Led Zeppelin at Knebworth (1979)

From recordcollectormag.com

In late July 1977, Led Zeppelin arrived in California to perform two open air shows in Oakland. They were riding high on the back of a lengthy and successful American tour. All that evaporated in the space of a few days. Firstly, manager Peter Grant and John Bonham were involved in a backstage fight with members of promoter Bill Graham’s staff at the first Oakland show. This would result in them both being given suspended sentences. A few days later, in New Orleans, Robert Plant heard the devastating news that his five year old son, Karac, had died back in England of a mystery virus. The tour was immediately cancelled.

Aside from a few interviews from Jimmy Page, denying they were splitting, nothing was heard from the group for the next nine months. Eventually, in May 1978, the first seeds of a Led Zeppelin comeback were sown at another stately English building near the Forest Of Dean. Clearwell Castle, previously used by Deep Purple, was the location chosen for the first group get-together.

Earlier in the year, Robert busied himself with his first musical involvement since the tragedy. He assisted a local punk band, Dansette Damage, to record a single at the Old Smithy Studios in Kempsey, Worcestershire, near his Midlands home. Along with Zeppelin roadie, Benji Le Fevre, Robert produced both sides of their single, NME/The Only Sound, and added backing vocals. Not wanting his involvement to become public knowledge, his production credit was listed on the sleeve as ‘The Wolverhampton Wanderer’. A further credit listed thanks to ‘Uncle Bob’. Unsurprisingly, the single was well reviewed in the NME, but made little impression outside of the West Midlands.

Robert’s decision to return to the Zeppelin fold was greatly influenced by John Bonham, who cajoled him to get back to doing what he did best. “I didn’t want to leave my family,’’ reflected Robert. “And I also didn’t know if it was worth it.

John came over and told me all the reasons it was worth it. He had the history with me outside of the success. He was the only one who hugged me and helped me at all. He said, ‘C’mon, we are going to go down to Clearwell and try some writing.”

At first nothing substantial emerged from the three week stint of rehearsals. They did work on a new composition entitled Carouselambra and a riff exercise, dubbed Fire. Jones himself was unsure of the sessions, as he stated years later: “Getting back together at Clearwell was a bit odd. I didn’t really feel comfortable.”

Jimmy Page was more upbeat: “That was basically a period of saying hello to each other, musically, once again. We hadn’t played together for so long, and Clearwell was the first actual playing we’d done for what seemed like an eternity. It was really just limbering up.”

Plant was also optimistic:. “I started to play again, and I realised that I still possessed something that really turned me on.”

Plant did begin to return to the stage with three low-key guest appearances. First he sat in with local Midlands band, Melvin’s Marauders (aka Melvin Giganticus & The Turd Burglars), at the Memorial Hall in Wolverly. Then, while on holiday in Ibiza, in August, Robert jammed with Dr. Feelgood and Atlantic Records executive Phil Carson at the Club Amnesia. And on 16 September, Robert turned up at the Birmingham Town Hall to see Dave Edmunds perform, and joined him during the encore.

In October, John Bonham and John Paul Jones took part in an all-star recording session held at London’s Abbey Road Studio 2. On the invitation of Paul McCartney, they joined McCartney’s Wings and a host of musicians including David Gilmour, Hank Marvin, Kenney Jones, Ronnie Lane, Gary Brooker, Tony Ashton and Pete Townshend, to record two tracks – Rockestra Theme and So Glad To See You Here, as part of what McCartney dubbed ‘The Rockestra’. The tracks were later included on the Wings album, Back To The Egg.

The same month, the group resumed rehearsals at Ezyhire, a North London studio. This time there was a clear purpose. The plan was to begin preparing new material for a new album. On 6 November, the band flew out to Stockholm for a series of Monday through Friday recording sessions at Abba’s Polar Studio, which would result in the In Through The Out Door album, released the following year. Every Friday afternoon, the band would fly back for the weekend and then return on the following Monday.

For these sessions, John Paul Jones emerged with various keyboard-led ideas and was anxious to apply them in the studio on his new GX 1 keyboard synth set-up. “I was one of the first to get one, I think – it was Stevie Wonder and myself. The sound you could get out of it was, at the time, very inspiring”.

Thus, tracks such as the aforementioned Carouselambra were dominated more by Jones than anyone else. The fact that he and Robert were often at the studio first, led to their influence being more strongly felt.

