hennemusic

Led Zeppelin II has died.

Not the album ... the man.

The Chicago Tribune reports Zeppelin, who lived near St. Louis, was known most of his life as George Blackburn before officially changing his name last fall.

More details about the name change can be found here.

"He and Mom got divorced and he wanted to start his life over, like a new chapter," said his daughter Mindy Baker of Seattle, adding that her father had seen Jimmy Page and Robert Plant's English band probably about 20 times in its heyday of the late 1960s and early '70s. "He had always liked Led Zeppelin since they came out, and it was just time to do it. My mom says that he talked about it for probably five years before the divorce."

The 64-year-old Zeppelin "climbed the 'Stairway to Heaven'" May 18 at Alton Memorial Hospital, according to a death notice published in newspapers, including the Tribune. He died of a heart attack, his daughter said.

"I reinvented myself," Zeppelin told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch last fall, after the name change was made official in Madison County court. "Since I became Led Zeppelin, my life has improved a thousand fold."

Read more at the Chicago Tribune here.

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