First Rehearsal: The Day Led Zeppelin’s Sound Was Born On or around 12 August 1969, in a cramped basement on…
On or around 12 August 1969, in a cramped basement on Gerrard Street in London’s Soho — an area now part of Chinatown — four musicians stepped into a room together for the very first time. Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham didn’t yet know that the sound they were about to create would reshape rock music forever. What they did know, almost instantly, was that something extraordinary had happened.
By their own recollections, it was an unassuming start: a rehearsal space packed wall-to-wall with amplifiers, a single gap left for the door, and four men unsure of exactly what would unfold. As John Paul Jones later recalled in a 1990 interview, “We first played together in a small room on Gerrard Street, a basement room, which is now Chinatown. 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?’”
Jones, who came from a background of prolific session work, suggested an old Yardbirds number, “Train Kept a Rollin’.” The choice turned out to be a catalyst. “The whole room just exploded,” Jones said.
Robert Plant remembered the session just as vividly. “I remember the little room, all I can remember was it was hot and it sounded good – very exciting and very challenging really, because I could feel that something was happening to myself and to everyone else in the room,” he explained. “It felt like we’d found something that we had to be very careful with because we might lose it, but it was remarkable: the power.”
Jimmy Page, who had been searching for the right combination of musicians to bring his vision to life after the Yardbirds dissolved, knew instantly they had found the magic. “At the end, we knew that it was really happening, really electrifying. Exciting is the word. We went from there to start rehearsals for the album.”
John Bonham, the powerhouse drummer who would help define the band’s ferocious yet precise rhythm section, summed it up simply: “We had a good play that day and it went quite well. Even the first time we’d played together, there’s a feeling when you’re playing whether it’s going to be any good, and it was good – very good indeed. But at that time I had no idea it would achieve what it has.”
The Gerrard Street jam was more than just a rehearsal — it was the first ignition of a musical engine that would roar across the world. The chemistry, the intensity, and the raw power they felt that day would carry directly into the making of Led Zeppelin’s debut album, recorded within weeks and released in early 1969, changing the trajectory of rock forever.
In hindsight, it’s almost mythical: four musicians in a hot, cramped basement, blasting through a blues-rock standard, unaware they were starting a revolution. But for those in that room on Gerrard Street, the feeling was clear from the first note — this was the beginning of something unstoppable.
