Led Zeppelin Concert Memories: Madison Square Garden June 14 1977

From u2act.com

Led Zeppelin performed six sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden the week of June 7-14, 1977. I was fortunate enough to attend the last two shows that week.

I was a 16 years old beginner guitar player from Douglaston Queens in New York. For the previous two years leading up to those unforgettable concerts, I would spend countless hours in my bedroom after school learning how to play guitar by trying to imitate everything Jimmy Page page did.

I would use cardboard, rubber bands and whatever else I could to slow my turntable down just enough to figure out Jimmy’s solos by ear.

I couldn’t afford the real sunburst Gibson Les Paul that Jimmy played. So I convinced my best friend to sell me his 1976 sunburst Ibanez Les Paul Custom copy. It was so close to the real deal, that Gibson sued the Elger Company (the distributor of Ibanez instruments in the U.S. at the time) and demanded they stop producing copies of their instruments, specifically their headstocks. I wish I still had that guitar.

More than any other musicians of that day, Jimmy Page and Led Zeppelin were by far my biggest musical influence. And they helped me get though some very dark days.

1977 was a very hard year for my family. Early that year, my 24 year old brother-in-law Dave died in a drowning accident, ten days after his son was born. He was like a big brother to me. Also, my dad became very ill and was in and out of hospitals. I desperately needed a distraction from the fear and sadness.

I was working at our family dry cleaner in Bayside Queens for the summer. One day at work my favorite radio DJ, Pat St. John, announced on WPLJ that Led Zeppelin would be performing six nights at Madison Square Garden in New York City. I freaked – I had to get myself a ticket, but how?

There was a lottery drawing for tickets. I managed to get hold of a ticket order form and I was fortunate enough to win a ticket for the second-to-last night, June 13, 1977.

For various reasons, I don’t really remember that first night other than being overwhelmed by the excitement of seeing my favorite band and my guitar hero. When the show ended I knew I had to see them one last time. And my only chance would be the following night – June 14, 1977.

I didn’t have a ticket, but the next day I took the 30 minute LIRR train ride from my hometown into Penn Station in New York City with the hopes of buying a ticket on the street. I remember the prices were way more than I could afford and my heart began to sink.

Then I came across some guy who offered me a ticket for $50.00. I told him all I had was $20.00. He told me that he would not sell me the ticket, but that he could get me in for $20.00. That’s all I needed to hear. I handed him the cash, he handed me the ticket and then he followed me into the venue.

Once we were through the doors he directed me to a specific ticket-taker and told me to wait for him on the other side. I presented my ticket and the guy pretended to tear it, handed it back to me and let me through. The guy who “sold” me the ticket was right behind me. The ticket taker pretended to rip the scalpers ticket as well and again handed it back. The scalper then approached me, took my ticket and exited the building with both tickets to repeat the process.

So, there I was at a Led Zeppelin concert at Madison Square Garden with no ticket or assigned seating. Now what? I figured my safest bet was the nose-bleed seats. I went up and grabbed any seat I could find. As people showed up I was bounced from seat to seat over the next hour and a half.

But none of that mattered. Once the show started most of us were on our feet the whole night.

The smell of weed filled the air. The lights dimmed, the crowd went nuts and the band hit the stage. With his Gibson SG double-neck strapped to his body Jimmy starts pounding out “The Song Remains The Same.” I was in awe.

Nobody’s Fault But Mine, Over the Hills and Far Away, Since I’ve Been Loving You, No Quarter, Ten Years Gone, Battle of Evermore—the show seemed to go on forever. Robert sounded great. John Bonham’s drum solo was beyond epic. And then finally, the opening notes of Stairway To Heaven. The crowd went ballistic.

When the show ended. The New York crowd was out of control waiting for an encore. As the band came out to play a few more songs there was this deafening BOOOOM, a loud explosion that reverberated throughout the venue. The lights go up and Jimmy Page rushes off the stage.

Some guy from the audience threw a lit cherry bomb up onto stage and it went off on Jimmy’s right hand. We were all shocked. I was devastated thinking he may never be able to play again.

I remember Robert Plant was furious. He said something like “we will never play in New Your City again” and he walked off the stage The crowd was booing and yelling. I was getting nervous, bracing for a riot. No one knew what was going to happen. It seemed like the show was over but no one left. And about 30 minutes later the band came out, Jimmy’s hand wrapped in a bloody cloth. Apparently Jimmy wasn’t done and wanted to play some more. I think they finished up with two songs – “Whole Lotta Love” and “Rock and Roll.”

What an amazing and crazy night. And it was about to get a little nuttier. As I was leaving I had to visit the mens room. That’s when I saw one of the strangest things I had ever seen up to that point in my life. The line was so long that guys got sick of waiting resulting a line of men peeing into the sinks. Welcome to New York circa 1977.

June 14th is the best memory I have of the summer of 1977. Sadly my dad passed away a few weeks later – early July, 1977. The memory of those two concerts, the music of Led Zeppelin and that beautiful Ibanez guitar helped a 16 year old boy from Queens deal with a year of deep loss.

Led Zeppelin Concert Memories: Greensboro Coliseum, May 31, 1977

“We have seen the gods.  Now we can die.”

The date was May 31,1977.  It was just past midnight.

Along with about 17,000 other hard rock fans with ringing ears, Robert and Tim Miller and I were walking out of the Greensboro Coliseum.  We had just seen a three-hour long concert by Led Zeppelin.   

I love listening to rock music and hearing it live.   Picking my second most memorable or greatest concert would be difficult.  I’ve been lucky to have seen dozens of shows across the span of my sixty-four years, including Zep, The Who, Black Sabbath, Queen, Van Halen, Deep Purple, Rush, Blue Oyster Cult, Judas Priest, Def Leppard, AC/DC, Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Scorpions, Uriah Heep, ZZ Top, Motley Crue, Eric Clapton, Kiss, Bad Company, Kansas and Boston.

People who know me and know how much I love Rush, who I saw about two dozens times over the course of about 40 years, will raise their eyebrows when I say that the greatest concert I have ever seen was that Zeppelin show in my hometown in 1977.   On the other hand, most of those people will also show some understanding.   We’re talking one of the greatest rock and roll bands of all-time, and arguably the greatest hard rock band ever.   

Every generation has arguments about which artists are the greatest.  In the fifties, Elvis ruled.  In the sixties, Jimi Hendrix not only lit his guitar on fire, he lit the world on fire on his way to becoming the greatest guitarist who ever stood on a stage.   Nevertheless, it was The Beatles that shook and conquered the world.   

The British Invasion was on.   After the Beatles disbanded in 1970, the Rolling Stones moved up to the top spot, helped by being introduced as “greatest rock and roll band in the world.”   I remember hearing that in mid-70s, and thinking something like — we Zep fans beg to differ. 

Part of our argument centered on our belief that Page was the greatest guitarist, Bonham the best drummer, Plant the best singer, and Jones the best bassist.   That is certainly subjective, but Google — greatest rock and roll guitarist/drummer/singer/bassist — and see what you get. 

On a trip in the early 1970s, Mom and Dad took me and my younger sister to Washington to see her aunt and uncle and family.   With a gleam in his eye, my cousin took me to his room, closed the door, and began playing Sabbath’s “Master of Reality.”   

In the mid to late 60’s, when feel good, three-minute songs ruled the AM airwaves, my brother had corrupted me by playing the Doors and the Stones on his reel to reel.  Listening to Black Sabbath for the first time  was something more.  My whole mind and body felt something very powerful.   Although the words were not in our vocabulary yet, I was entering the realm of hard rock and heavy metal.

The crazy thing about Led Zeppelin (or maybe not) is that the band’s management decided to not release singles.  Nevertheless, fans bought and played their vinyl albums, and some FM radio DJ’s began playing what became known as “Album Oriented Rock.”   By the mid-70s, Zep was filling up venues in numbers like no other act before.   

In our world of mega large venues, bands and acts, including the Stones, have set single performance attendance records with six digits, whopping figures that blew past Zeppelin’s high watermark.   Ultimately, however, we should judge performance by what was done in its time.  A month before the Greensboro show in 1977, 76,229 fans had filled the Silverdome in Detroit to see Zeppelin, a jaw-dropping figure that stood as a record for a number of years.   

Robert, Tim and I, were part of a sold-out crowd at the Greensboro show.   It’s hard to know if Coliseum Manager James Oshust (1970 – 1985) kept his own list of top acts he had brought to the arena.   He certainly had a lot to choose from.  In the 1970s and into the 80s, the Greensboro Coliseum was the main stop for touring bands, perfectly situated halfway between Atlanta and Washington.   As a big fan of live music, I took full advantage of that golden era.   We lived just two miles from the Coliseum.  

Concert-wise, the stars aligned for me in ’77.   Before turning my sagging life around by joining the Air Force in February 1978, I had money in my pocket from working odd jobs and was living at home.   In the summer of 1975, I had seen my first concert.   On the strength of their Number One hit, “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet,” as well as FM staples, “Let it Ride” and “Taking Care of Business,” Bachman Turner Overdrive headlined at the Coliseum.   I can still feel the excitement of stepping into that wonderful new world of sight, sound and spectacle, all the hands clapping, and as the BTO song says, “candles in the air” (and what was that sweet smell drifting around?)

In a span of just four months in ‘77 (February to May), Robert, Tim and I saw, at the Greensboro Coliseum, ZZ Top, Boston, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Led Zeppelin.   Boston was hotter than the firecrackers fans lit during concerts back then.   Their eponymous debut album would eventually sell 17M copies.   We saw them right when they were breaking out from back-up to headliners filling the biggest arenas.   

“More than a Feeling” was their smash hit, but every song on the album could have been a hit.   Those are the kind of shows you remember.   The band members are making a lot of eye contact, all that joy before the grind of touring does its damage.

Back in the day, concert promoters employed the standard practice of “festival seating.”   Sounds like a picnic in the park.  Oh, no.  Things could get ugly and fans got injured.   With some exceptions, the widespread practice eventually ended.   Ever so sadly, it took a terrible tragedy in 1979, the loss of 11 lives at The Who concert in Cincinnati, to show the world just how crazy the practice was.   

Anyway, we were oblivious to what happened outside the Coliseum ’77 show, but news reports I have now read tell of broken fences and rowdy behavior.   We must have held back and waited until the crush ended.   That meant we didn’t get up close to the stage, but being about 15 rows back and on the floor wasn’t too shabby.   And we didn’t get crushed like we did for the Boston show, where I was lifted off the ground. 

