Dread Zeppelin’s Stairway to Novelty Heaven : Pop: Mixing metal, reggae and Elvis Presley was the right formula for the Pasadena-area band’s first album. But what do you do for a follow-up?

If they gave out a Grammy Award for the year’s best novelty act, the members of Dread Zeppelin would be justified in getting an early start on their acceptance speeches.

Certainly, nobody else has come up with a more novel idea in 1990 than the Pasadena-area band that pumped Led Zeppelin full of laughing gas. Running a reggae beat under Led Zeppelin songs like “Black Dog” and “Whole Lotta Love” makes for a humorous mix, but Dread Zeppelin delivers the real punch line in the person of its lead singer, a bulky Elvis Presley impersonator named Tortelvis.

“We actually can play. That’s what makes the whole thing legitimate,” Tortelvis (who gives his real name as Greg Telvis) said in a recent phone interview from the Temple City home he has dubbed Graceland West. “It’s a way for people to see Led Zeppelin live without having to go to an embarrassing tribute band.”

Instead of paying note-for-note homage to its sources, Dread Zeppelin, which plays a sold-out show Sunday night at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano, manages to contort them humorously while still doing them justice with sharp singing and playing and inventive arrangements.

Just how Dread Zeppelin got the idea of constructing a skewed triangle out of Zeppelin, Presley and reggae is a matter of campy mythologizing on the band’s part.

Speaking with a touch of an Elvis drawl in his voice, Tortelvis recounted how he had received a visitation from the King in which the Zeppelin/reggae combination was revealed to him. Tortelvis said he didn’t act on his vision until after he had found a band--by plowing the milk truck he drove in his day job into the back of a car full of reggae musicians.

Actually, Tortelvis allowed, he and the five other members of Dread Zeppelin were buddies who hit upon their act in a somewhat less supernatural fashion. Tortelvis said he had spent some time in a band called Pete the Butcher that did sendups of old songs by the Bay City Rollers, the Partridge Family and the Brady Bunch. And several of his friends who wound up in Dread Zeppelin did, he affirms, have a background playing reggae music.

“I forget whose idea it actually was” to link reggae with Led Zeppelin, he said. “We were just joking around one day and somebody came up with the name Dread Zeppelin. It really worked. The (Led Zeppelin) songs did fit pretty easily into (a reggae) style. When we all first started this thing, we didn’t do much thinking at all. It was a fun thing. We were going to go out and play one show for a bunch of friends.”

The spoof caught on, and the band began progressing on the local club circuit, releasing a tape of its own, then courting record-company interest.

“They were all amused by it, but they were afraid of the legal aspects,” Tortelvis said. To launch Dread Zeppelin’s recording career, a deal would have to be struck for the right to use Led Zeppelin’s songs. Eventually, I.R.S. Records signed the band and secured the needed song-publisher’s consent to use material from the Led Zeppelin catalogue.

“If they didn’t like it, they possibly could have put a stop to it,” he said. “But it’s a fun project, and the Led Zeppelin guys are taking it for what it’s meant to be. We’re not trying to steal anything. It’s blatant fun.”

Former Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant has been a Dread Zeppelin booster. When Tortelvis got to speak to him over the phone last summer on a syndicated rock radio show, Plant expressed his delight with Dread Zeppelin’s album, “Un-led-Ed.” When Plant played at Irvine Meadows last summer, his fans heard Dread Zeppelin’s record play over the sound system while the stage crew went about its pre-show setup work.

“From what I’ve heard, he’s been playing our record (to arena crowds) his whole tour,” Tortelvis said.

The Presley camp hasn’t been nearly as enthusiastic. “The Elvis Presley estate has tried to put a stop to it,” Tortelvis said. “They don’t like anyone messing around with his image. We’ve complied with most of the things they’ve asked. If it were up to them, we would have to stop completely.”

On the original album cover, Tortelvis looked like a seedier incarnation of the bloated, mid-’70s Elvis, complete with paste-on pork chop sideburns and an ill-fitting helmet of hair. Tortelvis said that objections from the Presley estate led to some modifications: at first, his picture was stickered over. In later pressings of the album, he appears in dreadlocks.

The hard part about being a successful novelty band is having to be continually novel. Tortelvis said Dread Zeppelin is trying to figure out what it should do now for a second act. Another album of all Led Zeppelin material is unlikely.

“This has been called a one-joke thing. I think if we did a record exactly like the first one, it wouldn’t work a second time. We’re going to have to come up with something a little different. We’re going in next month to do the second record, and there has to be even more of a twist.”

Just what that twist might be hasn’t occurred to the band members yet, Tortelvis said. They’ll hope inspiration strikes in time. The basic elements of Led Zeppelin-style heavy rock, reggae, and Elvis impersonation will remain. “Probably we’ll record some original tunes, maybe having to do with things surrounding the group.”

“We are on the spot a little bit to come up with something,” Tortelvis acknowledged. “Even if nobody buys the second record, I think we did something pretty amazing.”

Dread Zeppelin and Lock-Up play Sunday at 8 p.m. at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. Tickets: Sold Out. Information: (714) 496-8930.