Expert: Mike Caldwell - 8/10/2007

Question
1.what year did they leave atlantic


Answer
Well, this will be one of those "splitting hairs" type answers.  Technically - *technically* - their initial Atlantic contract expired in 1973 (i.e. they never left, they fulfilled the obligations) and went on to form the Swan Song record label, ultimately to be distributed by Atlantic.  So around Halloween of 1974, they did basically form their own label but under the penumbra that Atlantic would oversee Swan Song's distribution, etc.  So semantically speaking, there was just a brief hiatus in 1974 between contract expiration and new label formation, but otherwise, Atlantic was closely tied to Zeppelin until the bitter end.