Almost all rock concerts in those days had one or more support acts.   That’s how up and coming bands got noticed.  I remember seeing five young lads from Britain in 1980 at the Coliseum, a band named Def Leppard that would go on to sell a few albums themselves.   The kids warmed up for the up and coming Scorpions and wild man Ted Nugent.   No one ever blew Nugent off the stage, but Robert and I saw Van Halen blow the doors off Boston in Raleigh in 1978 (remember the flying empty beer cups?)

Zep’s 1977 tour, billed as “An Evening with Zeppelin, was them and only them.  The term itself spoke to the band’s lofty status.   They had started the practice of “no support” around 1972, when their concerts had turned into three-hour affairs.  Of all the shows I saw back then, only Zep was a solo affair.

Rock musicians are not known for their compliance with rules and norms.   But when it comes to concerts, they know that show time is a sacred time.    Almost every rock concert I have ever seen has started on time.   That night, show time (8 pm) came.   Zep had only played Greensboro one other time (1975), a show I did not see.   The crowd was primed and ready for the magical moment when the lights go down.   

Only this time, they didn’t.   

As the first few minutes went by, I’m sure we were thinking, ok, no biggie, the band is just a little late.   Twenty long minutes later, we were all dying from the worry the show would be cancelled.   And after that, who knew?  Maybe no return appearance (as things turned out, this was their final tour of North America). 

Thirty minutes turned to forty, an eternity.  We might have been thinking —  So this is what purgatory feels like.   

It’s my thought that had it been any other band, the crowd would have reigned down a chorus of boos.   We certainly had every right to.   But as best as I can remember, we didn’t boo, because you don’t boo the gods.

Finally, the lights went down.  17,000 delirious fans started breathing again and roared in approval.   The band tore into “The Song Remains the Same.”    

My memories of the show have faded, but one can now fill in the gaps at the Zep website with reviews and comments, and newspaper reports.   I do recall Plant greeted us after the first song, and apologized for being late.   He said they would make up for it by playing a lot of songs.   These days you can’t get away with something like that because everyone knows the set lists and length of shows.   Having said, that, their three-hour show was without intermission.   I don’t remember any other band playing that way.   From 1997 to 2016, Rush played about three hours, but always took a 20-minute break.

I can’t remember Zep’s setlist, but one can now look it up on the web.   They had put out seven albums so we benefitted from that.   The band would release just one more studio album, 1978’s “In Through the Out Door.”   

My favorite Zep songs are Kashmir, Whole Lotta Love, and one you might have heard of — Stairway to Heaven.  They played all of them and a total of 19.    

With Led Zeppelin, their concert was more than just a collection of songs.   They were maestros.   As one writer has said, Robert Plant had “the whole package as a frontman — a tremendous vocal range, flowing rock star locks, and magnetism for miles.”   Page held court with a mesmerizing extended solo with his bow string during “Dazed and Confused.”   Only a fool took a bath room break during John Bonham’s drum solo, and John Paul Jones and his keyboards had the stage during “No Quarter.”    

I wish I did have more memories.  I do remember at one point Plant took a break by sitting down on one of the stacks of speakers.  Every other musician I ever saw who took a break went backstage.   In my book, Plant earned some serious respect that way.   

The late Jerry Kenion reviewed the show in the Greensboro Daily News.   We offer the following snippets of her write up.

Jimmy Page, his thin frame covered in white satin… John Bonham’s drums help put the heavy into the heavy metal sound… laser beams crossed the stage creating a hazy green screen for the rising smoke… the fog machines cranked up to give the appearance that John Paul Jones was floating on a cloud. 

What constitutes a great concert means different things to different people.   Neil Peart has written that each Rush tour would bring just a handful of magical shows.   For most fans, just seeing the band play is magical.   I’ve read nit-picks of a show I had just attended, a critique that made me wonder if we were at the same show. 

Nevertheless, we all find shortcomings.   I can point out some with shows I have seen.   I saw Deep Purple with the Fab Five lineup headline the 1985 Knebworth concert.  Great show at a storied outdoor venue, but it rained so much the concert was dubbed “Mudworth.”   And, get this.  There was an insane rumor going around Ritchie Blackmore did not want to play “Smoke on the Water” (they did).

I saw Black Sabbath, but it was at the god-awful sounding Fayetteville Coliseum and wasn’t with Ozzy (loved Ronnie James Dio all the same).  I saw The Who, but it wasn’t with Keith Moon (still a great concert).   I saw Lynyrd Skynyrd, but the memories are bittersweet.   Just five months later, tragedy struck when Van Zant, Gaines and a backup singer were killed in the crash of their chartered plane.  I saw Kiss in 1976, a killer show, but we sat in the nose bleed seats.  By the way, don’t get me wrong.  All those were awesome shows.

With the Zeppelin show we saw, there was the painful long delay.  But everything else was so right about it.  We sang happy birthday to “Bonzo,” and felt something very powerful when Page picked the first notes of Stairway to Heaven.   

In 2014, music journalist Lisa Robinson wrote, “There Goes Gravity: A Life in Rock and Roll.”   Robinson had full access to Led Zeppelin for a number of years and spends more than two dozen pages on what she saw.  In 2014, the author promoted her book at Politics and Prose here in Washington, DC.  I told her about seeing them and the unheard of forty minute wait.   

Echoing what many others have said, Robinson said by that time, the band was going downhill.   Many a journalist has written about “the monster that was Led Zeppelin.”   Page and Bonham drank heavily.   John Paul Jones would later say he was sick of life on the road.   Manager Peter Grant was a bully.    Zep weren’t the first band to become a train wreck, but all this made them easy targets for their critics.     

But for Robert, Tim and I, ignorance was bliss.   All we knew was the mighty Zep was coming to our home town and we scored tickets.    

The previous September, the band had released, “The Song Remains the Same,” a double live album from the best of three shows at Madison Square Garden during their 1973 tour.   I read now that,  “a number of critics consider it to be over-produced and lumbering.”   You’ll have to excuse me, for I can only chuckle on that one.  From our perspective, it was all good.    

Three months later, Zep released “The Song Remains the Same,” the movie of the same name.   Robert and I went and saw the flick at the Janus Theatre in Greensboro.   Once again, reviews aren’t flattering.   For us, however, just being able to see a hard rock band on the big screen was an utter and rare delight.   

You have to understand that in the 1970s, before MTV came along, there was very little hard rock music on TV.   I remember staying up past midnight to watch Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert (Zeppelin never appeared).  As a form of mental torture, I had to keep the volume down low as to not wake up my Mom and sister.   

As seen by this ad in the Greensboro Daily News (July 1985), TV programmers continued to push aside hard rock music.   

With some bands, the fans get to see them a long time.  The Stones are quite amazing that way, and Rush kept things top-notch for almost 40 years.  Blue Oyster Cult has played over, wait for it, 3,000 shows.     

But for many bands, the fire burns out too soon.   Just a few weeks after the Greensboro show, Robert Plant’s five-year old son died.   Bonham slipped away three summers later.

When things like that take place, bands face the tough decision of replacing an original member.   Some make the change and keep going.   

Led Zeppelin did not.   They were the gods, and we saw them.  

Led Zeppelin: ‘Loads of illicit substances’: the night Led Zeppelin invaded an Indian dive-bar (1972)

From telegraph.co.uk 10 Nov 2021

The Indian musician Madhukar ‘Madooo’ Dhas remembers an evening of screaming, hard rock and getting a thumbs-up from Robert Plant

Jimmy Page (left) and Robert Plant at the Slip Disc nightclub in Mumbai CREDIT: Madhu Dhas Facebook

It was a slow Monday in October 1972, and the Slip Disc nightclub in Mumbai could hardly be described as “jumping”. 

Around 10 people were in the venue, which was the hangout for the city’s nascent rock scene. Slip Disc measured just 30 by 18 feet, with a third of its floor-space taken up by a stage and DJ booth. Its tiny, low-ceiling dancefloor was fringed by four rows of carpeted steps, not that visitors would have noticed: low lighting and lava lamps’ swirling projections were the order of the day. The darkness meant that local teens could get their kicks and swig their beers undetected.

That night, three strangers walked in. They were long-haired Westerners who’d just been refused entry into Blow Up, a far more staid nightclub underneath the grand waterfront Taj Mahal Hotel where they were staying. 

Madhukar Dhas, aka Madooo, the singer in Indian psychedelic rock band Atomic Forest, was in Slip Disc that evening. “We didn’t recognise them as they walked in,” Dhas, now 72, tells me. “I thought, ‘Who are these guys?’”. But a second glance changed all that. “I thought, ‘Oh shoot. It’s Led Zeppelin.’”

Robert Plant and Jimmy Page were the singer and guitarist in arguably the world’s biggest band. The Zeppelin members were en route home from a tour of Japan, which itself was part of a vast global tour to promote Led Zeppelin IV, their career-high album, which was released 50 years ago this week and has since sold more than 37 million copies. 

That year, the band had already played to hundreds of thousands of delirious fans from Tucson to Tokyo, and here were Page and Plant – along with tour manager Richard Cole – in a broom-cupboard dive-bar in downtown Mumbai. Not only that, but Atomic Forest and a handful of other Indian rock bands had made a career out of playing covers of Zeppelin, Stones and Jethro Tull tracks. These men were living legends. And they were now in their midst.

Madhukar Dhas (right) with Led Zeppelin, 1972 CREDIT: Madhu Dhas Facebook

What happened next must rank as one of the more extraordinary “I was there” moments in rock history. It also yielded one of music’s most tantalising lost bootlegs. The evening had a broader cultural significance too. In the retelling and the myth-making that accompanied that night, the events at Slip Disc played a role in establishing Western rock ’n’ roll music in India.

As soon as Page, Plant and Cole arrived at the venue and sat down, it was clear to everyone who they were. Slip Disc’s owner, a man called Ramzan, sent over bottles of local beer: it had no head and glistened with what Dhas said looked like soap bubbles. The trio drank. “They were getting tipsy,” Dhas remembers, “but there was no entertainment. A band was there but it wasn’t their time to play. So this guy Ramzan comes to me and says, ‘Come on, sing!’” 

Then just 22 years old, Dhas froze with nerves, telling the owner that his band wasn’t contracted to sing at Slip Disc. “I said, ‘It’s Robert Plant, I can’t sing in front of him.’ [Ramzan] dug his nails into my ribs and said, ‘Go sing, you b—–d.’ He was desperate. So I thought, ‘What the hell.’”

Dhas took to the stage with a band comprising a musician called Willie on guitar and a drummer called Jamal (possibly from the band Velvett Fogg). Some reports suggest that the bassist with local band Human Bondage, a man called Xerxes Gobhai, also played. They’d never rehearsed together. After a brief conflab, the group launched into Honky Tonk Woman by the Stones, Dhas doing his best to channel Mick Jagger’s manic energy as one of the world’s greatest rock vocalists sat within spitting distance. 