“The band was divided between people who could turn up at recording sessions on time and people who couldn’t”, said JPJ. “I’d got the GX 1 installed and I wasn’t just going to look at it. I worked really hard on In The Evening and Carouselambra. It was a transitional period. It was a chance to see what else we could do’’.

Page was reported as being distant and less enthusiastic, showing particular indifference to Plant’s mellow leanings on All My Love. “Jonesy started working more closely with Robert,” recalls Page. “I wasn’t that keen on All My Love. It just didn’t seem us. In fact, Bonzo and I both felt it was a little soft, that album. We wanted to make a more hard, driving rock album after that”.

Page’s spark, however, was certainly in evidence on Wearing And Tearing – a raucous punktempered number that didn’t make the final album but subsequently showed up on the posthumous Coda set in 1982. Page and Plant both checked out concerts by Jerry Lee Lewis and Duane Eddy while in Stockholm – perhaps lending inspiration to the rockabilly-influenced Hot Dog and Darlene.

Years later, Jimmy would defend his role at the time. “There are people who said, ‘Jimmy wasn’t in good shape’, or whatever. But what I do know is that Presence was recorded and mixed in three weeks and In Through The Out Door was done in a little over three weeks. So I couldn’t have been in that bad a shape. I’d have never been able to play and I wouldn’t have been able to keep my head together to do this, that, and the other’’.

The sessions may have been on the tense side but, by early December, they had 10 numbers completed and the band returned to the UK in time for Christmas. Early in 1979, Page and Jones returned to Polar for further mixing and the album was duly completed with further work at Jimmy’s Plumpton Studio.

It was rumoured that they would undertake a series of dates in Europe at the end of February 1979. The album, tentatively titled Look, according to one source, was said to have a provisional release date of 12 February. It was also reported that Robert Plant would warm up for the tour by playing small club dates with local Midlands band, Little Acre. These reports all proved somewhat premature.

However, there was more on-stage activity in the spring. On 26 March, Robert joined Bad Company for the second show of their three-night stint at the Birmingham Odeon. He was back a week later on 3 April, this time with Jimmy and Bonzo in tow, they performed I’m Going Down. Later in the month, Plant performed again with the Midlands part-time pick-up band, Melvin’s Marauders, for an appearance at a local Stourbridge wine bar.

Meanwhile, in Hertfordshire, promoter Freddy Bannister had been looking for a big name to headline the 1979 Knebworth show. Initially, he had ideas to approach both The Eagles and Pink Floyd, but after the disappointment of failing to capture Zeppelin for the 1974 festival, Bannister was eager to land the band. Five years on, the timing was right. Peter Grant was keen for them to come back in the best possible manner.

With a new album ready for release, all that was required to seal their return to active duty was a return to live performances. Due to Plant’s reluctance to return to America, their scope was somewhat limited.

The dilemma they faced was which way to move forward. The whole operation had become just too big. Page’s experiences of overflowing audiences from the 1971 club tour ruled out any small dates. They had played the biggest indoor arena in the UK (Earls Court) four years earlier. As Peter Grant saw it, they had to come back in the grandest style. As he told this writer years later: “We didn’t want to start all over again so I said, ‘Fuck doing a tour. We’re the biggest band in the world so we better get out there and show them we still are’. I said Knebworth was the gig and I reckoned we could sell out two dates. I was absolutely confident.”

The initial agreement with Bannister was for two dates, though it was agreed only one would go on sale. Grant also stipulated that the Showco lighting rig would have to be flown over from California at a cost of nearly £200,000. The band’s fee for performing was reported to be the largest ever paid to one act at that time – a reputed £1 million.

On Tuesday 22 May, Led Zeppelin formally announced their return to the UK stage. The news was exclusively revealed by Annie Nightingale on BBC TV’s Old Grey Whistle Test. They would headline the Knebworth Festival, to be staged within the grounds of the Stevenage stately home on 4 August.

On Saturday 9 June, Radio One’s Rock On programme broadcast an exclusive interview with Robert Plant – his first in two years. It was conducted by Trevor Dann, backstage at London’s Palace Theatre, following a Dave Edmunds concert Plant had attended. He gave little away, deflecting the questions with sometimes ambiguous answers. “I think the music will speak for itself. It will stand up there as it always has done. Things always change with Zeppelin, that’s why after two years we can still get together and play. We are what we are when we walk on to the stage and play. It’s not a question of are we heroes any more? Heroes are in books, old books.”

