Led Zeppelin Plays Together for the First Time

Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham performed collectively for the very first time on Aug. 12, 1968 in a small area on Gerrard Street in the West End of London. The first track that the band – which might later be named Led Zeppelin – tore into was “The Train Kept A-Rollin’,” a setlist fixture for Page’s earlier band, the Yardbirds.

The chemistry was instantaneous, in accordance with Led Zeppelin’s official web site. “We first played together in a small room, a basement room,” Jones mentioned. “There was just wall-to-wall amplifiers and a space for the door – and that was it. Literally, it was everyone looking at each other – ‘What shall we play?'” As they kicked into gear, “the whole room just exploded.”

Even although the band was nonetheless referred to as the New Yardbirds at the time, they had been off to a robust and recent begin. And everybody there felt the electrical energy. “I remember the little room – all I can remember it was hot and it sounded good,” Plant mentioned. “Very exciting and very challenging really. It felt like we’d found something that we had to be very careful with because we might lose it. But it was remarkable, the power.”

The band would play its first concert on Sept. 7; their name change would come a little more than a month later, on Oct. 14. “Exciting is the phrase,” Page said about that first jam session, “At the finish, we knew that it was actually taking place, actually electrifying.”