“Plant was about six feet away,” he says. “Jimmy Page was probably 10 feet away. They were enjoying themselves.” He dared to catch Plant’s eye. “Robert Plant gave me the thumbs-up. I thought, ‘Oh my God.’ It was the highlight of my musical career.”

As Madooo sang, word seeped onto the street about the VIPs in Slip Disc. The venue started to fill up. By the time the Stones cover was over, the crowd had swollen to around 50 people – or full capacity. The audience turned their attention to the Zeppelin men swigging beer. A chant of “Jam, jam, jam!” slowly filled the venue. 

To everyone’s surprise, Page and Plant stood and walked to the stage. A frantic few minutes followed, as Cole tried to get the best possible sound from the amps and Page found that one of the guitars had been strung with piano strings. “You could only get what was available,” Dhas says. Ironically, Page and Plant had an aircraft full of the most expensive and cutting-edge musical equipment at the airport, but customs officials were refusing to release it. They tuned up and played.

Precise recollections of the impromptu set-list vary. It was recorded by Slip Disc’s resident DJ, Arul Harris, but the whereabouts of the only tape remain unknown. According to Dhas, Page and Plant started with a bluesy ad-lib about turning up at Blow Up, the club under the Taj, and not being allowed in. They had apparently gone to the club in traditional dress – kurta tops and Kolhapuri chappal shoes – and the doorman had dismissed them as hippies. By the time they arrived at Slip Disc, they had changed into Western clothes. 

Page performs at a Led Zeppelin concert in Wembley, 1971 CREDIT: Getty

Plant sang in his distinctive high voice, with his trademark vocal stammer: ‘I was walking down / And the man wouldn’t let me in / The m-m-mmmmaaan…’ Meanwhile, Dhas remembers, the “dumbfounded” rhythm section tried their best to join in. After about ten minutes of the Blow Up jam, the band segued into Whole Lotta Love from 1969’s Led Zeppelin II. The crowd went predictably wild, although Dhas found himself with a job to do.

The microphone that Plant was using was called an Ahuja mic. It was the only type available in India at the time, and it was screwed onto its stand, unlike the handheld ones that Plant was used to yanking away. As the singer tried to untwist the microphone, its connection with the cable loosened, and his voice cut in and out. Dhas dashed forward to hold the cable close to the mic so it made a connection. He recalls: “I was literally six inches from [Plant’s] face when he was screaming ‘Loooooove’. I was deaf for about two hours after that. That high-pitched voice right into my right ear – oh boy.”

Others who were present have recalled the band starting with Rock and Roll and ending with Black Dog, with the Blow Up jam happening in the middle. Either way, Page and Plant played for just under half an hour. As the cheers faded, Plant promised the pair would return the following evening. “We listen to you, you listen to us, we’re all one in this music,” he is reported to have said. 

They returned the next day as promised, only to find the world and his wife at Slip Disc, many with cameras. Page and Plant hated it, staying for around 10 minutes only. Dhas says it was a “fiasco”: “When the crowd turned up they became these rock stars again.”

Plant on stage at the Sports Arena in San Diego, 1972 CREDIT: Getty

As well as being an extraordinary encounter and yielding one of the most intriguing and as-yet-unearthed bootlegs in Led Zeppelin’s history, the Slip Disc jam played a role in seeding Western music in India. In 1972, Western pop and rock music hardly registered there. As the journalist Sidharth Bhatia wrote in his 2015 book India Psychedelic: The Story of a Rocking Generation: “The swinging ’60s that swept Britain and the West in general barely trickled in here. India was too busy trying to survive.” It was, as Bhatia suggests, a period of political turmoil, war with Pakistan and devastating droughts. In terms of fripperies like music, consumer choice was severely limited: TV only arrived in Mumbai in 1972 and most aspects of the Indian economy were nationalised. Strict import laws meant that Western albums were difficult to come by. 

But while demand for Western music was small, it existed, and the night at Slip Disc helped it to grow. People coming of age in the early 1970s were the first generation of Indians with no memory of life under British rule (which had ended in 1947), and they wanted something different. Plant has acknowledged the role that the night played in spawning rock in India, even in roundabout terms. 

“Jimmy and I played in a club in Bombay in 1972,” the singer said in 2012. “Somehow or other we ended up in there with loads and loads of illicit substances. Some guy is writing a book about rock in India – and apparently it was born in this club, with Page and I wired out of our faces.” (He also recalled playing the drums, something other accounts don’t mention.)https://www.youtube.com/embed/tzVJPgCn-Z8

And the whereabouts of the recording? Dhas has been trying to track it down for years, without success. Keith Kanga, the bass player of Atomic Forest who had the tape, has passed away, while DJ Harris doesn’t have a copy. Dhas’s best guess is that the tape is currently in Israel, after another DJ with links to the club moved there. “If anybody has regard for history and Led Zeppelin,” he says, “I’m sure they wouldn’t have tossed it.”

Dhas’s brush with fame didn’t end there: he went on to become a superstar in his own right, albeit one of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s creation. He played Jesus in the 1974 production of Jesus Christ Superstar at the Birla Hall in Mumbai. He performed the role for a year and a half, and became a national celebrity, before moving to New York in 1978. And it was here where he had a second encounter with Led Zeppelin, almost a decade after the first.

In 1981, Plant appeared as a guest on New York’s WNEW 102.7FM rock radio station. Dhas was having a martini with his wife when they heard the show, and he decided to ring in. “I kept calling, and my wife said, ‘Forget about it, you’re not going to get through.’ I said, ‘No. Where there’s a will there’s a way’, and I kept on trying.” He eventually got through, telling the receptionist: “I’d like to say a word to Robert Plant. I am a guy from India, and we jammed.’”

The disbelieving receptionist hung up. But Dhas rang back on a different number and suggested they run his story by Plant. They did, and eventually the Led Zeppelin singer came on the line. “He remembered the night with fondness,” Dhas says.

The sheer joy of the Slip Disc jam is still present in Dhas’s retelling. Plant’s voice may have stopped ringing in his ear – but the memory of that Monday night in October on the Mumbai waterfront lives on.

Led Zeppelin Concert Memories: Newcastle City Hall, England, 11th November 1971

From myvintagerock.com

For an old guy like me, who grew up listening to rock music in the late 60s and early 70s, Led Zeppelin were THE band. Their early albums are absolute classics of blues rock, and their live shows were simply the thing of legend. Everyone I knew had a copy of Led Zeppelin II, and would bring it to school to play at the record club, proudly displaying it to as a badge of honour. I’d so wanted to see Zeppelin live since I’d heard my friend’s older brothers talk about how great they were. They were lucky enough to see them at Newcastle City Hall and the Mayfair in the late 60s, and they came back from those gigs so excited, full of tales of Plant’s screaming vocals, of Page’s amazing guitar and how he “played his guitar with a violin bow”.

In those days such tricks seemed almost unbelievable to a teenager like me. So when Zeppelin toured in late 1971 it was my turn to see them for the first time. I was determined to make the most of the opportunity, and was lucky enough to end up seeing them twice in two days, on the first two nights of their UK tour, when they played in Newcastle and Sunderland. The concerts took place in the week that the classic Led Zeppelin IV album was released. Zeppelin were at the peak of their powers at this time, and were simply an awesome, electric live act.

I had a ticket for the Led Zeppelin concert at Sunderland on the Friday night, and just couldn’t wait! So I decided to try and see them at Newcastle the night before. The City Hall gig has been sold out for weeks, with people queuing all night for tickets; but I wasn’t going to let that stop me. I got home quickly after school on the Thursday night, had something to eat, and then set off on the train to Newcastle to try and blag a ticket outside of the venue. I managed to buy a ticket for a pretty ropey seat up in the circle, paying £1; which was twice the 50p face value. This may sound cheap now, but it seemed quite expensive at the time. But hey I was in, and although my view wasn’t great; I was going to see Led Zeppelin for the first time! I took my seat and waited for Zeppelin to take the stage. 

There was no support act; soon the lights went down and the guys stormed out, Robert Plant greeting us with a simple “Good evening! Here we are again”; and then it was straight into Immigrant Song, with Plant’s screaming wails roaring above Jimmy Page’s guitar. Page was wearing his guitar low, down around his knees, prowling around the stage while Prant posed, and played the rock god at the front. John Paul Jones stood quiet, and calm, providing the bass rhythms while John Bonham pounded and bashed away at his massive drum kit. For the next couple of hours I sat completely mesmerised by this band. I couldn’t take my eyes off Page and Plant. The set unfolded; featuring old favourites and tracks from the new lp. There were so many highlights: the opening “Hey hey mama said the way you move, Gonna make you sweat, gonna make you groove” lines of Black Dog; the mystical beauty of Stairway to Heaven; the back to their roots rhythms of Rock and Roll; the exquisite blues guitar and blood-tingling vocals of Dazed and Confused; the acoustic guitar interlude for That’s the Way, Going to California and Tangerine. And Jimmy Page did play his guitar with a violin bow, and he has this strange aerial which he waved his hands at and, as if by magic, made weird spacey, spooky sounds (I later learned that this was called a theremin).

A crowd recording exists, on which you can apparently hear Robert Plant talking about the release of the new album: “Now then, today’s the day of the Teddy Bear’s picnic, and to go with it, the new album came out. I know what they say about the length of time between the two, and I’m sure you can read all sorts of reports and toss a coin!” The concert was quite long, over two hours, and LOUD (which was good; for me the louder the better), even up in the circle where I was sitting. Just perfection; the greatest rock’n’roll band in the world. I caught the late train, the music still ringing in my ears, still buzzing and knowing that I’d experienced something very special. I couldn’t wait to see them again the next night, and bored everyone at school with how great they were.

There seems to be a little debate as to the setlist that night. Most sites show the set as: Immigrant Song; Heartbreaker; Black Dog; Since I’ve Been Loving You; Rock and Roll; Stairway to Heaven; That’s the Way; Going to California; Tangerine; Dazed and Confused; What Is and What Should Never Be; Celebration Day; Whole Lotta Love. Encore: Communication Breakdown. However, I’ve also read that they played Moby Dick, but I am assured that this was not the case. They did however also play Bron-y-aur Stomp.

