Led Zeppelin Albums – The Greatest in Hard Rock?

The artists behind the Led Zeppelin merch and albums, when taken collectively are widely known as the best in the genre of hard rock. Although other acts might dispute this opinion, enduring institutions in the music industry support the pedestal on which the band’s music has been placed. The Rolling Stone magazine, VH1, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Classic Rock all agree that this group has achieved enough for its music to deserve to be called the best.

The band started out with very little flair. The origins of the group can be traced to Jimmy Page who was originally a member of the Yardbirds. When this group disbanded, Page joined forces with Robert Plant, John Bonham and John Paul Jones to form their own band which was first known as the New Yardbirds. It didn’t take them long to ditch this first name.

From that time on, there was no trace of the Yardbirds name on every Led Zeppelin album. At the onset, the chosen name was just a term that meant a bad gig but others could not help but link it to a royal European family to which the Zeppelin airships are credited to. Because of the association, a member of the family threatened to take legal action so the group, at one point, had to perform with no name. Clearly though, the band has been able to keep its name.

Before they took to recording, the young group first got into tours, playing first in English premises in 1968 before reaching out to US territory. They weren’t able to make their first eponymous release until 1969. After five years, their first album was said to be so successful that it had already generated $7,000,000 in sales despite having been produced on the cheap.

More Led Zeppelin albums followed, the second and third ones of which were yet again self-titled releases. Album number two was so good that several bands treated it as a bible of sorts. The third one is currently regarded in a positive light but when it was released in the 70s it wasn’t as well received as the other albums mainly because it was strongly acoustic and very much unlike the band’s previous works.

The fourth body of work from the band officially remains untitled. The lack of an official title was meant to prove that the band could sell music for music’s sake and not because of hype or promotion associated with the band name. True enough, this untitled masterpiece is among the hottest selling of all time, registering sales in the millions in the US alone.

Having made a point, the members took to their instruments to create more music through the 1970s. Each of the succeeding albums departed from the self-titling trend. Up to 1982, the band released Houses of the Holy, Physical Graffiti, Presence, In Through the Out Door and Coda.

It was only appropriate that the last of the Led Zeppelin albums was named Coda because it was exactly just that. When Bonham died, the band decided they would no longer play and Coda marked the end of the group’s career. Today however, their entire body of works lives on and people definitely listen to more than their final notes.