In early June, all four members of the group convened on the Knebworth site for a formal photo session with the Hipgnosis design team – later used on the official Knebworth posters. Promoter Freddy Bannister took several weeks to sort out the line-up for the two dates and both went on sale with only Zeppelin as the officially-named attraction. Artists rumoured to be playing included Dire Straits, Little Feat, Joni Mitchell, Ian Dury, Roxy Music, JJ Cale, Bob Seger, Boomtown Rats, Aerosmith, B.B. King and Van Morrison. Eventually, Fairport Convention were confirmed for the 4 August date and (somewhat bizarrely) Chas & Dave, Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes and Todd Rundgren’s Utopia for both dates. Fairport’s appearance at the 4 August show was their penultimate before disbanding (at least for a while).

At one point, The Marshall Tucker Band was also confirmed to appear but they dropped out at the last minute, with Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen stepping in. The second on the bill spot was taken by Grant’s choice of The New Barbarians, a part-time pick-up band fronted by Ronnie Wood and Keith Richards. They had planned to perform at both gigs but they had to scrap the 4 August date due to The Rolling Stones’ recording commitments. Given some of the big names touted as being readied for the event, the actual line-up was disappointing.

Zeppelin rehearsed for their big comeback at Bray Film Studios in Berkshire. Notable as the studio where Gerry Anderson’s Space: 1999 was filmed, more recently it had been used for shooting the sci-fi film, Alien. The group spent three weeks in Bray, on and off. Aside from working on a variety of old faves, four new numbers, In The Evening, Hot Dog, Carouselambra and Wearing And Tearing were also worked on. Journalist Jim Taylor caught up with Robert outside the studio in mid-July. Plant told him they were here because “it’s just a nice big room where we can fit all our equipment in.” Asked how he felt about the punk and new wave explosion Plant remarked: “Something had to happen while we were resting. People may think we are conventional now. But we are still a law unto ourselves.”

On Friday 20 July,1979, Jimmy gave two pre- Knebworth interviews to Melody Maker and NME, both of which made cover stories on the 4 August editions. Talking about Knebworth, Page told Chris Salewicz: ‘‘We are faced with a dilemma. But then again, it becomes a challenge to see if we can make it work on a large scale. Don’t get me wrong, I’m the first to admit it can get too large, but something like Knebworth is a challenge because you know it’s worked in the past. When we’d finished the album we were trying to work out where we could get in and play. But then we thought, “are we running away from something?

“I’m looking forward to Knebworth. We’ve done a lot of rehearsing and checked things out. We’ve been down to the site and worked things out relative to the site. It’s like a natural amphitheatre so I would imagine it’s actually quite a good gig to be at. I went to Blackbush to see Dylan but that was a bit of a sea of bodies.’’

In a tactic that echoed Peter Grant’s original launch of the band in 1968, Led Zeppelin flew to Copenhagen on Monday 23 July to perform two warm-up shows for the big event. The venue chosen for the band’s first gig in two years was the obscure Falkoner Theatre in Denmark’s capital. The venue had previously played host to the likes of Abba and it was also the venue where Judy Garland gave her last live performance in March 1969.

With a capacity of just 2,000, the low-key nature of these warm-up shows made it still possible to buy tickets on the door. The first night was dogged with technical problems. The enormous lighting rig that the band had hoped to install was too big for the venue. This resulted in the persistent blowing of the generator, which led to long delays.

The show eventually ended at 1am the next morning. Predictably, there were first night nerves as they worked on the set-list that would be presented to the massive crowds due at Knebworth in 12 days’ time. From the new album there were debuts for Hot Dog and In The Evening.

The next night they returned, to turn in a more consistent set. Whole Lotta Love replaced Rock And Roll as an encore and they also added Ten Years Gone. The latter endured the only real technical hitch as delays occurred with setting up Jones’ effects pedals, prompting Plant to comment: “We’ll very shortly be doing Eleven Years Gone.”