Led Zeppelin Concert Memories: Earls Court London Saturday May 24th 1975

From myvintagerock.com

Led Zeppelin were initially booked to play for three nights on May 23rd, 24th and 25th at the massive Earls Court Arena in London, which has a capacity of 17,000. The venue had been used for concerts before, notably one by David Bowie, at which the sound was reportedly atrocious. Due to what Mel Bush described as “unprecedented demand in the history of rock music” two further dates were added on May 17 and 18th. The total attendance for the five sold out shows was 85,000. Bush negotiated with British Rail to advertise the ease with which Inter City trains could bring fans in. ”The Zeppelin Express Physical Rocket” was how it was dubbed, and the posters for the event featured a picture of Zeppelin riding the express. There was no support act for the shows, and Zeppelin played a long set, around three hours, each night.

This was the first chance to see Zeppelin after an almost three year gap since I last saw them at Newcastle City Hall in 1972. I went with John and a couple more mates, and we travelled to London by train, and straight back after the show on the midnight train. It was the day of the Scotland England match at Wembley and the train home was completely packed, full of very drunk (and disappointed) Scots fans (England won 5-1), travelling home after the match. We couldn’t get a seat and spent most of the night trying to sleep on the (cold metal) floor of the guards van, which was pretty uncomfortable :(!

Tickets went on sale for personal applicants only at various points across the country. John and I queued all night at Virgin Records in Newcastle for our tickets. We arrived late, just before the pubs closed, and the queue grew massively overnight. I took my car and parked it beside the queue, hoping to catch some sleep. Some of the guys in the queue took a dislike to this idea and threatened to turn my car over, so I quickly moved it, parked it a few streets away, and rejoined the queue. When the box office opened, we were quite disappointed to find that all they had on sale were tickets with pretty poor views, up the back of the arena. This was often the case in those days, with the best seats being sold at the venue itself, in London.

When we arrived at Earls Court we found that out seats had an obstructed view. We were sitting behind a wide pillar and literally could not see anything. However, we were able to sit on the stairs between the rows of seats for the whole show, which gave us a great view. This was one of the first shows to use videotron screens at either side of the stage which was very cool for the time, and the first time we had seen colour video screens. All the other screens I had seen before that, usually at outdoor festivals, were black and white, and used a projector. Looking back, the screens were pretty low tech compared to today, but at the time they were streets ahead of anything seen before at a rock concert. The sound wasn’t great, but was ok with a massive PA system, particularly given the size of the venue.

The compere for Saturday the 24th was Nicky Horne who opened the proceedings with something like “Welcome to Earls Court. For the next three hours….your mother wouldn’t like it”. The Saturday night that we attended is often rated as the best night of the five shows, despite a couple of minor glitches such as Page’s guitar cutting out during In My Time of Dying. Kashmir was a particular highlight and Plant joked “If you go along the A449,past Droitwich, take the third turn on the right, Kashmir is just up there – its got a white fence around it”. Tangerine was dedicated to “families and friends who have been close to us through a lot. Its a song of love in its most innocent stages”. Trampled Underfoot was simply breath-taking and included Robert unaccompanied leading into Rip it up by Little Richard for a few bars.

A DVD of the show exists, which includes around 90 minutes of the show. John has a copy and watched it through to remind us of some of the details of the night, particularly Plant’s stage banter: “Page wore the Dragon Suit, Jonesy his Matador Jacket, Bonham a black T shirt with a silver sequinned front and Plant an open “short blue kimono”. After Rock and Roll/Sick Again Plant welcomes us with “Good Evening (audience response)…Good Evening (louder response). Last time I was suffering from a touch of cholera, it seems to have worn off, must be all these eastern influences. Our intention is to play between three and three and half hours, and when we say play we don’t mean groove along (sings first line of Livin Lovin Maid in a goofy voice). We intend to take you on a little journey, some of the experiences we have had which had made the music so different in (emphasis) ….six and a half years !!” More banter then “This is the the beginning of that journey” – and then they play Over the Hills and Far Away.

After Over the Hills and Far Away Robert said “Malacoom Salaam as we Welsh would have it” (presumably a joke, the words are Salaam Alaykum -Peace unto You – or just – Hello). Then its more banter and into “As we divert from one stratosphere to another. We intend to take you through some of the changes -six and a half years in three hours”. They play That’s The Way.
After the song he sings a couple of lines from Old Man by Neil Young. He then says “The chairs are supplied by Habitat. This is a preview for all the talking shows we’re gonna do in the Fall…when we’ve really made it.” “This is about a blue eyed friend who wags his tail and keeps his mouth shut”. Then Bron Y Aur Stomp. “We’ve seen a lot of ups and downs, and ups and downs are the ability to create rhythm, and if you liken the ups and downs of the human body to parts of a motor car sometimes you can get Trampled Underfoot.

Dazed and Confused is dedicated to Dennis Healy (then Chancellor of the Exchequer) as he says “We gotta fly soon. Y’know how it goes with Dennis….dear Dennis. Private enterprise …no artists in the country anymore …he must be Dazed and Confused !! ” It included an excerpt from Scott McKenzie’s ‘If you’re going to San Francisco”. The intro to Stairway is “This is a song which typifies the mood of hope which in our brightest moments surrounds us.”

I’ll leave the final comment on the gig to John: “I though the entire set was great with In My Time of Dying, Trampled Underfoot, the acoustic set and Stairway being the highlights. Sick Again was a surprising choice. As you know I am not a big drum solo fan and by then I think Whole Lotta love was sounding a bit “overplayed”, but minor quibbles on a fantastic experience. I assume the posters must have been sold out by the time we got there or I would have bought one. Jimmy wore the Dragon Suit.

All I can say is this was greatest gig I have ever seen. A great venue, great visuals and sound, and a great time to see the greatest rock and roll band of all time. Like a a lot of things, at the time it felt a bit special, but I now realize it was a historic event it was. Sometimes the sun, moon and stars are aligned, I feel very fortunate to have been present.”

Setlist: Rock and Roll, Sick Again, Over the Hills and Far Away, In My Time of Dying, The Song Remains the Same, The Rain Song, Kashmir, No Quarter, Tangerine, Going to California, That the Way, Bron Y Aur Stomp, Trampled Underfoot, Moby Dick, Dazed and Confused, Stairway to Heaven, Whole Lotta Love and Black Dog.

Led Zeppelin Concert Memories: Dublin 1971

From irishexaminer.com

On this day in 1971, Led Zeppelin played a gig at the National Stadium in Dublin. John Daly recalls an event that was also his first ever gig.

On this day in 1971, Led Zeppelin played a gig at the National Stadium in Dublin. John Daly recalls an event that was also his first ever gig.

If the old proverb is correct in espousing that “vengeance is a dish best served cold”, then Led Zeppelin surely had a freezer full of retribution for Rolling Stone magazine.

In the magazine’s review of the band’s debut album — released 50 years ago this month — journalist John Mendelsohn did not spare the barbs: “Jimmy Page, around whom the Zeppelin revolves, is… a very limited producer and a writer of weak, unimaginative songs, and the album suffers from his having both produced and written most of it.”

Mendhlesson rounds out the assassination with a final attack on Led Zep’s “willingness to waste their considerable talent on unworthy material”.

Such a hatchet job certainly recalls the 2000 film, Almost Famous, inspired by writer Cameron Crowe’s years as a teenage music journalist, and where one 1970s rocker warns another about talking to the magazine: “It’s Rolling Stone, man,” he croaks. “The magazine that trashed ‘Layla’, broke up Cream, and ripped every album Led Zeppelin ever made!”

The fact that all the band’s albums went straight into the UK and US Top 10 must surely have made for a wonderfully tasty cold dish for Misters Page, Plant, Bonham and Jones to serve as the fame and fortune started to roll in.

Regardless of what kind of aggro they might have sustained from an initially unimpressed music press, when Led Zeppelin arrived in Dublin’s National Stadium on March 6, 1971, there wasn’t a single soul in that packed arena less than beatifically ‘dazed and confused’ to be present at such a legendary gig.

For myself, it was to become a huge tick on my life’s bucket list, long before I had even grasped such a concept — as I sat dead centre, seat A7, on the very front row for the princely sum of £1.25.

Barely into my teens, it was my first ever live concert — within touching distance of rock gods who were changing the world. All around was an air of unbridled expectation, like a roller-coaster moments before its deepest drop, added to by the pungent aroma of illicit substances breathing forth from every section. Smoking was an art form in those days.

Massive banks of enormous speakers towered almost to the ceiling, cables snaked off in every direction, and I can still remember the complete lack of barriers or security between audience and the stage — unheard of in today’s ultra-guarded arenas.

The band were then in the process of recording their seminal album, Led Zeppelin IV, and had blown away the Ulster Hall in Belfast the previous night, sending the media into overdrive with banner headlines proclaiming: ‘Ireland Unites Under Zeppelin’.

Long before Facebook or Instagram were even a concept, all 3,000 of us in that sweaty, grungy, ecstatic stadium knew we were going to hear the debut of ‘Stairway to Heaven’ — the song frequently listed top of the best rock anthems ever written. The same year the Irish Women’s Movement took the ‘contraceptive train’ to Belfast and The Troubles became a powder keg as internment was introduced, it was a night destined for the annals.

And suddenly they were there, a quartet of whirling dervishes cloaked in clouds of dry ice only six feet from us, racing into the wrap-around, ear-shattering volume of ‘Immigrant Song’.Lead singer Robert Plant, bare-chested and wailing like a banshee, drenched us in sweat with every twirl of his pelvic-length blond locks. Some reviewers suggested his ability to hit high notes was in direct proportion to the tightness of his jeans. No arguments there.

Playing his twin-necked Gibson guitar with a violin bow during ‘Dazed & Confused’, he puffed carelessly on a dangling cigarette while prancing across the stage clad in an ankle-length leather coat adorned with an SS badge on the collar. Cool and rebellious? Oh yeah.

The stadium really went ape as the first chords of their global hit, ‘Whole Lotta Love’, echoed across the rafters. It was the ultimate heavy rock call to arms that had everyone standing on seats, stomping the floor and bouncing in the aisles. Nobody was sitting at that point, and the few befuddled security staff, who had long given up attempting to restore order, melted meekly toward the exits. If this was the teenage rebellion, I wanted more.

Artist William Mulhall, who designed the tour poster depicting a zeppelin looming through the clouds over the Harland & Wolff shipyard, was invited to watch the concert from a prime position in the wings.

He later recalled:

They were shy lads, really, and asked me to sit on the stage. All of a sudden I was there, on the high altar.

Seemingly without pause to draw breath, the anthems piled up on each other — ‘Black Dog’, ‘Moby Dick’, ‘Going To California’, ‘Communication Breakdown’ — whipping the stadium into a frenzied, stamping, throbbing mass. In an arena more accustomed to southpaws and haymakers, all 3,000 of us reeled from the musical punches and rhythmic rope-a-dope being thrown our way.

