what I'm gonna be faced with on that music stand.

Sessions were a lot of fun in those days, actually.

When I started, I ended up playing a lot of sessions

together with Jimmy.

The "Goldfinger" session was at Abbey Road.

Jimmy and I were in the rhythm section.

There was a full orchestra...

and Shirley Bassey.

The whole energy just to be in there,

I mean, for me, I'm still a kid, really.

And it's, "Wow. It's Shirley Bassey."

While you were playing, you could see her.

And she did the whole thing.

It was wonderful to watch.

These studios would work with ruthless efficiency.

So you couldn't be the one to mess up

so they went into overtime.

'Course, if you messed up,

you wouldn't have been seen again.

There'd be a pocket diary, like this,

that I'd be carrying with me.

I played on sessions with the Rolling Stones,

David Bowie, Petula Clark...

I was on the Kinks' records.

The first Who record.

I mean, it goes right across the board.

But I didn't do anything with the Beatles.

I did quite a lot of work with Donovan

and I really enjoyed working with him.

And Mickie Most was his producer.

These sessions were great 'cause I could watch

and I could ask questions about things,

and I certainly did.

I made it my business to ask engineers

how certain effects were done,

like tape echo and reverb.

And you could see the way that they were miking

various instruments.

And, basically, that's what I could do.

I was allowed to, sort of, do that.

Not only that, I got a chance to have a solo as well.

So that was good.

I went to Mickie Most and said,

"Do you need an arranger?"

- "You do arrang..." - "Yeah, I do arrangements.

Yeah. All the time." And, uh...

I hadn't really done that before.

But my dad had always taught me never turn down work, right?

And had a great working relationship with him.

He used to drive by in his yellow Rolls-Royce

and drop an acetate through my letterbox

with "You know what we want. It's Friday."

And that was it.

I'd be playing bass in sessions all day, seven days a week.

So I had to write arrangements at night.

And then nine o'clock in the morning

I'd go to the session and do the songs.

I did all the arrangements for Herman's Hermits

and Donovan,

and had quite a lot to do with Lulu.

Did all her arrangements with Mickie Most as well.

I even did film work with her,

like To Sir, With Love, which was a big hit in America.

This was considered the pinnacle of the music business.

My dad was incredibly proud...

when people he knew and respected

would come, "Ooh, I saw your John on so-and-so session

the other day. He's okay. He's good, you know."

And...

Puffed him up a lot.

I was in a lot of different bands

around that time.

I did a couple adventures in recording studios.

But my parents, they weren't that keen at all.

In fact, when I cut my record, the first single on CBS,

they didn't know anything about it,

'cause I, um...

I was given the alternative of staying in the world of

academia and...

my article-- training for my articles...

as a chartered accountant or...

you just go out into the world and do what you gotta do.

So I did.

So I waved everybody goodbye.

I knew there were singers

who had more chops than me,

but I was just out there,

throwing it up in the air.

I had caftans, painted faces, bells ringing,

incense blazing,

and...

...was just...

Robert used to get up to more mischief

and little sort of things than any of us do.

It's ridiculous, you know.

John came up to me and said, "Well, what's all that about?"

I said, "Yeah, you're right. What is that all about?"

It was the end of '67.

We got back together

and the playing went incredibly well.

So we formed the Band of Joy.

We wanted to mix the blues with psychedelia.

We wanted to be a part of that huge movement.

We played at Frank Freeman's.

We played Middle Earth in London.

We went down to Tin Pan Alley and we recorded "Memory Lane,"

which was my first adventure in songwriting.

Sadly, we never got it released.

And not many people liked us.

But we liked us.

Pat was screaming at John, saying,

"I told you to stay away from him.

He'll get you nowhere."

And so he went off with Tim Rose and...

played "I Got a Loneliness" and "Morning Dew."

That's how it used to go, really.

I mean, we had a kid then.

You'd end up having to get a job

in a professional group to get a bit of money

to sort of live with, really.

I... I just fell from favor everywhere.

Things were pretty tough for me then.

I had a brown suitcase and some penicillin,

and I was homeless. I had nowhere to live.

So I, uh...

I got a gig with this band called Obs-Tweedle.

I was totally accepted

in the world of being a studio musician.

