Led Zeppelin were an English rock band formed in London in 1968. The band comprised vocalist Robert Plant, guitarist Jimmy Page, bassist-keyboardist John Paul Jones and drummer John Bonham. With a heavy, guitar-driven sound and drawing from influences including blues and folk music, Led Zeppelin are cited as a progenitor of hard rock and heavy metal. They significantly influenced the music industry, particularly in the development of album-oriented rock and stadium rock. Page composed most of Led Zeppelin’s music, while Plant wrote most of the…

Led Zeppelin were an English rock band formed in London in 1968. The band comprised vocalist Robert Plant, guitarist Jimmy Page, bassist-keyboardist John Paul Jones and drummer John Bonham. With a heavy, guitar-driven sound and drawing from influences including blues and folk music, Led Zeppelin are cited as a progenitor of hard rock and heavy metal. They significantly influenced the music industry, particularly in the development of album-oriented rock and stadium rock.

Page composed most of Led Zeppelin’s music, while Plant wrote most of the lyrics. Jones occasionally contributed keyboard-focused parts, particularly on the band’s final album. The latter half of their career saw a series of record-breaking tours that earned the group a reputation for excess and debauchery. Although they remained commercially and critically successful, their touring and output, which included Presence (1976) and In Through the Out Door (1979), declined in the late 1970s. After Bonham’s death in 1980, the group disbanded. The three surviving members have sporadically collaborated and participated in one-off concerts, including the 2007 Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert in London, with Bonham’s son Jason Bonham on drums.
Led Zeppelin are one of the best-selling music artists of all time, with estimated record sales of between 200 and 300 million units worldwide. They achieved eight consecutive UK number-one albums and six number-one albums on the US Billboard 200, with five of their albums certified Diamond in the US by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Rolling Stone described them as “the heaviest band of all time”, “the biggest band of the seventies”, and “unquestionably one of the most enduring bands in rock history”. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995; the museum’s biography states that they were “as influential” in the 1970s as the Beatles were in the 1960s. James Patrick Page (born 9 January 1944) is an English musician and producer who achieved international success as the guitarist and founder of the rock band Led Zeppelin.
Page began his career as a studio session musician in London and, by the mid-1960s, alongside Big Jim Sullivan, was one of the most sought-after session guitarists in Britain. He was a member of the Yardbirds from 1966 to 1968. When the Yardbirds broke up, he founded Led Zeppelin, which was active from 1968 to 1980. Following the death of Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham, he participated in a number of musical groups throughout the 1980s and 1990s, more specifically XYZ, the Firm, the Honeydrippers, Coverdale–Page, and Page and Plant. Since 2000, Page has participated in various guest performances with many artists, both live and in studio recordings, and participated in a one-off Led Zeppelin reunion in 2007 that was released as the 2012 concert film Celebration Day. Along with the Edge and Jack White, he participated in the 2008 documentary It Might Get Loud.
Page is widely considered to be one of the greatest and most influential guitarists of all time. Rolling Stone magazine has described Page as “the pontiff of power riffing” and ranked him number three in their 2015 list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time”, behind Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton, and ranking 3rd again in 2023 behind Chuck Berry and Jimi Hendrix. In 2010, he was ranked number two in Gibson’s list of “Top 50 Guitarists of All Time” and, in 2007, number four on Classic Rock’s “100 Wildest Guitar Heroes”. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice: once as a member of the Yardbirds (1992) and once as a member of Led Zeppelin (1995). Led Zeppelin II is the second studio album by the English rock band Led Zeppelin, released on 22 October 1969 in the United States and on 31 October 1969 in the United Kingdom by Atlantic Records. Recording sessions for the album took place at several locations in both the United Kingdom and North America from January to August 1969. The album’s production was credited to the band’s lead guitarist and songwriter Jimmy Page, and it was also Led Zeppelin’s first album on which Eddie Kramer served as engineer.
The album exhibited the band’s evolving musical style of blues-derived material and their guitar riff-based sound. It has been described as the band’s heaviest album. Six of the nine songs were written by the band, while the other three were reinterpretations of Chicago blues songs by Willie Dixon and Howlin’ Wolf. One single, “Whole Lotta Love”, was released outside of the UK (the band would release no UK singles during their career), and peaked as a top-ten single in over a dozen markets around the world.
Led Zeppelin II was a commercial success, and was the band’s first album to reach number one on charts in the UK and the US. The album’s cover designer David Juniper was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Recording Package in 1970. On 15 November 1999, the album was certified 12× Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for sales reaching 12 million copies in the US. Since its release, various writers and music critics have cited Led Zeppelin II as one of the greatest and most influential albums of all time.”Whole Lotta Love” is a song by the English rock band Led Zeppelin. It is the opening track on the band’s second album, Led Zeppelin II, and was released as a single in 1969 in several countries; as with other Led Zeppelin songs, no single was released in the United Kingdom. In the United States, it became their first hit and was certified gold. Parts of the song’s lyrics were adapted from Willie Dixon’s “You Need Love”, recorded by Muddy Waters in 1962; originally uncredited to Dixon, a lawsuit in 1985 was settled with a payment to Dixon and credit on subsequent releases.
In 2004, the song was ranked number 75 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, and in March 2005, Q placed “Whole Lotta Love” at number three in its list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Tracks. It was placed 11 on a similar list by Rolling Stone. In 2009 it was named the third greatest hard rock song of all time by VH1. In 2014, listeners to BBC Radio 2 voted “Whole Lotta Love” as containing the greatest guitar riff of all time. “What Is and What Should Never Be” is a song by English rock band Led Zeppelin. It was written by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant and was included as the second track on Led Zeppelin II (1969).

Composition and recording:
Guitarist Jimmy Page has said that he wrote the song on an acoustic Harmony Sovereign H1260 guitar. “What is and What Should Never Be” was one of the first songs on which Page used his soon-to-become trademark Gibson Les Paul for recording. The production makes liberal use of stereo as the guitars pan back and forth between channels. Robert Plant’s vocals were phased during the verses. Record producer Rick Rubin has remarked, “The descending riff [of “What Is and What Should Never Be”] is amazing: It’s like a bow is being drawn back, and then it releases. The rhythm of the vocals is almost like a rap. It’s insane — one of their most psychedelic songs.”
This was also one of the first songs recorded by the band for which Robert Plant received writing credit. According to rock journalist Stephen Davis, the author of the Led Zeppelin biography Hammer of the Gods: The Led Zeppelin Saga, the lyrics for this song reflect a romance Plant had with his wife’s younger sister.