by George Case
Long Beach Arena, Long Beach, California, June 27, 1972
Bootlegged by some of the thirteen thousand spectators present at the time and preserved for posterity on the How the West Was Won live CD, this summertime show is considered to be Led Zeppelin at the peak of their musical and theatrical powers. The songs played drew on their first four great albums—“Immigrant Song,” “Heartbreaker,” “Dazed and Confused,” “Stairway to Heaven,” and the annihilating finale of “Rock and Roll”—and included acoustic gems like “Tangerine” and “Going to California” as well. There were more fine gigs to come, but the combined vocal and instrumental strengths of Page, Plant, Jones, and Bonham were never again as high as they were here.
Earl’s Court Arena, London, May 17–18, May 23–25, 1975
Five brilliant nights of Led Zeppelin’s best music and best stagecraft were achieved at these historic events, their last run of wholly successful appearances in their native country. Playing to an estimated 17,000 fans per sold-out show, the foursome had Led Zeppelin, II, III, and IV, Houses of the Holy, and Physical Graffiti from which to select numbers, a true embarrassment of riches. They were also delivering to British fans the mind-blowing visual presentation hitherto reserved for North America, with laser effects, Page’s magical dragon suit, Bonham’s Vistalite drums, blinding backdrop lights that spelled out the band’s name, and, for the first time, big-screen Eidophor TV monitors for the benefit of the back rows. Some of the most reproduced photos of Zeppelin in all their glory are taken from the Earl’s Court concerts, and the choicest moments of the video coverage (like the dreamy acoustic interlude) were edited down for inclusion on the Led Zeppelin DVD of 2003. “In its field,” ran a contemporary report in London’s Daily Mail, “this is one of the most astonishing examples of pure theater I’ve seen anywhere,” while even the sober Financial Times admitted that Zeppelin “are no longer judged in mere musical terms but as an entertainment industry phenomenon.”
Los Angeles Forum, June 21, 1977
From a tour that was often troubled by weak performances and which ended in violence and tragedy, this opening night of a six-date LA engagement had the group rising to a final triumph just weeks before their painful American denouement. Led Zeppelin’s set ran over three hours on the summer solstice, taking in long solos (“No Quarter” ran almost a half hour; Page’s theremin and bow spot went on over fifteen minutes), but the full house of 18,000 was up for it. Journalist Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times wrote that Zeppelin began the gig “with a tenacious, well-paced 45-minute segment that left little doubt about the quartet’s continued ability to deliver on stage…. After the trauma-edged, two-year layoff, it seemed glad to be back on the road,” although he added that “if the show were edited to two hours, the gap between critics’ often cold view of Zeppelin and the fans’ adoration would be lessened considerably.” The Forum shows are how a generation of US Zep-heads would prefer to remember their favorite band.
Worst
Activity Center, Arizona State University, Tempe, July 20, 1977
Led Zeppelin’s third-to-last appearance in North America is widely thought to be the nadir of their entire performing career. Much of the blame is placed on Jimmy Page’s drug problems, which were all too apparent to his fellow musicians and to many in the audience. “Yeah, I remember that,” John Paul Jones conceded in a 1994 Phoenix newspaper interview. “It was a horrible night. Jimmy wasn’t… well.” Missed cues, desultory solos, and Page’s wasted condition were all in evidence on the ’77 tour, but this evening they combined for a real bummer of a gig that started late, saw flash pots go off at the wrong time and nearly blast Page and Robert Plant off their feet, and ended without an encore. Fans who were there were glad to see Led Zeppelin in any state, but connoisseurs of the foursome’s live work rate the tired Tempe recital very low.
Coliseum, Greensboro, North Carolina, January 29, 1975
The 1975 North American tour got off to a shaky start with Jimmy Page injuring the pinkie finger of his left (chording) hand in England and Robert Plant being struck with a bad cold in the depths of the US winter. Some early shows were canceled or postponed. When Led Zeppelin hit Greensboro, Page had been running on Jack Daniel’s whiskey and heroin in Los Angeles while the singer recuperated in Chicago, resulting in a
A typically San Franciscan psychedelic ad for a 1969 Zeppelin show.