I had been caught up doing the things

that all of the real old-timers when I joined in were doing.

Like Muzak.

Muzak is what they would call, like, lift music.

You know? Um...

Very, very difficult to do a, uh...

a Muzak session,

because you'd have a whole ream of music

and you'd have to keep turning it and playing it,

turning it and playing it.

To do that, to actually get halfway through

without being physically sick was quite a miracle.

So I knew that... that...

that it was time to, sort of, come out of there.

All my friends, like Eric and Jeff,

were all in bands

and they were having a great time.

I thought, I've got a lot that I really want

to be able to offer.

And Jeff Beck said,

"It'd be really good if you came in with The Yardbirds."

So I thought, "How would you really like to play

if you had the chance?"

"Right. You do it. Do it now. This is your opportunity."

Going into The Yardbirds with Jeff,

it was touring with a friend and having a really good time.

But in the middle of an American tour,

he left the band,

and I... I was quite shocked.

But it gave me the opportunity to try a totally new direction.

So I took over on lead guitar.

Nobody was interested in The Yardbirds

over here in England anymore.

So we started to really grow our underground following

in America.

And it was just a thrill, an absolute thrill,

just really getting a feel for the West Coast music scene.

But we were up against Mickie Most,

who was our producer, so...

we were recording all these awful singles

for the AM Radio, which was the pop radio,

and I didn't want to be making singles anymore.

Being in America

and seeing the advent of the FM underground radio,

which was playing whole sides of albums,

I knew that this was gonna be the way to go in the future.

So that was my plan.

To make albums that would be played,

a whole side,

on the FM stations.

I had this new sound for The Yardbirds

already worked out in my head.

I already knew exactly what I wanted to be doing, guitar-wise,

on the new stuff that I had in mind

like "Dazed and Confused,"

which was inspired by Jake Holmes.

That guitar was given to me

by Jeff Beck.

I painted it.

I consecrated the guitar.

This is the guitar that takes the full journey

like... Excalibur, the mythical sword.

I went to a palm reading in LA.

And the palmist said,

"You're gonna be making a decision very soon

which is gonna change your life."

A meeting happened two or three days after the palmist...

where the group said, "That's it. We wanna fold."

I mean, it was a shock.

I immediately went, "Well, now I know what I'm gonna do.

I'm gonna form my own group,

and I know exactly what it is that I wanna do with it,"

and I just needed to find a powerful vocalist.

And so there was a singer called Terry Reid.

He registered with me

and I thought, "I'm gonna aim for him."

I asked Peter Grant if he could track down Terry Reid.

Peter Grant was the manager of The Yardbirds

and, bless him, he really believed in me.

This is the thing, once The Yardbirds folded,

and I said, "I wanna start a group,"

he was there. You know? He said, "Great.

Whatever help I can give."

Peter Grant and Mickie Most were in the same office and...

they had two desks,

and they, more or less, faced each other across the room.

The next thing that I hear is,

"Oh, unfortunately Terry Reid's signed a solo deal

with Mickie Most."

And I, "Oh, yeah?"

- Off the press? - Right. I know that one.

- For you. - Right.

I thought, "Wow. This is super ruthless."

But nevertheless, Terry Reid suggested

a singer from the Midlands in a band called Obs-Tweedle.

"This is an unusual name. This is a bit odd."

He and Peter Grant came up to have a look at me.

He asked me if I knew where he could find Robert Plant.

And I said, "Yeah. Right here."

He was doing some wonderful improvised vocals

and I thought they were marvelous.

So I invited him round my house.

I still had nowhere to live, sadly.

So I took my suitcase and got a train to Pangbourne

and knocked on another door.

Yeah. We had a really good connection.

And he was looking through my records,

"I've got that one." You know?

And I played him a Joan Baez version

of "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You"

and said, "If you can sing that top line there,

I've got an arrangement that goes with it."

And it just really, really dovetailed together.

It was beautiful.

He... He... He just sang beautifully.

We knew something was in the air.

I could feel this stuff around me.

Jimmy's guitar playing was just tremendous. Amazing.

Jimmy then said, "We've got this drummer lined up."

And before he went any further, I said, "Wait a minute.