The standing ovation started long before the show was over, and at the end Zeppelin were forced to come back for several encores before the night was done.

I can still vividly remember a beautiful blonde-haired girl a few seats along my front row — Afghan coat, purple tie-dye peasant blouse, ‘Ban the Bomb’ headband —stubbing out a doobie beneath the heel of her Earth shoe and murmuring: “It’ll never be better than this,” as she passed me by. She wasn’t wrong.

Led Zeppelin Concert Memories: Chicago, January 22, 1975

From justbackdated.blogspot.com by Chris Charlesworth

It’s cold outside, freezing, sub-zero and bitter, but inside Chicago Stadium, a superstructure designed to accommodate ocean liners, 20,000 Led Zeppelin fans are roaring in unison as if some giant orgasm has overtaken each and every one.

They’ve recognised the opening notes to ‘Stairway To Heaven’, the song they all came to hear. Even Robert Plant made a reverent speech before Page plucked the opening strings on the lower fretboard of his Gibson twin-neck.

“We… uh… recorded… now let me see… 14 sides of music including the new album in our career… and uh… well, we think that this song is… uh… pretty bloody good… eh, Jimmy?” says Plant. Jimmy grins and the crowd roar.

Danny Goldberg, a harassed-looking New Yorker with a pony-tail who runs Swan Song Records for Zep in the States, was telling me about ‘Stairway’ on the way to the concert. “It’s amazing,” he said. “The FM radio stations in New York have done a poll on what is the most requested album track and for two years it’s been ‘Stairway’. Nothing else comes close to it. They’re always playing it.”

Up there on stage Zeppelin are giving the song a new dimension. Page is subtly altering the guitar feed-in, twisting a note here and adding an extra one there, but it’s Plant’s vocal that charges the song with drama.

It took about three numbers for his pipes to clear out and now he’s shifted into top gear. Spoken asides between lines, building to a frenzy as Page moves up to the 12-string neck and crashes on open chords that ring out like echoes in a tunnel.

“To be a rock and not to roll…”

Lights everywhere, sparkling off a silver ball, and everyone is on their seats, cheering madly. John Bonham, in white boiler suit and black bowler hat, stumbles off his drum podium and nods back to the crowd, John Paul Jones, demure in gold embroidered waistcoat and fitted black pants, grins, and Page, relinquishing the twin-neck to a roadie, bows very low.

“Thank you, Chicago,” says Plant, and the group retire to an ovation that continues for ten minutes, building in waves of hoarse cheering until the group return, plug in and punch out the definitive riff of ‘Whole Lotta Love’. Page, guitar slung as low as ever, duckwalks around, jerking out the notes that have become standard lesson number one in heavy guitar tuition, long black hair covering the right side of his face.

‘Love’ moves into ‘Black Dog’ with the aid of four explosions atop the five lighting towers that beam down on the band, and it’s off again for five minutes before Zep return with ‘Communication Breakdown’, to make it almost three hours from the golden boys of heavy rock, three hours of incredible music that will be repeated nightly until Zep’s US tour, the first major rock tour of the US in 1975, winds up at Los Angeles on March 27.

The tour, however, was almost cancelled at the last minute, for Jimmy Page is playing under a severe handicap.

The third finger of his left hand, the one that’s used by all guitarists to bend notes, was two weeks before the tour trapped in an interconnecting carriage door on a train at Victoria Station.

The jolt broke a bone and specialists say he won’t be able to use the finger for another two weeks. He takes a pain-killer before going on stage.

 “I can’t play any blues at all, can’t bend notes either,” he told me before going on stage at Chicago. “It’s the most important finger for any guitarist, so I’m having to modify my playing to suit the situation. A shame, but it can’t be helped.

“We’ve had to cut ‘Dazed And Confused’ from the set and substitute ‘How Many More Times’ which we haven’t played in four years. I’m still doing the violin bow routine but we’ve had to alter even that and I can’t do it as well as I’d like to. I can tell it’s not as good as it usually is, but the audiences don’t seem to notice.

“We almost cancelled the tour, but we couldn’t, as we’d sold all the tickets and a postponement would have meant chaos. It couldn’t have happened at a worse time, either.”

Plant, too, was complaining of illness. “I’m catching ‘flu and can’t sing properly,” he said.

Illness and broken finger bones are not the only problem that Zep are having to cope with on this junket. There were riots when tickets went on sale in several cities and the worst incident occurred at Boston, where the council refused to grant a licence for the concert.

As a result the concert scheduled for February 4 has been cancelled, the first time in seven years of touring that a Zep concert has been cancelled. An extra date has been added at Nassau Coliseum to make up for the cancellation, and tickets are being distributed to Boston fans by mail order. All mail with Massachusetts postmarks received preferential treatment.

Boston was actually the venue of one of the first US appearances by Zeppelin, so the band feel bad about the cancellation. The real reason for the ban, however, was not so much the rioting fans as the tense racial situation in a city where recently there have been riots over school bussing arrangements. The City Fathers are reluctant to permit any large gatherings, so it’s just unfortunate That Led Zep seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The tour opened this week with three concerts at the 20,000 capacity Chicago Stadium, the third of which I saw. “It takes them a few concerts to get into stride,” one of the roadies told me backstage. “By the time this band gets to Madison Square Garden, it’ll be one of the best rock acts ever to set foot there.”

Zep’s three hour set, there is no support act, includes five new songs that’ll be on the Physical Graffiti double album, due for imminent release. The hold-up, as always with Zep, is because of the artwork.

Two of the new pieces stand out. ‘Kashmir’ is a long song, a builder with a complex ascending riff, while ‘Trampled Under Foot’ is an out-and-out rocker with a simple catch-line that would make an excellent single. ‘Trampled’, in fact, might eventually take the place of ‘Whole Lotta Love’ as a power finale.

Zep, in common with a few others in their league, have the ability to hit an audience right from the start, merely by their actual presence. In Zep’s case, the number is ‘Rock And Roll’, and the effect is like a steam-driven locomotive gathering speed for a long, express journey from the opening staccato notes.

Plant, bare-chested and golden hair curling over his shoulders, is the very epitome of the rock star, a super stud whose blatantly sexual manoeuvres around his stage rival anything from Tom Jones Las Vegas routines to David Cassidy’s more primitive but similar expressions of virility.

The slightly-built Page, shy, sleepy features hidden behind a mass of black curls, dressed in white silk suit and black embroidered shirt, prowls the stage with a Les Paul tucked in a little above knee height.

John Paul Jones keeps out of the picture, alternating between three Fender basses (one fretless) and only really making his presence felt when he moves to the keyboard. His Mellotron work on ‘No Quarter’ was a coup de grace.

Two new songs follow ‘Rock And Roll’. The first, ‘Sick Again’, is a trite comment on the LA scene and hangers-on that Zep accumulate whenever they visit California. Another uptempo rocker. The second is a reworking of the blues standard ‘In My Time Of Dying’ which features Page on slide throughout. Then it’s ‘Over The Hills And Far Away’, and ‘The Song Remains The Same’, which moves into ‘The Rain Song’, the first opportunity for Page to play delicately and use his twin-necked guitar.

Two new pieces, ‘Kashmir’ and ‘Wanton Song’, come next before Jones’ solo on ‘No Quarter’. Then it’s ‘Trampled Under Foot’ before Bonham’s tour de force, ‘Moby Dick’, which now includes a 15-minute drum solo, a powerdrive extraordinaire that has the audience standing time and time again at its false conclusions.

‘How Many More Times’ is Page’s new vehicle for the violin bow scenario, modified slightly because of his broken finger but still impressive, especially the part where he uses a stabbing echo and apparently duets with himself. ‘Stairway’ closes the set.

Hasty getaways, police escorts and armed bodyguards are all part of the routine on a Zeppelin tour. The band are hustled directly off the stage into the usual waiting limousine while the audience is still waiting for a third encore.

On arrival at the hotel the band locked themselves away for an hour’s conference with Peter Grant before venturing out into hotel lobby and bar which were rapidly crowding with fans who’d heard where the group was staying.

This week Zeppelin take possession of the Starship, the personalised rock and roll jet that will ferry them to and from gigs with Chicago as a base. This method of touring, used by Zeppelin on previous tours, is unique: it’s also extraordinarily expensive.

Led Zeppelin Concert Memories: Bath Festival, June 28, 1970

From justbackdated.blogspot.com by Chris Charlesworth

Fifty years ago today I was at the Bath Festival, the biggest assignment I covered during my first summer on Melody Maker. Compared to the National Jazz & Blues Festival at Plumpton in Sussex that I’d attended the previous year, this was just huge; perhaps as many as 150,000 people stretching all the way up a hill for almost as far as the eye could see. The reason was that Led Zeppelin was appearing, taking pride of place on Sunday, the final day. It was their biggest show yet in the UK, an important step in the upward momentum their career was taking.

Having driven down from London I got snarled up in traffic and didn’t arrive until quite late on the Saturday afternoon, my portable typewriter in the boot of my car, all set to report this major event like the trusty reporter I’d trained to be. I parked my car backstage, hooked up with Chris Welch and photographer Barrie Wentzell, then wandered around, eight weeks into this job and feeling unusually privileged to be inside the inner sanctum at a major festival. The weather was fine, though it wouldn’t stay that way, and for longer than seemed necessary I was entertained by a chap with a guitar called Joe Jammer, evidently someone’s roadie, who was filling in while Frank Zappa readied himself to face the crowd. Frank came and went and was followed, curiously, by Maynard Ferguson, an ageing (by Bath standards) big band leader who’d taken a left turn into jazz rock to appeal to a younger audience. I also watched It’s A Beautiful Day whose singer Patti Santos had made an altogether pleasing impression on me earlier in the week when I’d collared her for MM’s ‘Blind Date’ feature in which we played records without saying who it was and inviting comment.

The highlight of the evening, though, was Pink Floyd, whom I was seeing for the first time, premiering their new work, Atom Heart Mother, the album with the cow on the front. They went on very late, set their controls for the heart of the moon and played until the early hours of Sunday morning. I listened to them in wonderment and awe, then retired for the night, driving to Bath and a nice warm bed in a B&B, unlike so many others who slept beneath the stars.