The group arrived in Knebworth on the evening of 2 August to conduct the sound-check. Robert patrolled the arena wearing a white T-shirt and red shorts, keen to get a feel for the sound. John Bonham’s son, Jason, was in attendance and performed with them on Trampled Underfoot.

So to the first date, for which the set-list ran as follows: The Song Remains The Same/Celebration Day/Black Dog/Nobody’s Fault But Mine/Over The Hills And Far Away/Misty Mountain Hop/ Since I’ve Been Loving You/No Quarter/Ten Years Gone/Hot Dog/The Rain Song/White Summer/ Black Mountain Side/Kashmir/Trampled Underfoot/Sick Again/Achilles’ Last Stand/Page Solo/In The Evening/Stairway To Heaven/Rock And Roll/Whole Lotta Love/Heartbreaker.

After a day of somewhat erratic sets of performances from the support line-up, Led Zeppelin took to the stage at 9:40pm. Page’s ringing guitar chord that preceded The Song Remains The Same was greeted by a huge roar as the green vivid light behind the stage gave way to a giant video screen relaying the show on video for all to see. Despite the long lay-off, they gave a compelling if, at times, erratic performance. There was little doubt that they could still cut it. The actual presentation was most impressive. The giant video screen behind them was very innovative for the time.

For much of the show the sheer chemistry of the four got them through. John Bonham was outstanding, driving the likes of Nobody’s Fault But Mine with all the necessary power. Plant seemed to gain in confidence as the set developed, and by the end his on-stage bravado was back to its best. The Knebworth revamped arrangement of Whole Lotta Love was, alongside In The Evening, the illuminating moment of the set – with it’s You Need Love refrain and a dynamic new riff section. Overall, there were enough moments during the shows to indicate that Led Zeppelin in the 80s still had new places to go.

After the encore of Rock And Roll, the crowd burst into spontaneous singing of the football anthem You’ll Never Walk Alone. “I don’t know about being frightened’’, said Plant from the stage, ‘’This is fantastic’’.

They were back for the second date a week later. Ten Years Gone was dropped from the 4 August performance, while Heartbreaker was replaced as an encore with Communication Breakdown. They may have been less nervous on 11 August but this performance lacked the emotional aura of the first show. Page, at times, seemed to rush the arrangements. But again, when it peaked, it was still very good. Early on, there were some technical problems. A faulty lead during Over The Hills produced some undesired sounds from the PA.

As they came back for an encore of Rock And Roll, Plant humorously asked the crowd: “Good evening, can you do the dinosaur rock?”

Whole Lotta Love included the Boogie Chillin’ section often favoured in the 1972/73 era and Communication Breakdown was a nostalgic romp through one of their early anthems. Plant’s final words being: “We’ll see you soon. Very soon. Don’t know about the Marquee, but somewhere soon.”

The press reaction was mixed. ‘Ghosts Of Progressive Rock Past’ read the headline in the NME, as Paul Morley noted that, “Led Zeppelin did not do enough to live up to their legend – what they did do was to prove they’re a clever, conceited, old fashioned rock’n’roll group who still have drastic lapses in taste and discipline. They are not heroes – they are survivors. I’m considering them in a contemporary perspective, finding them not awkward or flatulent at all but in lots of ways exciting. In fact, I’m saying Zeppelin deserve some respect. When Zeppelin play rock’n’roll I can see why people call them the greatest. Led Zeppelin at Knebworth was a triumph. I didn’t expect or demand anything from them. I don’t need them. I don’t care whether they go away for another bunch of years.”

Robert Plant obviously read all this because he was particularly defensive in some of his on-stage comments on the 11 August date “Well, it didn’t rain, but it rained on us from one or two sources in the week – well we’re gonna take it and stick it right where it really belongs.”

This stance riled the once-supportive Nick Kent. Reviewing the second show in the NME he wrote: “For the first half, one couldn’t help but be impressed by Zep’s overdrive, at times they were breathtaking. But the mixture of Robert Plant’s frequent snipes at their less than totally adulatory press coverage and the elongated virtuosity of the likes of No Quarter ultimately left me cold and bored. Zep are like a behemoth – impressive but something from the past – almost a museum piece.”

