In a new Forbes interview, The Yardbirds drummer Jim McCarty claimed that Chris Dreja was going to be the bassist of what would become Led Zeppelin, but that he was ‘shunted’ in favor of John Paul Jones. He claims they wanted to use the name The New Yardbirds, but were stopped by Dreja after a legal threat.
“[The Yardbirds] petered out. We were so tired, on the road for three years, playing every night. We lost all the creativity in the band. It wasn’t quite the same with the four-piece lineup [Keith Relf, Chris Dreja, Jim McCarty, Jimmy Page].
Keith and I decided to leave to do something totally different, which we did with Renaissance. But there was already a tour booked with Vanilla Fudge. So Jimmy [Page] went and did it with Robert Plant, John Bonham and John Paul Jones. They called it The New Yardbirds for the first tour.
Chris Dreja got shunted out in favor of John Paul Jones. But Chris had rights to the name. He stopped them from using The New Yardbirds, sent them a lawyer’s letter or something. So legally they couldn’t carry on with it. They changed it to [Led] Zeppelin.”
Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant will reissue Fate of Nations on Record Store Day, April 13th.
Record Store Day‘s official website writes, “This special limited edition 180gm black vinyl of Fate of Nations is being re-issued on Robert Plant’s own record label Es Paranza around Earth Day. All profits from the sale of this record will be given to Robert Plant’s nominated Environmental charity. The album title and the artwork of the original 1993 is focussed on the impacts of geo-politics and globalisation on the earth / Robert’s environmental concerns.
The outer sleeve will be high end matt soft pack, whilst the inner sleeve will be printed on ethically sourced material and feature updated artwork (Environmental facts from 1993 compared to today’s data) This album has not been available on vinyl for 30 years (since the 90’s).”