Courtesy of Robert Rodriguez
disappointing gig where both Plant’s voice and Page’s guitar were well below par.
Tampa Stadium, Florida, June 3, 1977
When this outdoor concert was canceled two songs in because of an imminent thunderstorm, a riot among almost 70,000 fans and assembled police broke out. Injuries and arrests were plentiful. Though the band’s performance was not the issue, punters who expected to see Zeppelin play “Rain or Shine,” according to the tickets, were disappointed and a makeup show was canceled in light of the unrest.
Knebworth Festival, Stevenage, UK, August 11, 1979
The back-to-back weekend Knebworth spectacles were intended as Led Zeppelin’s English comeback after the prematurely halted 1977 American circuit, but by the second show it was clear that the group had not weathered either the years or new developments in rock music well. Attendance at the open-air event had dropped from as many as 200,000 on August 4 to only around 40,000 on the eleventh, prefiguring the band’s equally small-scale and sometimes uneven appearances throughout Europe the following year. Rust, nerves, and technical problems affected both Knebworth shows, and scribes from the New Wave–touting English music press eagerly wrote off Zeppelin as a foundering dinosaur. Quality moments from Knebworth are distilled into a portion of the 2003 DVD, but many of those in attendance left less than impressed.
Gonna Be a Star: Artists Who Shared Bills with Led Zeppelin
By the early 1970s the group was successful enough to be the sole act at most of their events, to the satisfaction of punters and with the bonus of making backstage arrangements and contracts easier for the act and its promoters alike. Interviewed in Hammer of the Gods, Richard Cole told Stephen Davis, “If you go to a concert, you don’t want to see the Shmuck Sisters singing for thirty minutes…. It stopped all that fucking aggravation, the arguments between groups about equipment and all that shit.” John Paul Jones told Susan Fast: “Opening acts were more trouble than they were worth. You couldn’t get them on [on] time, then you couldn’t get them off! Most people only wanted to see the headline band anyway, especially if it did a three-hour set.”
Before then, however, Led Zeppelin appeared with a wide variety of musicians, especially at rock festivals. The band played big outdoor shows in Atlanta; New York; Dallas; Milwaukee; Newport, Rhode Island; and Bath, England, in 1969 and 1970, where fans also got to see and hear everyone from the Moody Blues, Santana, the Jefferson Airplane, and Sly and the Family Stone to B. B. King, Chicago Transit Authority, and Buffy Sainte-Marie. During this time Zeppelin also shared stages with Spirit, Zephyr, Alice Cooper, Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger and the Trinity, the Doors, the Who, the Guess Who, and Chuck Berry.
Headliners Vanilla Fudge and Iron Butterfly were both reluctant to go on after Zeppelin in 1969, and Grand Funk Railroad’s Don Brewer recalled a backstage clash between their manager Terry Knight and Peter Grant over cutting Grand Funk’s set short. “Terry went onstage and made some sort of announcement after they got the PA back on that Led Zeppelin didn’t want Grand Funk back on—which just infuriated [audience members] more.” Led Zeppelin teased their occasional 1969 opening act Jethro Tull as “Jethro Dull,” and suggested Tull’s prospective live album be titled Bore ’Em at the Forum. Many small-time local players were also booked together with Zeppelin or the New Yardbirds in 1968–69, among them Last Thursday (Schenectady, New York), the Eyes (Brøndby, Denmark), the Spokesmen (Kansas City), and the Trials of Jayson Hoover (Vancouver). Rick Derringer and Judas Priest, both of whom came to enjoy substantial followings, preceded Zeppelin at the Oakland gigs of
’77, and at the Knebworth Festival the day’s lineup featured Fairport Convention, Todd Rundgren and Utopia, and the Rolling Stones offshoot the New Barbarians, with Keith Richards, Ron Wood, and bassist Stanley Clarke.