Phil Sutcliffe was somewhat kinder in his Sounds review: “Consider what would you feel if you saw a dinosaur coming down the street? Surprise, fear, fascination, awe, excitement? All of these things. It’s by no means all bad to be a living fossil. And from the impartial Zeppelin watcher’s point of view it’s futile to demand that they change, that they be anything other than their old selves. So at this second Knebworth show it has to be acknowledged that within terms which bear little comparison to The Clash, Talking Heads or Ian Dury, this was a passable Led Zeppelin concert.”

Talking about the Knebworth event in 1993 to this writer, Peter Grant observed: “The performance was a bit rusty. We’d been to Copenhagen to get the sound sorted out – that was always one of my strategies to warm-up in Europe. I thought the laser bow light show was most effective. Jimmy worked really hard with the lighting guys to get the exact order he would project the bow outwards to make sure the laser effects were spot on. That was a fantastic moment, watching that from the side of the stage.”

Robert Plant would later have mixed feelings about the comeback. “I wasn’t as relaxed as I could have been. There was so much expectation there and the least we could have done was to have been confident enough to kill. We maimed the beast for life, but we didn’t kill it. It was good, but only because everybody made it good. There was that sense of event. It was an incredible thing, really. I patrolled the grounds in a jeep on the night before the first gig and people had pushed down the stone pillars to get in early. It was a phenomenally powerful thing.”

Both Knebworth shows were professionally recorded on The Rolling Stones’ mobile studio with George Chkianz engineering, and filmed for the backdrop video screens that were used on both dates. There was a plan for the footage to be used in a TV special – which is one of the reasons why the group wore the same clothes on both dates. Nothing came of that, although the 11 August Hot Dog clip was quickly edited for use as an in-store promo trailer for the new album.

In 2003, the official DVD compiled by Dick Carruthers and Jimmy Page included a superb seven-song summary of the shows; edited performances of Rock And Roll, Nobody’s Fault But Mine, Sick Again, Achilles’ Last Stand, In The Evening, Kashmir and Whole Lotta Love – with fan Andy Bank’s cine film incorporated.

At the time of its release in 2003, Page commented: “The reality of Knebworth was that it was fantastic. We had to come in by helicopter and you could just see this huge sea of people. It was astonishing. Everything about those two Knebworth shows was a big deal, and it came across in some very evocative areas within the music. I had seen bits of it here and there over the years but what I managed to find was extraordinary stuff that I never knew existed”.

Plant added, “If you see and listen to Achilles Last Stand at Knebworth, it’s still absolutely spectacular.’’

While Zeppelin’s return to the stage was viewed as a triumph by their vast following, behind the scenes there was a less savoury atmosphere. First, there was a minor dispute over the potential filming rights of the event, with Bannister under pressure to sign a waiver of any rights to him should they release anything after the event.

In the days after the first show, Grant argued with Bannister over the first date’s attendance. The manager claimed a figure of 250,000 had covered the 32 acres. Bannister told him no more than 104,000 had paid to attend. Grant had an aerial photo of the crowd analysed by NASA representatives which he insisted backed his claim. Grant also informed Bannister he wanted his people manning the gates and counting the money for the second date. As it was, only 40,000 ticket sales were recorded for the 11 August event.

At a meeting at the Dorchester Hotel a month after the shows, Grant also asked Bannister to sign a letter absolving himself or the band from any bad publicity the festival had generated. Unhappy at the situation, Bannister nonetheless agreed. “I was not exactly thrilled with the request. However, after all the unpleasantness, worry and innuendo, I was scared for the safety of my family. I just wanted everything behind me and to get on with my life, so I agreed to sign the statement.”

An amended version of the letter dated 20 September 1979 was duly published in the music press. As Bannister stated in his book, There Must Be A Better Way: “The facts are that we received 104,000 paid admissions for the first show and 40,000 for the second. If you allow comps and a few gatecrashers you can probably round it up to 150,000, still a very impressive number to draw over two consecutive weekends. We did not cheat Led Zeppelin out of one penny, quite the contrary, as we not only lost money on the promotion, we lost our livelihood as well”.

The disagreements about payments and attendance figures eventually forced Bannister’s Tedoar company into liquidation. This allegedly left unpaid bills of £50,000 for the police and £2,000 to Stevenage Borough Council. Knebworth owner David Cobbold was also fined £150 by North Herts Council for alleged breaches of the festival license, overrunning the time restrictions and noise problems. At one point, it did look as though the level of complaints from the local authorities would put future festivals at the site in doubt. However, the following year, Capital Radio promoted the event with The Beach Boys headlining.