The next day I drove back to the site around midday and was astonished by the scenes in the village of Shepton Mallet. There was a phone box with a queue that stretched for over 100 yards. I calculated that if there were three people in the queue for each two yards, there were 150 people waiting, and that if each call lasted ten minutes, the last person in the line would wait for 25 hours before making their call. There were similar queues for toilets and food on the site; indeed, the contrast between the conditions endured by the fans and those enjoyed by the artists and their guests brought a sharp intake of breath. Huge tepees had been erected backstage to serve as private quarters for artists while a big marquee served as a dining room in which waitresses dressed in traditional black dresses with white aprons served three course meals and a selection of fine wines.

In the adjoining bar I met the members of Led Zeppelin for the first time, introduced by my new colleague Chris Welch. Jimmy Page was dressed as a yokel in his grandad’s old coat and a scarecrow hat, Bonzo was wrapped up in a leather coat with fur trim and John Paul Jones, who arrived later by helicopter, kept his thoughts to himself, as he always would. Robert Plant, bare chested, hair aglow and by far the most affable, autographed a pink backstage pass for me*, and later in the day I passed this memento on to a girl I knew who was in the crowd, a big Zep fan whom I hoped would grant me her favours as a result. I actually got DJ John Peel to make an announcement from the stage: “Would Lorraine meet Chris by the backstage gate in 15 minutes.”

It was also my introduction to Led Zeppelin as a live force. They appeared 30 minutes after an American group called Flock, led by violinist Jerry Goodman, and – though I didn’t know it at the time – Led Zep’s crew, led by their formidable manager Peter Grant, had hustled Flock off the stage with undue haste in order that Jimmy and his merry men could perform just as the sun was setting behind them. Mighty impressive they were too, even though my view was restricted by being so close to the high stage that I had to crane my neck to see what was going on up there. I couldn’t see Bonzo at all, and if the other three stepped back they too were out of my sight line. But I could certainly hear them. Good grief!

They opened their set with the hitherto unreleased ‘Immigrant Song’ which they attacked with all the ferocity of the marauding Vikings Robert was singing about. Drums and bass reverberated like cannon fire, and Jimmy Page’s guitar cut through the twilight like a broadsword. Every other band on the bill sounded decidedly limp dick compared to this onslaught. The reception was phenomenal, song after song greeted with wild applause, and they returned to the stage for multiple encores. It was a coming of age for them, their first really huge British show, a triumph, and there I was lapping it all up. Serious competition for my beloved Who, I remember thinking.

“Led Zeppelin stormed to huge success at the Bath Festival,” Chris Welch and I wrote in the following week’s MM. “As about 150,000 fans rose to give them an ovation, lead singer Robert Plant told them: ‘We’ve been away a lot in America and we thought it might be a bit dodgy coming back. It’s great to be home!’

They played for over three hours – blues, rock and roll and pure Zeppelin. Jimmy Page, in a yokel hat to suit the Somerset scene, screamed into attack on guitar. John Paul Jones came into his own on organ as well as bass, and John Bonham exploded his drums in a sensational solo. And the crowd went wild, demanding encore after encore… a total of five!

They kicked off with a new riff from their next album called ‘Immigration Song’ [sic]. They actually took some time to warm up the crowd, but this may have been intentional as they built up to a fantastic climax with an act lasting over three hours… They had made all the hang-ups worthwhile and given the crowd a night to remember – whatever else happened. In their final minutes, they paid tribute to the Masters of Rock and Roll with the songs of Little Richard, Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry.”

In fact, the encores included snippets of Buffalo Springfield’s ‘Mr. Soul’, Muddy Waters’ ‘Long Distance Call’, Big Joe Williams’ ‘El Paso Blues’, Elvis Presley’s ‘I Need Your Love Tonight’ and a final blast through Little Richard’s ‘Long Tall Sally’ included Gene Vincent’s ‘Say Mama’ and Chuck Berry’s ‘Johnny B. Goode’.

Aside from the mighty Zeppelin, Sunday’s stars were Donovan, Santana, Flock, Hot Tuna, Country Joe, Jefferson Airplane (whose set was aborted amid pouring rain due to fear of electrocution), The Byrds, who played a truly delightful all-acoustic set, and, closing the show early next day, Dr. John who tripped the night away as it finally turned to daybreak. Sunday’s music at Bath that year started at midday and finished at about 6am on Monday morning. I saw it all and in the misty dawn light drove immediately back to London, parked my car behind Fleet Street, rode the elevator to the MM office and wrote my story.

It wouldn’t be the last night without sleep that I willingly endured in seven years’ service on Melody Maker.

Led Zeppelin Concert Memories: Jimmy Page and Robert Plant at Riverfront Coliseum, Cincinnati 25th April 1995

From oldbuckeye.com

Cincinnati was the place to be last night! It was an absolutely incredible show – it exceeded my expectations! For those of you that want to skip all of the descriptions and go straight to the set list, you can find this at the bottom of this message. Page and Plant put on an incredible 120 minute performance that left the audience in complete awe. Most notable was the absence of any new additions to the set list from the concerts previous in the tour, or any inclusion of the new P/P tunes like Yallah, City Don’t Cry, etc. Yes, this was ALMOST a Led Zeppelin concert.

The band had had a 15 day hiatus, and they really looked well rested, and full of energy. Plant was all over the stage. At one point Robert was spinning around and he knocked a guitar amplifier mic over with his mic stand. Page danced about on many occasions, as well. Plant’s voice was in top shape, I think he cracked only once. Page was just a little, shall I say, sloppy, a couple of times. But, I’m being too critical here. The band has even improved since the filming of UnLeded, they are much tighter musically, and looser emotionally. Everyone in the band was really having a great time and smiles could be seen from them all night long.

Our seats were not real good. We were all the way back in the arena, up high, on Charlie Jones’ side of the stage. I brought binoculars, and it helped immensely. At the top of the stage was a large projection television screen where they showed action of the stage, and blended it with pre-recorded video clips and wild images. This screen really made the show so much better – it was great to see close-ups of Jimmy’s fingers as he blistered through the solos. The sound was very good for the arena, which suffers from the typical reverberations of most arenas in it’s class. The mixing was done excellently, and most importantly, Jimmy’s sound was never drowned out, like in the recent past (so I’ve read).

Of noticeable disappointment was the lack of any good Plantations. He did mention Cincinnati by name a few times, but I didn’t hear a whole lotta humor, as compared to other times. Also, I could NOT find the Miller Genuine Draft Led Zeppelin Memorabilia truck. We went looking for it earlier in the afternoon, as well as right before the show. Oh well.

The concert itself started promptly at 7:30 with the warm-up group. I never did hear what their name was! They were not Rusted Root, since this was a four-piece, all-male group. Could this have been Tragically Hip? The band kind of had a Seattle sound to it. Everyone except for the bass player had short hair and the blonde-haired guitarist didn’t move very much. The band was, for me, okay, at best, and we all gave them an obligatory applause, knowing what was ahead. This band exited the stage at 8:00.

I went down and got a Page/Plant coffee mug for $10. As I got to my seat, at 8:25, the lights went down again. This was it! The Tales of Bron poem was read in the dark, as people screamed and cheered. I couldn’t make out too much of the poem. Then the music started as the band launched into THANK YOU. Jimmy had his legendary Sunburst Les Paul. [Fashion Report: Robert had on a denim vest, open at the chest, with tight leather pants, and gray snakeskin boots. Page had on a semi-ghastly orange, baggy, shirt, with normal looking dark pants and shoes.] Porl was no where to be found until the band went into BRING IT ON HOME. Next, Jimmy strapped on his gold Les Paul with the transperformance (sp?) tuning gizmo for SHAKE MY TREE. Included in this tune was a famous theramin solo from Jimmy. Robert didn’t seem to mind singing this Coverdale/Page tune, as reported in past posts. Robert did a much better job, too, than Coverclone. Next was a showcase tune for Porl, LULLABY, the Cure tune. Charlie switched to a stand-up bass for this one. People began to sit down for this one.

The people who had just sat down, however, where back up quickly, as Robert and Jimmy sat down now, for NO QUARTER. This tune featured Plant and Page exclusively, with incredible video shots of the two intertwined with the video of an eagle’s view flying over a lush forest, a la the No Quarter (NQ) video. Plant’s voice wasn’t quite as processed (flanging, echo, etc.) as it was in the NQ video. Jimmy was playing his 12 stringed acoustic guitar. Next, Jimmy switched to his 2-neck acoustic and they launched into GALLOWS POLE, much to the audience’s delight. In mid song, the rest of the band joined in, including the first appearance of Nigel Eaton, the hurdy gurdy man. This was followed by a hurdy gurdy solo, which, when Robert introduced, said that perhaps this was the first time this instrument had been played in the city. People will not forget this either. Nigel made a very positive impression with this strange instrument. Then came NOBODY’S FAULT BUT MINE, the new NQ version. Page, still with his double neck acoustic, launched into some strumming that is quite familiar to us all, it was HEY, HEY WHAT CAN I DO. The crowd danced in the isles and sang along with Robert. Nigel played mandolin for this one.

Jimmy then switched to his famous red Gibson double neck electric. It was THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME. Jimmy let Porl play about half the solos on this. Next Robert introduced the Cincinnati Symphony and Symphonium, about a 20-piece orchestra. Jimmy, drenched in sweat, led off the familiar notes of SINCE I’VE BEEN LOVING YOU. Porl, who must have had too much of a workout with the solos of the previous tune, took a break. This song, which is one of my favorites off of the NQ show, for me, didn’t seem to be quite as hot. Jimmy was a little tired, but plowed ahead, with some stunning fret work.

Robert then introduced the Hossam Ramzy Ensemble, or as he called them: the “Egyptian Pharaohs”. These guys were loads of fun. They should hire out to do parties! My favorite one is Ibrahim Abdel Khaliq, the guy that does the finger cymbals, and has the protruding teeth. He is always dancing about. At times it looked as if he were doing Robert Plant imitations, with the mystic hand motions and such. They also threw their tambourines high in the air and caught them, and Robert did this too (no drops that I saw!). The band launched into FRIENDS, with page on an acoustic, and Porl still resting somewhere.

CALLING TO YOU, a Plant solo from Fate of Nations, was next, as the video screen showed footage from Egypt and other far-away lands. Page was playing a cherry-red Les Paul, and hey, Porl was back, even getting a solo! This song went into an extensive, all-out jam, progressing into the Door’s BREAK ON THROUGH, DAZED AND CONFUSED, and back to Calling. Plant, singing the Doors tune an octave higher than Morrison, gave the song a refreshing change. At this point, the crowd was absolutely wild, at the first notes of Dazed, we were all in ecstatic.

