(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Fri 2 January 2026 20:30, UK
“We first played together in a small room on Gerrard Street, a basement room, which is now Chinatown,” John Paul Jones remembered Led Zeppelin’s first jam session very fondly.
“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?’ Me doing more sessions, didn’t know anything at all,” he said. “There was an old Yardbirds tune called ‘Train Kept a Rollin’… The whole room just exploded.”
That was the moment that the members of Led Zeppelin knew that they had tapped into something special, and it was only a matter of time before the rest of the world knew it as well. They were a good rock band, sure, but they tapped into the hearts and minds of listeners for a lot more reasons than that.
While all of the hallmarks of a rock band were on display throughout the band’s sound, there were also different genres present, which I wouldn’t have previously thought could exist in a rock song. Folk, acoustic music, blues and R&B could all be heard in the sound of Led Zeppelin. Rock music was already popular by the time the band had started working together, but now, Zeppelin were showing everybody just how limitless the possibilities of this genre actually were.
Their sound was unlike anything anybody had heard before, and it was so otherworldly that for many, it proved something they had already been suspicious of, which was the idea that rock legends sold their souls to the devil. The idea that mortal men could rock as hard as Led Zeppelin did was a bizarre notion to many, and so they subscribed to the theory that the boys were satan worshippers and it was only through the power of beelzebub that their songs could come to life.
These rumours led to a large amount of myth surrounding Led Zeppelin, and it didn’t just impact their music. Stories started circulating about band members drinking blood and worshipping the devil on their tour bus. They became a band where it was impossible to work out what was fact and what was fiction.
At the time, it worked to their advantage, as the mystery contributed to album and tour sales; however, as time moves on and music takes new form, the band members of Led Zeppelin want to do away with these myths so that people can just start enjoying the music.
It was for this reason that they let the family friendly movie School of Rock use their track ‘Immigrant Song’, a privilege hardly any other films have had. Robert Plant said they opted to do this in a bid to let young people enjoy the music of Led Zeppelin and have their sound laced with humour rather than stories of the devil.
John Paul Jones also felt that the reissue of the band’s live show on The Song Remains The Same in the early 2000s, as he liked the fact that people who hadn’t heard the band prior would finally be able to experience their live show. In doing so, they could see that their legacy has nothing to do with worshipping Satan and everything to do with just playing good music. He felt all the songs were a great reflection of this, but one of the best was ‘Moby Dick’.
“People were cheering at the ends of songs like a real gig. Even I cheered at the end of [Bonham’s showpiece] ‘Moby Dick’,” Jones concluded. “More than The Song Remains The Same, people get a real feeling of the power, and everything Led Zeppelin was about.”
Related Topics
The Far Out Led Zeppelin Newsletter
All the latest stories about Led Zeppelin from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.