Zeplin balloon5/24/2023 ![]() Moon and Entwistle, both being English, would have been more likely to have used the English 'go down' version. Moon is said to have borrowed the term from John Entwistle, who had previously used it to describe bad gigs. Keith Moon is reputed to have said the new band would go down like a lead balloon - some reports say go over like a lead balloon (or zeppelin). The story goes that Jimmy Page had completed a Scandinavian tour with the New Yardbirds - an impromptu band that was formed from the popular rapidly disintegrating Yardbirds. The most celebrated use of the term is the part played in the naming of the English heavy-metal band Led Zeppelin. That's when the phrase can be said to have entered the language and there are many examples in print from US sources of ventures which went down like a lead balloon from that date onward. "But occasionally a column or comic strip will 'go over' like a V-1 rocket in one community and, for inexplicable reasons, a lead balloon in another." Actually, that coinage went over like a lead balloon itself and the phrase didn't appear again until after WWII for example, this piece from The Atchison Daily Globe, May 1947: The phrase is American in origin and the first mention of a lead balloon with the meaning of something that fails comes from a Mom-N Pop cartoon that was syndicated in several US newspapers in June 1924. In the UK a complete failures 'go down like a lead balloon'. 'Go over like a lead balloon' is the US version of this phrase. What's the origin of the phrase 'Go down like a lead balloon'? ![]() Fail completely and be considered a flop by the public.
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