With their first album not yet released, Led Zeppelin made their live debut at the University of Surrey, Guildford on 25 October 1968. This was followed by a U.S. concert debut on 26 December 1968 (when promoter Barry Fey added them onto a bill in Denver, Colorado) before moving on to the west coast for dates in Los Angeles, San Francisco and other cities.[31]
Led Zeppelin's eponymous debut album was released on 12 January 1969, during their first U.S. tour. The album's blend of blues, folk and eastern influences with distorted amplification made it one of the pivotal records in the creation of heavy metal music. However, Plant has commented that it is unfair for people to typecast the band as heavy metal, since about a third of their music was acoustic.[32]
In an interview for the Led Zeppelin Profiled radio promo CD (1990) Page said that the album took about 35 hours of studio time to create (including mixing), and stated that he knows this because of the amount charged on the studio bill. Peter Grant claimed the album cost £1,750 to produce (including artwork).[21] By 1975, the album had grossed $7,000,000.[33]
Led Zeppelin's album cover met an interesting protest when, at a 28 February 1970 gig in Copenhagen, the band were billed as "The Nobs" as the result of a threat of legal action from aristocrat Eva von Zeppelin (a relative of the creator of the Zeppelin aircraft), who, upon seeing the logo of the Hindenburg crashing in flames, threatened to have the show pulled off the air.[34]
In their first year of existence, Led Zeppelin managed to complete four US and four UK concert tours, as well as find time to release their second album, entitled Led Zeppelin II.[26] Recorded almost entirely on the road at various North American recording studios, the second album was an even greater success than the first and reached the number one chart position in the US and the UK.[35] Here the band further developed ideas established on their debut album, creating a work which became even more widely acclaimed and arguably more influential.[36] It has been suggested that Led Zeppelin II largely wrote the blueprint for 1970s hard rock.[36]
Following the album's release Led Zeppelin completed several more tours of the United States. They played often, initially in clubs and ballrooms, then in larger auditoriums and eventually stadiums as their popularity grew. Led Zeppelin concerts could last more than three hours, with expanded, improvised live versions of their song repertoire.[37] Many of these shows have been preserved as Led Zeppelin bootleg recordings.
For the composition of their third album, Led Zeppelin III, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant retired to Bron-Yr-Aur, a remote cottage in Wales, in 1970. The result was a more acoustic sound (and a song, "Bron-Yr-Aur Stomp", misspelt as "Bron-Y-Aur Stomp" on the album cover), strongly influenced by folk and Celtic music, and revealed the band's versatility.
The album's rich acoustic sound initially received mixed reactions, with many critics and fans surprised at the turn taken by the band away from the primarily electric compositions of the first two albums. Over time, however, its reputation has recovered and Led Zeppelin III is now generally praised.[38][39] It has a unique album cover featuring a wheel which, when rotated, displayed various images through cut outs in the main jacket sleeve.
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