There is no drummer on the planet

to compare with John Bonham.

He's magnificent."

He was playing with Tim Rose.

Jimmy said, "Oh, well, if that's the case,

let's go and see him."

And I said, "John, you've got to listen to Jimmy play.

He's amazing."

John said, "Not a chance."

I said, "You gotta be crazy. You don't wanna do this stuff,"

playing electric folk.

"Come with me." He said, "Pat would kill me."

"Don't say that!"

I said, "I'll talk to Pat, and your mum."

My wife Mo read that, "Oh, Jimmy's forming a band.

You should give him a call.

See if he wants a bass player."

Like, "No! I can't...

I've got this to do, I've got that to do.

I got these arra-- and albums..."

"No," she said. She insisted. "Give him a call, please."

So I did.

I said, "Hello, Jim. Heard you're forming a band."

He went, "Yeah, yeah." I said, "Uh...

Do you want a bass player?"

He went, "Well, actually, yes.

But there's a problem." I said, "What's that?"

He said, "The drummer is playing with Tim Rose

and he's getting £40 a week. Can we best it?"

So we decided, yeah, we probably could.

Peter Grant managed to get a two-hour rehearsal space

in Gerrard Street.

So we all get there and I've got my equipment set up.

John Paul Jones is there with his session equipment,

and John's got his drums.

It literally was just wall to wall amplifiers

and we just picked one up...

"Hello. How are you?" "Right," you know?

"I'm so-and-so. He's so-and-so else."

It was quite strange really,

meeting John Paul and Jimmy.

Coming from where I'd come from,

I'd sort of thought it was a bit of a joke,

getting telegrams and things, you know.

There's a chance of becoming one of The Yardbirds,

it's like a gift from Heaven, wasn't it?

I said the first number that I want to do

is "Train Kept A-Rollin'."

"Train Kept A-Rollin'." "Do you know it?"

I went, "Mm. Nope."

He said, "Well, it's a 12-bar."

"It's got this riff." "Okay. Count it in."

And that was it.

And the room just exploded.

We just kept playing it and doing solo breaks

and all the rest of it, and Robert's improvising.

I'd never heard anything like it.

I was expecting some cool soul singer

and there's this screaming maniac...

with this fantastic voice and a fantastic range.

I was like, "What are you doing up there?

You'll hurt yourself, man."

It was devastating because it seemed like...

that had been what I'd been waiting for.

I was pretty shy.

The best thing to do when you're in a situation like that

is not to say much and just soldier along

and suss it all out, sort of thing.

Well, being a bass player,

and he was probably thinking the same thing,

you know, because rhythm sections

are very sensitive creatures really...

um...

I just needed to know that

we could work together.

The first time we played together

you could tell it was gonna be a good group.

Not being sort of flashy about it.

But I am.

Marvelous.

When it finally came to a halt,

I'm absolutely convinced

that everyone knew that that was a life-changing experience.

I think there was so much kinetic energy,

so much energy that needed to come out for everybody.

Let's take it to the next stage and let's take it to Pangbourne.

Pangbourne is on the River Thames.

I remember when I first came across this boat house,

I just saw this absolute magic.

It had a good energy to it.

And it was just a cauldron of creativity.

This is the house I lived in in 1967 through to 1970.

We set up initially in the upstairs of the house.

Where those windows are at the top,

there's a largish room

and that was where we did the rehearsals.

We were overlooking the river.

It was beautiful.

And we just got to know each other

and worked pretty hard.

We weren't slackers.

Our aim wasn't to be seen on the telly.

We all wanted to play music very badly.

We were working on the material for the album,

and then we were putting in other material as well

that was gonna fill out the set.

We were rehearsing for days,

and it would have been pretty loud.

You'd hear it. You'd hear it over here.

I did expect somebody to be knocking on the door

to complain, but nobody did.

We got together very quickly

because there was already a tour that had to be done

by The Yardbirds,

which was a few dates in Scandinavia.

It was convenient that, lo and behold,

there was this tour that we could do.

So we could go there and have the benefit

of playing in front of an audience

away from London and all the rest of it.

Off to Scandinavia we went

for our first concert as The Yardbirds.

