How Led Zep Got Their Name
Posted onIn trying to prove my theory that Maroon 5’s name is actually a subtle homage to Luke Skywalker’s X-Wing’s call signal during the Death Star attack stage of “Star Wars: Episode IV, A New Hope” (“…Red Leader, this is Red 5…”), I came across this simple and well worded explanation as to how Led Zeppelin, aka the greatest rock band eh-VER, got its name:
Keith Moon and John Entwistle of the Who were hanging out with Richard Cole (The Yardbirds road manager) one night at the disco “Salvation” in New York. Moon and Entwistle were burnt out on the whole scene with The Who and were talking about the desire to form a band with Jimmy Page and Steve Winwood. And Entwistle said “Yeah. We’ll call it Lead Zeppelin. Because it will go over like a fucking Lead Balloon.” Laughter followed and Cole told Jimmy about the discussion later. So when the time came to change the band’s name from The New Yardbirds they finally settled on “Led Zeppelin” after short stints as “Mad Dogs” and “Whoopee Cushion”. They changed the spelling of lead to “Led” so that people wouldn’t mispronounce the groups name as “Lead Zeppelin”.
If I ever form a band, I was going to name it Red 5. Now I can’t do that because of stupid Maroon 5. Now I have to go with my backup name – Field Order 15. This is the formal name for General Sherman’s order to give all freed blacks 40 acres and a mule, which in my opinion, while great sounding (Land to a former slave? Great!) added insult to injury. The mule, a cross between a donkey and a horse, is a sterile animal and can’t reproduce. Its used as a work animal and let’s face it, freed blacks in 1865 were used to working. So in reality, Sherman would have been much better off giving a plow to the freed slave to push instead of a mule. At least that way the field will get plowed and something might grow instead of just having a sterile animal sitting around, doing nothing except waiting to be fed by a freed slave that probably has no money for food. But that’s just my opinion.