Page, back to his double neck acoustic, and Jones with his stand-up bass, went into FOUR STICKS. Michael Lee, who I neglected to mention had done an absolutely powerful and tight job on drums, with his ever-present smile, started in with two sticks in each hand. Next, with a intro that included some tribal-sounding drums and violins from the Pharaohs, the band launched into IN THE EVENING which led seamlessly into a bit of CAROSELAMBRA and back into Evening. Jimmy brought out a Fender Stratocaster for this one. After quite a bit of powerful jamming through this one, the lights went out. It was 10:05, and we finally had a chance to catch our breath! The lighters were out in full force, as the place lit up like a smoky, stary night.

The band soon reappeared. Robert dressed the same, with Jimmy wearing a black Second Harvest T-shirt. “Hey Hey Mama” was the so familiar chant that opens BLACK DOG, as the crowd was louder than ever. The crowd sang along and sang the responsive “ah ah” parts. But through the loudness of the crowd, Robert’s voice emerged quite strongly and all-out powerful, even for all of the high notes. I was very amazed that he still has it in him to hit those notes at that power level! I have bootlegs of Led Zeppelin, even 20 years ago, where he had trouble hitting those notes. Perhaps a newer lifestyle has helped his throat and lungs recently, I don’t know. At then end of this tune, Robert appeared to be drinking a beer, a Corona or a Miller, clear glass, anyhow. Page strapped on his Gold Les Paul (with the transperformance) and slipped into KASHMIR. Personally, I had always thought this song was over-rated, but since the re-arrangement of it in the NQ version, I have a new-found fondness of it, greater than before. The whole orchestration of it really brings the tune to new heights. For everyone on stage, this was just an all-out jam. The Hossam Ensemble’s Wael Abu Bakr had a wonderful violin solo, much like he did in the NQ video. This song was a stunning conclusion to a wonderful night. I guess it had to end somewhere. It was now 10:30. Page, Plant and the band members (without the Orchestras) all joined at center stage, arms interlocked, and bowed to the audience, first in front, then to the sides, then the back of the arena. They came, they jammed, they went. It will never be forgotten. It was unreal.

Led Zeppelin: Stairway to Excess

From vanityfair.com

As Led Zeppelin’s concerts broke attendance records across America, the band was dismissed by critics, while gaining a reputation for unprecedented debauchery, thanks to tales (often true) of drugs, sex, and violence. Unearthing her diaries, written on tour with “the boys” and maverick manager Peter Grant between 1973 and 1979, Lisa Robinson recalls the men behind the mayhem, the integrity and innovation of their music, and why the biggest-selling group of all time was so short-lived.

BY LISA ROBINSON FEBRUARY 18, 2014

With all due respect to the movie Almost Famous, I never went on a Led Zeppelin tour where the band spontaneously burst into an Elton John song on a tour bus. Nor do I recall hootenannies with acoustic guitars in the Continental Hyatt House on the Sunset Strip. I remember the band’s needle-thin guitarist, Jimmy Page, sitting in the dark on a sofa in a corner suite at the Plaza hotel in New York City with a cadaverous David Bowie by his side, watching the same 15 minutes of Kenneth Anger’s film Lucifer Rising over and over again—with lines of cocaine on the table. I recall a flight to Detroit aboard the band’s private jet when Jimmy got into a fight with a Fleet Street reporter, and the tour manager, the menacing Richard Cole, pulled out a gun.

And, of course, I remember the rumors: Jimmy traveled with a suitcase full of whips. One time he was naked, covered with whipped cream, put on a room-service table, and wheeled into a room to be served up to a bunch of teenage girls. The band attacked a female reporter from Life magazine, ripping her clothes, until, in tears, she was rescued by the band’s manager. And, in 1969 at Seattle’s Edgewater Inn, in a notorious episode that has achieved mythic proportion, the band violated a teenage girl with a live shark. (“It wasn’t a shark,” Richard Cole told me years later. “It was a red snapper. And it wasn’t some big ritualistic thing; it was in and out and a laugh and the girl wasn’t sobbing—she was a willing participant. It was so fast, and over and done with, and no one from the band was there. I don’t think anyone who was there remembers the same thing.”)

With more than 200 million albums sold, Led Zeppelin is the biggest-selling rock group in history. Tour promoters have offered untold millions for a Zeppelin reunion. A whole new generation has discovered the band with a TV ad for Cadillac that features their song “Rock and Roll.” This past spring, Zeppelin entered both the CD and DVD charts at No. 1 with eight and a half hours of live material recorded more than 20 years ago.

At the time of Led Zeppelin’s ascent, at the end of the 1960s, their reviews were at best dismissive and at worst, devastating. A Rolling Stone critique of the band’s first album stated, “Robert Plant sings notes that only dogs can hear.” Zeppelin was labeled derivative, a hype, and every vile name anyone could possibly think of, and their U.S. tours were scandalous, rapacious, excessive, arrogant sprees. There was nothing new about girls waiting in hotel lobbies, jumping into limousines, hanging out at clubs until the musicians passed out, then accompanying them back to their beds. What was new was the level of decadence (high or low, depending on your point of view) that accompanied Led Zeppelin, especially in the U.S.

At the beginning of the 1970s people were liberated and angry, frustrated and bored. There were no cell phones, no Game Boys, no DVDs, no Walkmans, no Internet, no reality TV. Music was it. And, just when big music and big money came together, Led Zeppelin gave new meaning to “sex and drugs and rock ’n’ roll.” Everything was offered to them. They turned nothing down. But if a legend was about debauchery only, people would still be extolling the virtues of the 1980s hair band Poison, or David Lee Roth. And they’re not. According to producer Rick Rubin, “Jimmy Page revolutionized everything. There was no real blues rock in that bombastic way before Zeppelin. Plus, with the insane drumming of John Bonham, it was radical, playing at a very, very high level—improvisational on a big-rock scale. It was brand new.”

In 1970 the Beatles, no longer on tour, seemed tame. The Rolling Stones, while fashionably louche, played songs. Led Zeppelin was neither a hippie jam band nor an improvisational jazz outfit, but they took the blues, added Eastern influences, switched into acoustic folk in the middle of a number (they even did a cover version of Joan Baez’s “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You”), and you never knew what they would do next. Twenty-six-year-old Jimmy Page, a sophisticated London studio musician, had toured the U.S. as a member of the Yardbirds—a superior blues-rock band that had also, at different times, featured Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. Bassist-keyboardist John Paul Jones, 24, was also a seasoned London session musician. Combine that with two novices from the provinces—the randy 22-year-old singer Robert Plant, besotted with flower power, blues, and rockabilly, and drummer John “Bonzo” Bonham, 22, who knew all about Motown and James Brown—and you had a group that took rock music to a progressive new level: loud, fast, complex, heavy, virile.

And the band’s manager, Peter Grant, changed the rules of the music business. A baroque, bearded, 300-pound former bouncer, tour manager, and professional wrestler (who had gone by the name of Count Massimo), Peter was an intimidating presence. When he worked with Jimmy and the Yardbirds, concert promoters “split” the take 50-50 with bands, but the bands rarely made a dime. Peter signed Zeppelin to Atlantic Records for the then unheard-of sum of $200,000, before anyone at the label had even heard a note of the first album (recorded for $3,500, which Jimmy paid out of his own pocket). Peter refused to let the band release singles, so that fans had to buy the albums. After the band got big, he wouldn’t let them make television appearances, so if people wanted to see Led Zeppelin they had to pay to go to the concerts. And, in a move that forever changed the rock-concert business, he forced promoters to give the band 90 percent of the gate—take it or leave it. They took it. Instead of employing the usual local promoters, Peter hired Jerry Weintraub’s Concerts West to oversee the band’s tours. (Weintraub, now the movie producer, was then John Denver’s manager and the concert promoter for Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra.)

Led Zeppelin enjoyed immediate and massive financial success with their first album, which included such rock classics as “Dazed and Confused” and “Communication Breakdown.” They pretended not to care about the bad reviews. Defensively, they did no interviews. Peter and Jimmy (at the start this was clearly Jimmy’s band and Peter worked for Jimmy) encouraged a mystique. But eventually they wanted to be famous. Robert Plant, in particular, was irritated that Zeppelin was breaking attendance records but the Rolling Stones were getting all the press. So they hired a press agent.

1973: Danny Goldberg, hired to do publicity for the band, asked me to go see them on the southern leg of the U.S. tour. I was terrified. I had heard all the stories and wanted no part of this band. But my editors at the British music weekly Disc—and later at the New Musical Express, Hit Parader, Creem, and the New York Post—all insisted that I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to talk to what was quickly becoming the world’s biggest rock band. So, from 1973 to 1979, I traveled on and off with Zeppelin in the U.S. and taped more than 50 hours of interviews (published sections of which were “sampled” by others without permission in books written about the band). I endured the disdain of my so-called colleagues, all of whom considered Led Zeppelin déclassé: hyped-up barbarians who drew a working-class—or, worse, white-trash—and mostly male audience.

May 7, 1973, Jacksonville, Florida: Zeppelin had just broken the Beatles’ attendance record for the largest paying crowd ever at a single group’s concert—56,800 people at Tampa Stadium—but the first show I went to see was at an indoor arena. Backstage, I saw a phalanx of security guards. Peter Grant was screaming at some T-shirt bootleggers and at a policeman who had been rough with a female fan. Richard Cole, after politely shaking my hand, placed me on the side of the stage near the amplifiers. To my astonishment, I loved the three-and-a-half-hour show. The next day, at the Fontainebleau hotel in Miami, I was told that the band asked if I was “hiding” in my room. I took the challenge and went downstairs to the pool. John Bonham and John Paul Jones were nowhere in sight. Jimmy Page was aloof. Robert Plant, wearing a tiny red bikini, was charming. I asked about the band’s bad reputation. “It’s all true,” he said. “When we do something, we just do it bigger and better than anybody else. When there are no holds barred, there are no holds barred.”

May 13, 1973, the Royal Orleans Hotel, New Orleans: The band and their entourage were assembled at the rooftop pool. Jimmy Page was fully dressed, looked very pale, and talked about the bad press the band received in England. “I wouldn’t mind constructive criticism,” he said—whatever that is, I said—“but they seem to be losing the essence of what’s important, which is music, purely. They wallow in rubbish. And while I may be a masochist in other regions, I’m not that much of a masochist that I’m going to pay money to tear myself to bits—reading.” Robert Plant, dressed in the same red bikini he wore in Miami, talked about the band’s image. “There are so many people who come around just because of that. We’ve been to California and that Continental Hyatt House and there are guys who book in there with whips and goodness knows what just because they hear we’re coming. It’s crazy. I like to think that people know we’re pretty raunchy and that we really do a lot of the things that people say we do. But what we’re getting across [onstage] is goodness. It ain’t ‘stand up and put your fist in the air—we want revolution.’ I’d like them to go away feeling the way you do at the end of a good chick, satisfied and exhausted. Some nights I look out and want to fuck the whole front row.”