And we went on an aeroplane,

me and John sitting next to each other

having a cigarette,

seeing lots and lots of silverware,

knives and forks in front of us.

Stuff that we would normally have stolen

was there in profusion.

Couldn't have even got enough of it in our bags

to get off the plane without having somebody help us.

It was great. Everything was there.

Gin, tonic...

people.

People being kind and charming.

Air conditioning.

It was off we went.

Because you couldn't... What could you do?

Couldn't go back to Mummy then.

When I told my colleagues

and the people that employ me

that I'm giving up session work,

I'm gonna join a rock 'n' roll band...

everybody said, "You're mad. You're completely crazy."

On bass guitar, John Paul Jones.

John Paul Jones.

On drums,

John Bonham.

Lead guitar, Jimmy Page.

And myself, Robert Plant.

Yes! All right!

Yes!

Come on. Ah, yeah!

Yes!

It went so well, really,

that the group started to make the album

straight after coming back from Scandinavia.

How long had we been together about then? What, a month?

We went into Olympic Studios at night

over a few weeks.

The very first time we go in is the 25th of September

in 1968.

Arrival time from 11:00 p.m. onwards.

Let's take one.

Right.

There's Glyn Johns, dear Glyn,

at the controls of the Helios desk

that was custom-built for Olympic Studios,

and he was doing the engineering on it.

Drumming set one.

John, Jimmy, and John Paul

were much more connected

in these sessions than I was...

because they were recording it live.

They had to make it work on the floor.

A take is a take.

So it was an electric atmosphere.

And I just tried to land on top of it all.

John Paul Jones brought the most amazing bass playing,

and he was quite a force to be reckoned with musically.

I was very much in love with John's right foot.

I had great respect for it.

And I used to try and highlight it

and help it along and...

give it space.

Uh, take three.

So I could be doing a riff and just leave a note out

and something of his would pop through

and the rhythm would just suddenly come alive.

I was gonna throw everything I could at it.

I was gonna play acoustic guitar,

I played pedal steel guitar,

I played slide guitar, electric guitar.

I wanted to have so many different textures

and moods on it,

that the whole album

would just totally arrest the listeners

and take them to a realm that they hadn't been in before.

The guitar's not on a regular tuning

on "Black Mountain Side."

It is very much like a sitar tuning.

Jimmy and John Paul

were really at the top of their game.

They'd played on so many diverse pieces of music

that there was nowhere that they couldn't find themselves

comfortably going to.

So that gave us a whole magnificent bunch of colors

to play with.

Jimmy produced the album.

Which is great because it's got a different sound

and I like that.

He had all these ideas of microphone placement

to get distance, so he knew what he wanted to hear.

There were some really complex things

that went on during the mixing,

like the backwards echo that comes in "You Shook Me."

When you turn the tape round and apply the echo

and then turn it back over

and then you get the echo coming in reverse.

I was cross-fading from one song into another

and all these sort of tricks,

so that when people listened to the whole album,

as I say, it would just absolutely demand attention.

Well, I mean, it's amazing. Yeah. I had...

I had a pair of those big quad electrostatic speakers

in my front room.

You could sort of sit almost in them.

I just used to play it loud.

If you finance the album yourself,

you're in a much better position

than if you're going in with, like, a demo tape.

So, if you knew what you were doing,

it made sense to complete the album

and then go round and do a deal.

The American producer Bert Berns

had really done a great PR job for me at Atlantic Records.

When he took me there in 1964,

and I said we should aim at Atlantic...

so that's what we did.

Yeah.

Yeah. We'd done our bit,

and Jimmy and Peter were going to convince people

that they really needed it.

Jimmy had the kind of keys to the beginnings of a kingdom.

And he went off to New York with Peter

and through them, they got to see Jerry Wexler.

We put it on, and that was a great moment

to actually be able to play it, regardless of what they thought,

to actually be playing it to, you know, Jerry Wexler.

Atlantic wasn't allowed to remix anything.

It was perfect. It was done.

The sequencing was perfect. There was nothing...

Certainly no single's gonna be taken off it.

Having seen a situation whereby singles

have broken the spirit of a band,

I didn't want it to break the spirit of this band.

And I made a point of saying we're an album band,

we're not doing singles.

