Led Zeppelin's First Rehearsal — Studio 19, Gerrard Street, Soho

In August 1968 — most likely on either the 12th or the 19th — Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham played together for the first time in a basement rehearsal room beneath a former record shop at 19 Gerrard Street in Soho, London. The session, arranged by their manager Peter Grant, lasted approximately two hours, and by all accounts the four musicians immediately understood they had something extraordinary. Page later recalled that they ran through a handful of songs and that by the end of it he simply 'knew' — the chemistry was unmistakable from the very first run-through.

For decades the received wisdom, repeated in countless books and articles, placed the rehearsal at 39 Gerrard Street. Research published in 2025 corrected the record, identifying the actual address as number 19, which had housed a record shop that closed shortly before the session took place. The basement had been operating as Gerrard Sound Studios since at least 1964 and was subsequently rebranded Studio 19 — the name under which it was known when Zeppelin first plugged in. Generations of fans had been photographed in front of the wrong address.

Today 19 Gerrard Street sits at the heart of London's Chinatown, which grew up around the area from the 1970s onwards. The building still stands but no longer functions as a recording or rehearsal space, and no plaque marks the site. The corrected address is a relatively recent discovery, adding an appropriately mysterious footnote to a band whose early mythology has always attracted more legend than documented fact.