Meanwhile, there was the matter of the release of the new Led Zeppelin album. In what may have looked like a rare lapse of marketing strategy, the album missed the concert deadline, appearing a week after Knebworth on Monday 20 August.

Not that it made a scrap of difference. The record, eventually titled In Through The Out Door, because, as Jimmy put it, “That’s the hardest way to get back in”, was rapturously received around the world. It made No 1 in the UK in its first week and No 1 in America in its second. It also instantly topped the charts in Japan, New Zealand, Australia and Germany. In the first 10 days of release, its sales topped two million.

It was in America, though, that the real sales phenomenon occurred. Its release was heralded as a saviour to the then-flagging US record industry. It generated massive store traffic as it held the top spot for seven weeks. Even more remarkable was the renewed demand for previous Zep albums. Atlantic shifted a staggering one million back catalogue albums during September 1979, a situation that resulted in Led Zeppelin’s entire catalogue appearing on the Billboard Top 200 during the weeks of October 27th and November 3rd. This beat the previous record for most albums on the chart, set in 1975 by, you guessed it, Led Zeppelin.

What made these figures all the more staggering was that, during Led Zeppelin’s absence from the music scene in the previous two years, Punk Rock had emerged, and a central philosophy of punk was its contrary stance to – and general loathing of – massively popular ‘stadium’ bands like Led Zeppelin who, it was claimed, were now redundant in the new era. The success of both the Knebworth concerts and this album, of course, proved otherwise.

The album came packaged in no less than six different sleeves. Easily their most ambitious to date, the brief to Hipgnosis was simple enough. They all felt the album to be fresh, new and direct. The album sleeve was to indicate just that. Designer Aubrey Powell felt some of the music had a barrel-house, bayou bar, late-night blues feel to it. On Page’s suggestion, he worked on a bar room scene, travelling to New Orleans to gain some reference. (Some reports indicate that the bar is the Old Absinthe Bar at 400, Bourbon Street, just around the corner from the Royal Orleans hotel.)

On his return, the Hipgnosis team built a New Orleans bar room scene at Shepperton Studios, shooting six different scenes. These sepia-toned photos formed the six alternate sleeves that were issued, each one depicting the view from the six characters in the scene. To indicate that freshness, or a new lick of paint as Powell described it, an area was wiped clean on each print. This outer stroke led Jimmy to request that the inner bag be prepared in such a way that it would colour when water was applied.

Finally, Peter Grant insisted that all the sleeves be shrink-wrapped into a brown paper bag, so that no buyer would know which sleeve he would be receiving, and also to prove that you could stuff a Led Zeppelin album into a paper bag and it would still sell. And of course it did. Complete sets of the differing sleeves labeled on the spine A to F are now much sought-after.

Musically, In Through The Out Door was dominated by John Paul Jones. Disappointingly, the album suffers from a less than crystal clear production, and in hindsight, did possess more than its quota of filler material. In The Evening was indication that they could still strut with the best of them. The samba-influenced Fool In The Rain explored new territory, Carouselamabra was a lengthy epic in the Achilles tradition, and Plant’s vocals on the heartfelt All My Love were outstanding. The sales reaction to the album ensured that, despite the critics, Led Zeppelin were ready to enter the new decade riding on the crest of a wave.

There were three other performances from the 1978 Polar sessions that did not make the album: Ozone Baby, Darlene and Wearing And Tearing, which would eventually surface on Coda in 1982. If some of the harmony in the band had evaporated for those sessions, looking back, Robert did not hold John Bonham responsible.

“On the contrary. It was the four of us, but I don’t think it was as ‘Led Zeppelin’ as it might have been for a myriad of reasons. But if you listen to how Bonzo is contributing to the various pieces of music from Fool In The Rain through to I’m Gonna Crawl and Carouselambra, he was weaving with as much dexterity and finesse as the early days. The rest of us might have been struggling at that point but Bonzo still had it’’.

In November, it was announced that they had scooped seven awards in the annual Melody Maker readers’ poll – again a remarkable show of faith from their following in a musical climate dominated by new wave. The ensuing publicity somewhat covered up Jimmy Page’s problems of the time – the death of a friend, Philip Hale, at his Plumpton home. At the end of the year, Plant, Jones and Bonham appeared at the request of Paul McCartney on the last night of the Concert For Kampuchea concerts, staged at the Hammersmith Odeon.