We could call the shots because we owned the album.

And here I am, signing a contract.

Then there's Peter, looking really cool.

Looking quite like a Mafia don.

Peter Grant and Jimmy had fixed it

so that Atlantic had no say in what we did whatsoever.

They went there saying, "Look, you want this band,

and we're gonna give you the music."

But...

Peter Grant wouldn't let any record executives

anywhere near the studio.

Or the band.

They were terrified of him, which was brilliant.

To have that freedom, I mean, it was unheard of.

Rather than keep The Yardbirds name,

the group became strong enough to start fresh,

and it was a decision that we'd change the name.

Keith Moon had suggested a name,

Led Zeppelin.

I thought that'd be a great name to use.

I thought, "Yeah. That's a terrible name.

Nobody's gonna remember that."

But I couldn't come up with a better one

so Led Zeppelin we were.

So, suddenly I was a dad and I was nearly married.

And I was in this group that was now gonna be called

Led Zeppelin.

So I went back to my parents with an open heart.

I called up my mum and dad and said,

"You might like to meet your possible,

most probable, daughter-in-law-to-be."

And so, of course,

they opened the door.

November the 9th, 1968,

we played Middle Earth.

And just to celebrate the fact that we did that gig,

I got married on the same day.

Trying to get as many things in in a day as I can.

The car broke down on the way to the gig.

All that stuff, you know.

We'd figured out what we were gonna play

and how we were gonna play it.

The first three numbers were just bam, bam, bam.

You could see people going, "What on Earth is going on?"

It's a funny thing.

You couldn't play big gigs in England.

You'd say, "Do you want to take some dates on Led Zeppelin?"

and all this sort of thing.

People wouldn't even book the band.

So Atlantic decided that

the record is going to come out on the 12th of January,

but only in America.

So Peter gets a tour together for us.

It was Christmas Eve, I think, we had to leave.

You suddenly find the album's coming out

so we sort of had to go to America to play.

I was concerned I wouldn't feel home there at all.

Pat kept saying, "Told you not to work with him."

But she and my wife Maureen were really good friends,

so they had the mutual overview of celebration

for what John was doing and what I was doing.

We just rolled with it.

Going to America was my dream, for every reason.

We're supporting Vanilla Fudge to begin with,

and they were the only group that took us under their wing.

They're good friends, because they were friends

when we had nothing, you know?

Carmine and John Bonham picked up

such a great repartee.

They used to watch and mimic each other, play little parts.

It was a great exchange of energies between everybody.

Denver was the first show.

Like playing in an aircraft hangar.

There wasn't that many people there either.

I thought, "Oh, boy."

But I said, "Look, let's just group together

as though we're playing in a club,

and just play to each other.

Don't worry about whether the place

is half or totally full.

Let's just play for ourselves to get a feel."

From the handful of dates with the Fudge,

then we go to the Whisky a Go Go in LA,

and then we're going to San Francisco.

The album is already being played

on the underground radio

and people are really curious

to see this band that they're hearing.

So we were gonna go in there with a hatchet

and just play like we'd never played before.

Just throw everything we'd got into it.

We're backstage at The Fillmore,

and, um, Peter Grant says,

"Well, whatever happens,

if you don't crack it here, it's over."

We knew after that one that we were on the right track.

Everything is traveling like wildfire.

The whole thing is just building.

People were bashing down the doors to get in

by the time we played Boston Tea Party

because we were working across the States

from the West Coast to the East.

On FM radio they would play

one side of your record

and back announce that side,

have one word from a sponsor, and then play the other side.

People would just listen to it

and they'd go, "They're playing in your town tonight."

And so they'd all come on down.

Rock 'n' roll with Led Zeppelin.

Robert Plant is here and I know you feel real good now.

I'm gonna put another caller on the phone here.

- You're on the air, dear. - Is this Robert Plant?

- Occasionally, yeah. - Oh, God.

I want you to know that I'm having heart failure.

Oh, good God!

Don't tell me. You need a doctor!

I just want you to know that you are so sexy.

- It's unbelievable! - Okay, dear.

Thank you very much.

- Next? - Hello?

I was gonna go see you last night

but I couldn't get tickets.

Oh, it was really good last night.

