A palm reader, a trendy church Vicar and Shirley Bassey are part of the unlikely story of how Led Zeppelin formed and became one of the greatest rock n roll bands of all time. New movie Becoming Led Zeppelin has traced the roots of the band right to the very start - including the first time they played together in a rehearsal space having just met drummer John Bonham. Bass player John Paul Jones recalls: "The room just exploded. "We just kept playing it and doing like, solo breaks and all the rest of it, and Robert's improvising. I've never heard anything like it. I was expecting some cool soul singer, and there's this screaming maniac with this fantastic voice and fantastic range. You know, I was like, What are you doing up there? You hurt yourself. Man, it was devastating.".
The band would then go on to make 16 top ten albums with eight UK No1s. And despite their aversion to singles they still had huge songs like Whole Lotta Love and Stairway To Heaven. Their untitled fourth album, commonly known as Led Zeppelin IV from 1971 is one of the best-selling albums in history, with 37 million copies sold. But the band's formation was much more humble and unlikely in some ways...
John Paul Jones wanted to play bass after hearing it booming through jukeboxes of the late Fifties. But his dad wanted him to play saxophone and he would never have got the bass guitar he wanted if it wasn't for some divine inspiration. He recalls: "I had a little band and we were playing at the Youth Club, and I got talking to their very go ahead, young priest. He went, we really like an organist. I said 'Well, I could be an organist for you', like not thinking anything of it. But 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. And I learned the hymns, I could figure out what the hymns were.
"I'm not particularly religious, but it was a good gig, and he was a really cool priest, and so I became organist and choirmaster at 14. Which paid me the princely sum of 25 pounds a year, which bought me a Fender bass.". In Epson, Surrey, Jimmy Page had been inspired by Lonnie Donegan, saying he was "mesmerised" and had to start playing guitar. It took over his young life and perhaps explains why he became so good.
He recalls: "I was absolutely inseparable from the guitar. You know, I play it before breakfast and then play on the way to school. I'd go there and want to practice, but it would be confiscated and given back at the end of the day.". By the time he was a teenager he was being asked to record guitar solos in the studio for bands laying down albums. He was much younger than those around him and learned how the studio worked and the production side of things which would become useful later in life.
One session saw him playing guitar as par of the backing band for Shirley Bassey and her hit Goldfinger. The bass for the song was played by a young man called John Paul Jones and he and Jimmy got to know each other in sessions like these and became friends. For his part, Robert Plant could well have ended up in a boring office job. He recalls: "I grew up in the West Midlands. My childhood was very sheltered until my parents had me to a big school in the big town studying to be a chartered accountant. I mean, I really dug a lot of what was going on at school, but when Little Richard appeared, it was so provocative and all consuming and hypnotic, and it kind of knocked everything else.".
Schoolwork took a back seat to bands and Robert began singing anywhere he could, sometimes playing in groups with drum player John Bonham. Fast forward a couple of years and by now Jimmy Page has quit session music to play the music he loves with the band The Yardbirds and his pal Jeff Beck. But Beck quit the group during a tour pushing Jimmy to the lead guitar role. He was excited about what was to happen next with the rest of the band whilst on tour in the US.
He says: "I have this new sound for The Yard, it's 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. I went to palm reading in LA and the palmist said 'you're going to be making a decision very soon which is going to change your life'. "A meeting happened, like two or three days after the palmist, where the rest of the group said, 'That's it. We want to fold'. I mean, it was a shock." The band were still due to be going on tour in Scandenavia and so Jimmy decided he would form his own group to replace the The Yardbirds alongside their manager Peter Grant.
After failing to land the first vocalist they want they were recommended Robert Plant and both men went up to see him perform in his band. "He was doing some wonderful improvised vocals, and I thought they were marvelous. So invited him around my house," says Jimmy. Robert, who was homeless at the time and living out of a brown suitacase, was on board and recommended drummer John Bonham. "I said, 'Wait a minute, there is no drummer on the planet to compare with John Bonham. He's magnificent'." The luck of both men was about to change forever. The line up was complete thanks to John Paul Jones' wife and some lucky timing and him having some spare cash to make sure they got the drummer they wanted who had a family to feed.