Despite the lay-offs, negative press reaction to their Knebworth shows, and the derision heaped down upon them by the newly popular punk bands (“Led Zeppelin? I don’t need to hear their music – just looking at their album sleeves makes me want to throw up” – Paul Simonon of The Clash), the loyalty expressed by their stillmassive fan base indicated that this particular dinosaur was far from extinct. The problem faced by Peter Grant was how to capitalise on their sustaining power while Robert Plant refused to tour America.

“We had to go back if the group was to continue, as that was where a sizeable amount of the market was,” recalled Grant years later. To rejuvenate the camp, a plan was hatched to tour central Europe (avoiding the UK). After a couple of revisions to the itinerary, the tour kicked off in Dortmund on 17 June under the slogan Over Europe 1980 and took in 14 dates spanning Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, and Germany.

The early shows displayed a strong air of determined rejuvenation as they romped through a streamlined set that effectively disposed of much of the excessive improvisation of the past. There was a worrying night in Nuremberg on 27 June, when they had to abandon the show after John Bonham collapsed with exhaustion after three numbers. This was a result of nervousness and bad eating habits more than any drink or drug-related issues.

Press coverage was minimal, draping a mystique over this tour (particularly in the US). But the Europe jaunt did provide enough motivation for Plant to reconsider his decision on America: “I didn’t put any pressure on him and he kept saying to Bonzo, ‘What’s G said about America?’. I hoped being up there on stage would give him the necessary lift to do it,” said Grant.

At the time, it would seem that Plant harboured secret reservations about the long-term future of the group: “By the time we got to the In Through The Out Door album, I was so furtive,” he admitted in 1995. “And I think Jimmy was too. Maybe if we had communicated then as we do now, perhaps we could have gone on working together. In that period, I was beginning to think that I could do fresh things outside of the group.”

Torn between opting out and letting the others down, Robert decided to continue in the band. As they were walking across the airport tarmac on their return to the UK in early July, Robert told Grant that he would be willing to tour the US in the fall – but for a maximum of four weeks only.

A relieved Grant set about getting the wheels in motion for a campaign that would be dubbed Led Zeppelin – The 1980’s Part One. The group split for their customary summer recess, ready to reconvene at Page’s Windsor house in September, in preparation for their return to America.

On 5 September, Swan Song issued the following press statement under the heading ‘LED ZEPPELIN – THE 80s PART ONE’.

Grant: “I knew we couldn’t cover everywhere in four weeks, which was Robert’s condition, but once we got over there and got back into the swing, I thought we’d be fine. So it was Part One of what I hoped would be further visits.”

The basic plan was to cover the Midwest and North East of America in October and November and return to the US for a West Coast tour early in 1981. The UK was pencilled in for the spring.

On 24 September, John Bonham left his Worcestershire home to meet up with the rest of the group for initial rehearsals at Bray Studios. He began drinking quadruple measures of vodka at a stop-off in a pub on the way and this binge continued when the group assembled at Bray. Bonzo had been feeling tentative about going back to America – the Bill Graham incident still hung heavy on his mind – and as ever he was nervous about preparing for a tour.

Realising there would be little in the way of serious rehearsing completed that night, Page and Plant called an early evening halt. They all returned to Page’s Windsor home.

Bonham fell asleep around midnight. On the morning of 25 September, Page’s aide, Rick Hobbs, checked on Bonham’s room at around 8 am. He appeared to be sleeping normally. At 1:45 pm roadie Benji Le Fevre and John Paul Jones entered Bonham’s room to check on him again. He did not stir and, on checking his pulse, John Bonham was found to be dead, a victim of waterlogging of the lungs through inhaling vomit following a drinking session that had included 40 measures of vodka. The verdict later recorded at the inquest was accidental death. He was just 32. On 4 December, the group made the logical announcement that they could not continue as they were.

The two shows at Knebworth, therefore, became the group’s last performances in the UK. In the midst of the punk and new wave explosion, Led Zeppelin successfully reclaimed their crown as the world’s No 1 attraction. Thirty years on, the thousands of fans who came to pay homage still hold dear the memories of these last great British festival gatherings of the 70s.