What's your name? Oh, forget it.

- Hello? - Hi.

Hi.

Guess what? I think you're a fox.

What's that mean?

You're a very good-looking man.

Far out.

I really dug the concert.

I really liked it.

I just really think you're a fox

and keep on doing what you're doing.

That's very nice of you. We will.

The anticipation was overwhelming.

I mean, really overwhelming.

To come back to England with what we'd experienced,

I just had to keep quiet.

I mean, over here, the record wasn't out yet.

So I just didn't have anything to say.

People would have laughed at me.

So Bonzo and I used to get together and go...

"Well, what was that?" "Well, I don't know."

"What happened?" "I don't know."

It was just absolutely stunning.

You know? Ridiculous.

We came back from America

and we'd gone through a big change,

and feeling good about it all.

But it does affect you.

Think about it. We're 20 years old,

and suddenly there were drugs

and there was a lot of girls,

and so many characters that suddenly arrive on the scene.

This huge sort of sub-subculture that spins around fame.

Especially fame in its very early stages.

'Cause that's the place where you can smell...

something new coming.

It felt good.

As it might.

Especially as we were doing it without the press,

who didn't seem to like us,

the few reviews we did seem to get,

the obvious one being the Rolling Stone review.

I remember reading that review,

thinking, "Who are they talking about?

Do they mean us?"

A lot of those writers at that time,

I don't know whether they were studying the music

to criticize it or whether they were more concerned

about the sort of social activities.

But do you really care about other people's responses

if you're playing like that?

Well, the answer is...

unfortunately, yeah.

That's where you can come unstuck.

Fortunately, as four guys, we did not care that much.

We were more caring about how we turned ourselves on.

The first album, it just got ripped to pieces.

Like, loads would say, "Oh no.

I don't like Zeppelin's sort of music,"

for some reason, you know?

So we all thought it was a bit of a joke.

We worked really, really hard and...

people got it, and you could see they got it.

Then they told their friends that they got it.

"Get some too."

The venues are jam-packed, so what people are hearing

as opposed to what they're reading

is what really makes the band.

It was exciting to be doing these concerts

and being able to have this communion

with the four of us

and be able to just change, you know,

things with a sense of humor or an intensity

or a level of aggression or whatever.

And this is how connected we are,

that we can be moving in any direction

and everyone's following.

If the guitar's leading, they're all following.

I can just hold back and change this.

The improvisation is just at an extraordinary level.

With "Dazed and Confused,"

the intensity is building. It's positively evil.

Uh!

Oh! Ah!

Hey!

I knew what we had and I just really wanted

to knock everybody dead with it.

I had a whole vision for the next album.

It was going to be very cinematic

in its approach to how the music is done in the first place,

let alone what the overdubs and the layers are gonna do.

So I called for a rehearsal at the house

and we rehearsed two new songs,

"Whole Lotta Love"

and "What Is and What Should Never Be."

Jimmy would sit down with an acoustic guitar

and we'd work the songs out.

He just comes in and plays what we've written.

Then we, all together, suss it all out.

We went into Olympic Studios in April

and we were just really excited to be back in the studio again.

My songwriting capacity's starting to kick in...

because of the color of the plane that surrounded me.

So, with "Whole Lotta Love,"

Jimmy had done some work on the chorus.

He showed me his riff which was incredible really.

And for the verse, I just sang a Willie Dixon lyric.

And, you know, it was like...

I was finding the best bits of Black music

and putting it through the wringer,

one way or another.

I think there's no point in having "Whole Lotta Love"

and then having another riff

which was pretty much the same sort of sound.

So, the thing with "What Is and What Should Never Be"

is that it's got these laid-back, gentler verses

and then it comes in with,

I won't call them a power chorus,

but it's more intensity to it

so that you could then illustrate

John Bonham's power and the group's power as well,

the whole thing.

We had this tour coming up

and I think it's going to be really a hoot

to be able to record in various locations in America.

The idea was to be inspired by,

you know, the love of the people

and to get the reaction of the audience.

It was just a joy to be able

to go into studios in the States.

You've got the energy of being on the road

and you're actually documenting it

within whatever you're recording.

John Bonham's kit was going to be spread

right across the stereo picture.