Spent My Money: Led Zeppelin’s Usual Ticket Prices
The cost to see Led Zeppelin rose as the group went from underground sensation to reigning superstars, but even adjusted for inflation a seat at a live performance between 1968 and 1980 was a bargain compared to what it would cost today. In 1969 tickets for Led Zeppelin’s appearance at Chicago’s Kinetic Playground went for $5.00, at Toronto’s Rock Pile for $2.50, and at Pasadena’s Rose Palace for $4.00 at the door. By 1970 a good spot at the Baltimore Civic Center was $7.00. In 1971 attending a club show in Southampton, UK, cost 60 pence, at Wembley’s Empire Pool 75 pence; the price went up to £1 (about $5.00 at the time) in 1972–73. Tickets were hitting $10.00 by 1975 (inflation was rampant), and £2.50 would get you on the floor of Earl’s Court. Fees topped the $10.00 mark in ’77, and getting in to the Knebworth Festival (where other artists were on the bill) was £7.50. Seats for the fall 1980 North American tour had already been sold at $15.00 apiece, but were of course refunded after John Bonham’s death.
By contrast, tickets to Led Zeppelin’s reunion show at London’s O2 arena in 2007 were retailed by an online lottery that was swamped by millions of applicants around the world. The minimum cost to get in was £125, about $250 US.
My Old Blue Dungarees: Led Zeppelin’s Stage Costumes
“Page and I were from the school of, ‘It’s a show so wear something different,’” John Paul Jones explained to Susan Fast in 2000. For many though not all of their live appearances the various members of the group were clad in special attire that was clearly chosen for its visual qualities; while their early gigs saw them dressed pretty casually in T-shirts, jeans, sweater vests, and other fashions of the day, by the early 1970s at least one or two of the musicians were wearing nothing that could be considered street clothes.
Jimmy Page
Page came dressed in a black florally embroidered shirt, left unbuttoned to expose a bare chest, for some shows of Zeppelin’s 1972 North American tour; before then he’d worn a sweater with his “ZoSo” sigil woven across the chest for English concerts in ’71. Though he never sang and rarely spoke to the audience, his wizardly clothes identified him as Zeppelin’s star performer as much as his guitar playing. For 1975’s American gigs his shirt and pants were stitched with stars and other glittery insignia, until he debuted his spectacular dragon suit at Earl’s Court, a black shirt and pants decorated with matching Chinese-style dragon designs as well as horoscope symbols and a small “ZoSo” patch. By the 1977 US tour he was alternating this outfit with a contrasting white one, embroidered with a winding poppy motif over the pants and top. For one Chicago show on April 10 of that year he made a dubious statement with breeches, jackboots, sunglasses and an SS officer’s cap, an ensemble he never tried again but which was widely documented and secured Zeppelin’s image as blitzkrieg rock ’n’ rollers. At Knebworth in ’79 he was back to a vaguely New Wave dress shirt, and for Europe in ’80 he was trying a punk look, with the sleeves of his T-shirt rolled up to expose his scrawny biceps.
Robert Plant
Plant never donned anything as outrageous as Page’s stage wear, but open shirts or blazers, hippie necklaces, bracelets and belt buckles, and tight, low-cut bell-bottomed jeans were his trademark look from 1971 on. Many fans, indeed, would probably cite Plant’s bare chest as one of Led Zeppelin’s most valuable recurring spectacles. At New York’s Madison Square Garden and San Francisco’s Kezar Stadium in 1973 his blouse—more of a vest with puffy sleeves—looks several sizes too small. In 1975 he donned a sort of waist-length kimono with cherry designs. By the 1980 European shows he too was trying to keep up with a return to T-shirts and jeans.
John Paul Jones
The low-key Jones seldom stood out sartorially on stage, the one exception being an outfit seen at some Earl’s Court dates in 1975, a truly strange jacket hung with heart-shaped ornaments and other doodads.
John Bonham
Bonham usually came dressed for hard physical work at his drum stool—T-shirts or tank tops, and sometimes a headband to keep his hair out of his face—but in America in ’75 his costume rivaled Page’s in its distinctiveness: a derby hat and a white jumper and pants, taken from the surreal droog styles of Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film A Clockwork Orange. This was appropriate, since Bonham was known to have a taste for ultra-violence when far from home.
