In what strange location did Led Zeppelin perform their first concert as a band?

“In what strange location did Led Zeppelin perform their first concert as a band?” — The answer is a school gymnasium. On 7 September 1968, the newly assembled group played its first concert at the Teen Club in Gladsaxe, Denmark, a venue operating inside the gymnasium of Egegård School.

The performance came together after Jimmy Page’s previous band, the Yardbirds, had broken up. Page recruited Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham, but the new lineup still had outstanding Scandinavian dates connected to the old Yardbirds. As a result, the group performed in Denmark under the name The New Yardbirds rather than Led Zeppelin.

That naming detail causes a related mix-up. The first concert by the lineup that became Led Zeppelin took place in the school gymnasium, while the first show billed specifically as Led Zeppelin is generally identified as the 25 October 1968 performance at the University of Surrey. The Danish school-gymnasium concert remains the accepted answer to the broader question about the band’s first concert, and it is a striking contrast to the arenas and stadiums the group would later headline.