So then you could have the placement

of the instruments within and the layering within.

He knew how to tune.

He had the science of tuning the drum.

So that when he hit it,

it just resonated out of the top.

It just projected.

And he played with his wrists.

It's not all this forearm smashing.

But he could also do an accent on the bass drum

and you'd feel it, you know, more or less in your gut.

He was so inventive.

And inspiring to play with, you know.

You'd hear the stuff and, well, I don't wanna just go...

...over that.

I want to do something that'll fit in really well with it.

That's what bass players do best is to fit in.

So everybody could be heard.

That was the important thing for me,

that everybody could be heard,

what they were doing, on a separate record.

We just recorded what we liked.

Zeppelin always had completely different influences.

We all listened to different things.

I always said that Led Zeppelin was the area in the middle.

In between us all.

It was very encouraging to peel back

the vulnerabilities

of starting to create a writing partnership with Jimmy,

where we were breaking down the sensitivities

and the possible embarrassments.

Writing is a very intimate thing.

You expose yourself.

I had written some lyrics on the first album,

and also on the second album,

but I wasn't as confident about my lyrics

as I was about my guitar playing.

I had to start thinking about

what do I do as a singer

and as a guy who's gonna bring melody

or even a story to something.

The idea was to inspire him through the music

to be inspired lyrically.

And then he came with these lyrics for "Ramble On."

Yeah, this is, um...

a rough shot of "Ramble On."

"Leaves are falling all around.

Time I was on my way."

That is the story of my life.

I was really keen to have a lot of texture and layering,

certainly on behalf of the guitar,

with "Ramble On."

It has these various guitar parts that go in it.

There's, like, guitar rolling

that is moving over some of the verses.

Then there's the whole texture of the solo.

It was just a joy to to be able to do these tracks

and everyone do their part and then come back

and go, "Wow. What's he done with this?"

There were so many diverse places

that it was coming from.

That very fact that we were able to be intimate in writing,

that's the big breakthrough,

because it's a total exposure.

As a kid, my parents took me to every mystical mountain top

and every beautiful ruin and...

all that sort of great resonance of another people.

Well...

that's what that song's all about really.

Me, you, and the other people.

Gig after gig, night after night,

maybe we had 20 songs to choose from at that point in time.

Soon we'd have 40.

We'd opened the door to America and there was a glint of light

and, obviously, you're gonna kick the door open

and go in and really... and really...

It's a massive continent.

We really wanted to get the word across

through performances.

We toured horrendously at first.

We toured for months on end pretty much.

Three of these guys had families already

at that point in time,

and this is our fifth tour in seven months,

so they were away from their children

for a long time.

It is difficult when you've got a family.

I flew with my wife Mo to all the good spots.

She'd come to New York.

She'd just take the kids shopping.

Go to shows. It was great.

But then they'd go home and leave us

to get on with touring the rest of the country.

There weren't tour buses or any niceties in those days.

It was just like getting whatever transport you can,

get to the gig, play it, then try have Richard Cole

find the next venue, or even the city sometimes.

You could always tell, when he was like,

you'd get to a junction and see him going like this...

you'd go, "Oh no. We're lost again."

It's so much easier to tour around England.

If you're in America, you're all day in a hotel

having arguments with bloody turd heads and everything.

It does affect you, what's happened previously in the day.

It was all commercial airlines

so you had to get up early in the morning and go

and sit in some airport waiting for a plane to somewhere.

But that's how everybody got to hear us in America.

We came back from America

and everybody wanted to book the group.

It was a change of tune.

There was no publicity

and, strangely, you'd get to a British show,

"How did these people know we were coming?"

We figured out it was just word of mouth.

I just liked the idea of the stimulus

of travel and attention.

What do you know if you don't seek?

You've got to go and have a look for it.

We were playing festivals in America

two years after the Summer of Love.

I know that really has no real significance,

but to me it had every significance

'cause I was in a place that I really wanted to be,

emotionally.

I can remember John doing a sound check

at Newport Jazz Festival

and I could just see all of James Brown's drummers

coming out of different doors

going, "What the... What is going on here?"

He's going...

He's going, "Oh, yeah. I know. I know who's watching me."

But it was great.