The Led Zeppelin gear came from a variety of sources. Some of the articles were likely altered, or sewn from scratch, by friends or wives of the band members. “We came across some people that made these fantastic clothes,” John Paul Jones told biographer Mick Wall. “They were very enthusiastic and we bought all this stuff.” Fans and groupies may have donated individual pieces in hopes of seeing them worn in concert. Others have speculated the outfits came from the hip London boutique called Granny Takes a Trip, a Chelsea outlet that designed and sold freaky footwear and velvet suits to rock stars like Keith Richards, Rod Stewart, and Mick Jagger. (According to Victor Bockris’s biography of Richards, Granny Takes a Trip was also the scene of a drug connection for high-profile musicians, including Jimmy Page.) Page himself has said his dragon suit was made by a Los Angeles seamstress named Coco, possibly a reference to his friend David Bowie’s longtime personal assistant, Corinne “Coco” Schwab.
Despite All Your Losing: Led Zeppelin and Hostile or Indifferent Audiences
Considering that any contemporary performances by Led Zeppelin or its remaining members are received with respect more appropriate to a
Led Zeppelin encountered some unfriendly audiences in the US South during the fraught era of the late 1960s.
Courtesy of Robert Rodriguez
presidential address or the Second Coming of Christ, during their active life the band was not always given the same response. Before they made their reputation they had to work hard to win over skeptical or suspicious crowds, and they sometimes dealt with the common hassles of booing, thrown objects, and general disruption among the attendees. “It was around the time of student unrest in America and obviously the police didn’t help,” John Paul Jones said to Dave Lewis. “It became a bit of a two-way fight…. Robert was always making gestures for calm.”
Robert Plant himself has recalled that the first times “Stairway to Heaven” was played, “you could often see people settling down to have forty winks,” and the lengthy drum, guitar, and keyboard solos of the ’75 and ’77 tours saw good business at the concession stands; even late in their career concertgoers could be crass or inattentive to their music. At their best Led Zeppelin were powerful enough to shut down any hecklers, and most of their gigs ended with encores and ovations, but still, there were numerous occasions when the group was in jeopardy of going over like, well, a lead zeppelin.
Bristol Boxing Club, Bristol, England, October 26, 1968
A surly crowd of rural types was in no mood for long-haired electric blues this night, tossing beer glasses and other artillery at opening act the Deviants and continuing the onslaught when the band formerly known as the New Yardbirds came on. A similar response was said to have greeted the band in Exeter, England, a few weeks later.
HemisFair Arena, San Antonio, Texas, August 15, 1969
Led Zeppelin’s first ventures into the US’s South and Southwest landed them in the thick of a nation rent by social unrest and generational division. Page, Plant, Jones, and Bonham all had very long hair at the time, longer than most of the kids in their audiences’, making them big targets for local yahoos. Both onstage and off in San Antonio, the group was jeered at by resentful Texan onlookers. Jimmy Page has spoken of other dates in Memphis and Nashville where he and the other players were openly threatened by police and other officials. “It was seriously redneck back then,” he said in a Guitar World interview. “I mean, what are you gonna do? You aren’
t going to go against an armed police force that wants to bust your ass.”
Konserthuset, Göteborg, Sweden, February 25, 1970
Page reportedly spat on an audience member who tried to accompany his “White Summer / Black Mountain Side” solo with a harmonica outburst.
Olympia Stadium, Detroit, August 28, 1970
On this tour Led Zeppelin tried to perform their acoustic material from the upcoming Led Zeppelin III album, but the public address and amplification systems of the era were simply not up to the job, particularly in large halls like Olympia. Fans grew bored and impatient for the hard rock they expected here, shouting “Louder,” until Page got up and walked off. “[A]fter two songs’ worth of squirming fans and frustrated musicians,” ran a Detroit review, “Zep had to plug back in to rescue the evening, which they did with a vengeance.”
Vigorelli Velodrome, Milan, July 5, 1971
Led Zeppelin’s lone show in Italy ended in a full-fledged riot between fans and police and military units. The melee was impending anyway and wasn’t the band’s fault, but they did have to escape the venue after only twenty minutes while tear gas and clashing bodies filled the stadium. Zeppelin vowed never to play the country again, and never did.