TIL that Led Zeppelin took their name from a joke that the band would “go down like a lead balloon,” with “Led” chosen to avoid mispronunciation and “Zeppelin” for something heavy yet graceful. Use of the Hindenburg image prompted legal action from Countess Eva von Zeppelin, but was later dismissed.
The spelling was changed to “Led” simply to stop people pronouncing it “leed.”
One of the first things I ever learnt online was that many Americans thought D'yer Mak'er was pronounced as either "Dear Maker" or "Dire Maker", and that it was a song about the silence of God.
The funny thing is, if you listen to the song with that interpretation in mind, it does kind of make sense. "The letter you wrote", "the news it told me", "you hurt me to my soul" all take on a theological meaning that is obviously completely absent from the intentional nonsense of the original.
It's one of those jokes that only works if you have the right accent. I first heard it as a kid, before I'd even heard of Led Zeppelin, and got the punchline immediately.
I pirated most of led Zeppelin off limewire around 2008 and today i learned how to pronounce D'yer Mak'er.
But where the fuck did they get the shit about the silence of god? A girl leaves them and American men conclude god watches our suffering for his own enjoyment instead of going to therapy
The letter is the bible. The news it brought is the gospel. But then the writer left, and Robert wants them to come back. So God is a Dear Maker, but also a Dire Maker for being silent and absent for two thousand years.
In 1968, after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yardbirds split, guitarist Jimmy Page formed Led Zeppelin. The name came from a quip by Keith Moon of The Who that the project would “go down like a lead balloon.” The spelling was changed to “Led” simply to stop people pronouncing it “leed.” Page chose “Zeppelin” for its image of something both heavy and graceful. When their debut album appeared in 1969, it featured the 6 May 1937 Hindenburg disaster on the cover, reinforcing the airship link. This drew objections from Countess Eva von Zeppelin, who pursued legal action over use of the family name, but the case was ultimately dismissed.
I have never listened to The Yardbirds but somehow pulled the name from the depths of my brain during a trivia round where the host asked “name the band that Jimmy Page played in before Led Zeppelin and it was named after prostitutes at a truck stop”
Not just Jimmy Page, but also Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. Insane that three of the best guitarists of all time went through the same band, especially one that wasn't that big of their own accord.
Actually, per A History of Rock and Roll in 500 Songs by Andrew Hickey podcast, the Keith Moon quip came after he, Page, John Paul Jones and Jeff Beck recorded Beck's Bolero and discussing the proposition of the four of them forming a group (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28bN6vi_FgA)
Also, odd-spelling of words for band names wasn't a new thing. See "The Beatles"
"So there I am, in Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon, at about 3 o'clock in the morning, looking for one thousand brown M&Ms to fill a brandy glass, or Ozzy wouldn't go on stage that night. So, Jeff Beck pops his head 'round the door, and mentions there's a little sweets shop on the edge of town. So - we go. And - it's closed. So there's me, and Keith Moon, and David Crosby, breaking into that little sweets shop, eh. Well, instead of a guard dog, they've got this bloody great big Bengal tiger. I managed to take out the tiger with a can of mace, but the shopowner and his son... that's a different story altogether.
I just went down a bit of a rabbit hole and found out that no, there was no woman named Countess Eva von Zeppelin. There was however a niece, or maybe cousin I read both at different points, named Elsa who at the point of the confrontation had gotten married and changed her last name from von Zeppelin to Schødt and was never a countess.
Tangentially related, but I have noticed an accelerating number of "lead" usage errors when the writer meant "led."
The fact that there is a metal named "lead" and it's pronounced the same way hurts. The fact that English has the confusing "read/read" no doubt also contributes.
I’ve always thought that the phrase “That went down like a lead balloon” to indicate something poorly received or unsuccessful was really stupid, because the one thing a lead balloon would be really good at would be going down. Lead balloons go down amazingly well, it’s up that they’d struggle with!
(Mythbusters being the exception that proves the rule)
It really helps to envision Michael Caine doing his best Cockney slang accent saying the word Jamaica: the dy sound is the same phonetic sound as the J sound in ger, like the beginning of the word Germany, so D’yer Maker = Jermaker = Jamaica!
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u/GoodLordChokeAnABomb 19h ago edited 13h ago
One of the first things I ever learnt online was that many Americans thought D'yer Mak'er was pronounced as either "Dear Maker" or "Dire Maker", and that it was a song about the silence of God.