It's what made Zeppelin unique in that way.

It's just the way he approached rhythm

and what he did.

We recorded all the songs

for Led Zeppelin II on that tour.

It was like a kind of hurricane.

A whirlwind of energy and release.

We hadn't really had a chance, obviously,

with the amount of time that we were spending in America,

to concentrate that much at home.

So we came back and actually played

our first British festival.

Would you welcome, please, Led Zeppelin.

And, of course, you still wonder, is this...

gonna have any resonance?

Is this gonna bring it on home?

Wow.

I've seen a photograph of the first Bath Festival

but to see moving images of it,

well, that's absolutely amazing.

That was probably the first festival

that we'd done in Britain.

And it didn't rain, so it was really good,

and it was fun.

But how long do you want off between a tour and a tour

and a tour? Not long, really.

I mean, we had no idea of fatigue.

There's just energy and power.

32 minutes past the hour,

liftoff on Apollo 11.

That's one small step for man,

one giant leap for mankind.

I can just remember we were in a tent

and somebody landed on the moon.

I mean, can you imagine just being in America...

as a kid, more or less, and just looking up...

You got this thing going on with the music

and you look up and there's a man on the moon.

You know, it's a big old world out there,

and I'm sure that 99% of people are far more interested

in the fact that these guys got back safely from the moon.

But the day they got back, that was a big day for us too.

That is the biggest deal

if you're a kid and you want to be a singer.

You get a gold record.

I mean... [blows raspberry] What happens next?

Doesn't matter, does it?

I just really wanted to make sure that

this album was really gonna get everybody excited.

I wanted it to be something that they hadn't heard before.

The acoustic and the electrics and the more radical

and even avant-garde.

So, when it came to doing the mix

for Led Zeppelin II,

I'd mixed it with Eddie Kramer at A&R Studios in New York.

I think he did an amazing job.

And, as was the case with these mixing things,

there was often more than two hands on the desk.

I really wanted to do something with "Whole Lotta Love"

to stop it being a single.

So it was gonna have a radical avant-garde section

in the middle that began with a sonic wave.

Then when I put the overdubs on it

for what was gonna go in the middle,

I de-tuned the guitar all the way down

and I was just pulling the strings across and across.

Then there was lots of panning.

That means moving things from left to right.

And so that was it.

Led Zeppelin II was completed...

and ready to be delivered.

January the 9th, in 1970,

we played the Royal Albert Hall in London,

and if we're thinking back a year,

January the 9th, 1969,

is when we were playing in San Francisco.

So this is a whole year's progress.

It was far out.

I mean, I was just having a great time.

No chartered accountant here.

This is like a London concert, so, of course,

this is where the families come.

Yeah, it's like a gathering of the clans.

Just to go in there and tread those boards

was just something else, you know? Fabulous.

And it was our own show,

so we just went out there and did it.

Led Zep! Led Zep!

Led Zep! Led Zep!

Led Zep! Led Zep!

Led Zep!

Thank you very much.

Led Zep! Led Zep!

Led Zep! Led Zep!

Led Zep! Led Zep!

Led Zep!

My dad came to see that show.

He was really proud, which was great.

Said, got great passion and fire and all that.

It was really nice.

John Paul and me, we get on really good.

I mean, we all do, you know.

Each member of the group, they're quite different,

but you find that they're quite lads, actually.

They're their little category on their own, really.

Um, it was at least the middle of '69

before I got to really know each of them.

It's a gradual thing, isn't it?

I could talk about Robert forever

because I know him so well really

that it's ridiculous.

And Jimmy's pretty shy, actually.

But knowing him like I know, he's really great.

You can like each one of them for what they're doing.

But I always love playing in the group so...

I don't need to do anything else.

We got there in the first place,

on the first day,

playing "Train Kept A Rollin',"

'cause we were drawn to that moment

and it worked.

But all the preamble to that was just out there,

throwing it up in the air.

So why should it ever stop?

If you have something that you know is different

in yourself,

then you have to put work into it.

You have to work and work and work.

You also have to believe in it.

But as long as you can stay really true,

your aim is true,

you can realize your dreams. I do believe that.

I believe that that can be done, 'cause this is what happens.

Thank you.