Peter Grant instructed Danny Goldberg to make up a press release that stated, “The 49,000 people at the Atlanta Led Zeppelin show was the biggest thing in Atlanta since Gone with the Wind,” and to attribute the quote to the mayor of Atlanta. In both Atlanta and Tampa, the band got front-page billing with the Watergate hearings. In New Orleans, Ahmet Ertegun rented Cosimos Studios, a big, funky, warehouse recording studio, for a party for Zeppelin after their show, and invited the Meters, Ernie K-Doe, and Professor Longhair to perform. A large portable air conditioner was set up to cool the room. Ernie K-Doe was wearing white linen trousers and a pink sport coat and white tie. Art Neville sat at the organ, ready to perform with the Meters. Blind blues great Snooks Eaglin had his guitar, and Professor Longhair was at the piano. The members of Led Zeppelin, who grew up in England hearing these guys on pirate radio, were thrilled.

Led Zeppelin were aware that when the Rolling Stones walked into a room they created an ambience. So when Zeppelin went to a club, Richard Cole called ahead to say the band was on its way and to make sure that bottles of Dom Pérignon were waiting at the table. When Zeppelin was in town, especially in New York City and more especially in Los Angeles, the groupie grapevine went into overdrive. In Hollywood, at the Rainbow on the Sunset Strip—just down the street from the Hyatt House where the band stayed—bodyguards manned the booths reserved for “the boys.” (They were always “the boys,” and, in fact, musicians now well into their 50s and 60s are still, on tour, referred to as “the boys.”) Teenage girls lined up in front of them. “No head, no backstage pass” was the mantra among the roadies who were in a position to get the former and give the latter to the 14- to 18-year-olds who wanted to get to the band.

One 15-year-old, who modeled in the rock publication Star Magazine and caught Jimmy’s eye at an L.A. club, was Lori Mattix. (“We were madly in love,” says Lori today, now a 45-year-old fashion buyer and mother of a 17-year-old boy. “My mother knew all about us. She adored Jimmy. He sent her flowers.”) Lori was Jimmy’s steady girl whenever he was in L.A. She says he called her every day even when he was in England, where he lived in a reportedly contentious relationship with longtime girlfriend Charlotte Martin, the mother of his daughter Scarlet. Lori says she never saw a whip in his room, Jimmy was always delightful to her, he would never let her touch a drug, and he was so furious when he once saw her smoke a cigarette that he made her smoke an entire pack of Salems so she’d never do it again. During the 1973 tour, when Robert got the flu and a show was canceled, there was talk of sending the band’s empty jet to fetch Lori to bring her to be with Jimmy in the Midwest. Instead, the band went to Los Angeles—their favorite playground—for a few days off.

Robert’s tour amours were girls he managed to convince that he was, at any given moment, about to leave his wife, Maureen, the mother of his two young children. Once, when he went back home to his farm on the Welsh border after a tour, Maureen came running out of the house furiously waving a copy of the English music weekly Melody Maker. A photo of Zeppelin at Rodney Bingenheimer’s Sunset Strip club with a bunch of young girls was on the front page. “Maureen,” Robert cried, “you know we don’t take that paper!”

July 24, 1973, New York City: The limousines were lined up outside the Plaza, and our seven-car procession made its way out of Manhattan to Newark airport, where the band’s private 720B jet would take us to Pittsburgh. The Starship (which would later be used by the Rolling Stones and Elton John) was some plane: gold and bronze, with LED ZEPPELIN painted along the side. I persuaded the band to line up alongside the wing (no easy feat) for Bob Gruen to take the photo that would eventually become a postcard. The stewardesses were Wendy—who wore a blue feather boa and whose uncle was Bobby Sherman’s manager—and Susan, dressed in maroon and pink. The walls of the plane were orange and red; there were circular velvet couches, white leather swivel chairs, a mirror-covered bar, a nonfunctioning fireplace, and a white fake-fur-covered bed in the back bedroom. Tour manager Richard Cole described the plane as “elegant.” John Paul Jones (nicknamed “Jonesy”) usually played a quiet game of backgammon. John Bonham (always called “Bonzo”) sat alone in the front. Bonzo was homesick. He’d been getting drunk and wild and would bang on Danny Goldberg’s door in the middle of the night, demanding to do interviews right there and then. Peter Grant told Danny to get two rooms: a secret one to actually sleep in, and an empty one to deflect Bonzo’s four A.M. rampages. Once, on a street in Dallas, Bonzo saw a Corvette Stingray he wanted, and instructed Richard Cole to wait until the owner showed up and insist that “Mr. Bonham from Led Zeppelin wanted to buy him a drink.” He paid $18,000 for the car, which was worth considerably less, shipped it to L.A., and put it in the basement of the Hyatt House while the band’s lawyer went through the necessary rigamarole to get the insurance transferred. Bonzo then dragged musicians from other bands over to admire the car, drove it for two days, and sold it.

July 29, 1973, New York City: Possibly because Jimmy was a known collector of memorabilia relating to the English satanist Aleister Crowley, and especially because he bought Crowley’s house in Scotland, he got bizarre mail and death threats. On the final night of a five-night run at Madison Square Garden, more security men than usual checked out the area underneath the stage. The band did a blistering three-and-a-half-hour set, and when it was over we were inexplicably shoved into cars and raced to the Upper East Side apartment of the band’s lawyer’s secretary. No one told us why we were there, but for some reason “the boys” needed to be kept away from the Drake Hotel. Later that night, at a party given for the band by Ahmet Ertegun at the Carlyle Hotel, we learned that $203,000 in cash had been stolen from the group’s safe-deposit box at the Drake. (“Peter did have a funny expression on his face,” Robert said, “but what were we going to do? Break down and cry? We had just done a great gig.”) The Drake was crawling with cops and F.B.I. agents; the band’s roadies had to get into the rooms and get rid of the drugs. The next morning Peter Grant, Richard Cole, and Danny Goldberg faced press accusations that the robbery was faked by the band. The band’s position was that someone who worked at the hotel had taken the money. The “case,” such as it was, was never solved. And the 1973 tour was over.

May 7, 1974, New York City: By now, Atlantic Records gave Led Zeppelin anything they wanted, and what they wanted was their own record label, like the Rolling Stones had. Zeppelin’s Swan Song Records signed other acts—the 60s band the Pretty Things, Scottish singer Maggie Bell, and rock band Bad Company, led by ex—Free singer Paul Rodgers. Zeppelin came to New York for a Swan Song launch at the Four Seasons restaurant, where they instructed Danny Goldberg to get some swans for the pool. He couldn’t find any, so he got geese instead. The band was furious. “We all live on farms!,” Robert shouted. “Don’t you think we know the fucking difference?” Bonzo and Richard Cole picked up the geese and let them loose on Park Avenue. The band then traveled to L.A. for a Swan Song launch at the Bel-Air Hotel (with real swans) attended by Bryan Ferry, Bill Wyman, and Groucho Marx. They went back to England to record Physical Graffiti, the double album that included the Eastern-flavored “Kashmir,” which many consider the band’s real masterpiece, as opposed to what was undoubtedly the biggest song of their career—the song that has been played on radio more than any other, the song that ended every one of their shows, the song that was Jimmy’s pride but privately referred to by Robert as “that wedding song”—the pompous “Stairway to Heaven.” (“Every band should end their show with ‘Stairway to Heaven,’” Robert said. “In fact, the Who do a very nice version of it.”)

January 20, 1975, Chicago: There were box-office riots in New York City, Long Island, and Boston when tickets went on sale for Zeppelin’s 1975 U.S. tour. Right before the tour, Jimmy injured his finger getting off a train in England. Robert had the flu. Bonzo’s stomach hurt constantly and he was more homesick than ever. This was not a good start. “I’d like to have it publicized that I came in after Karen Carpenter in the Playboy drummer poll!,” Bonzo roared in the band’s dressing room at the Chicago Stadium. “She couldn’t last 10 minutes with a Zeppelin number,” he sneered. Danny Goldberg told me that Bonzo had just shown up wearing his Clockwork Orange boilersuit and said, wasn’t it a good idea, and who was going to argue with him? When Bonzo was sober, he was a sweetheart—articulate and a gentleman. Drunk, and particularly during a full moon—a nightmare. His drum solo, the 20-minute-long “Moby Dick,” was a concert crowd-pleaser and an opportunity for Jimmy to go back into the dressing room for some sexual activity. Once, Jimmy went back to the hotel during the drum solo. After the show, everyone went to Busters to see Buddy Guy play guitar with a small amp perched on top of a pinball machine. The next morning, Jimmy came to my room in the Ambassador East Hotel around noon for breakfast. He often wouldn’t eat for days on tour (he weighed 130 pounds and wanted to get down to 125), but this time he’d been making vitamin-enriched banana daiquiris in his room—for sustenance. In Peter Grant’s ornate suite (the only one Zsa Zsa Gabor stays in when she’s in Chicago), Peter reminisced about a Midwest hotel clerk from the last tour who admitted that the worst trashing of hotel rooms had occurred during a Methodist youth convention. “The guy was so frustrated about not being able to just go bonkers in a room himself,” Peter said, “that I told him to go and have one on us. He went upstairs, tossed a TV set against the wall, tore up the bed, and I paid the $490 bill.” Late that night at the Bistro, Bonzo—the man known as “the Beast” when he got wild—was sitting quietly in a booth, alone. “You know my wife is expecting again in July,” he told me. “She’s really terrific, the type of lady that when you walk into our house she comes right out with a cup of tea, or a drink, or a sandwich. We met when we were 16, got married at 17. I was a carpenter for a few years; I’d get up at seven in the morning, then change my clothes in the van to go to gigs at night. How do you think I feel, not being taken seriously, coming in after Karen Carpenter in the Playboy poll. . . . Karen Carpenter . . . what a load of shit.”

January 31, 1975, New York City to Detroit: On the plane, Jimmy was having a heated discussion with a reporter from the London Daily Express. “You’re not supposed to make intelligent remarks,” said the reporter, smirking. Uh-oh. After we landed in Detroit, in the car on the way to Olympia Stadium, Jimmy was incredulous. “Can you believe that man referred to my guitar playing as a trade?” During Bonzo’s drum solo, the other band members went into the dressing room. The reporter tried to follow, but was stopped by Richard Cole, who said the band was having a “meeting.” The reporter was enraged: “I write for 10 million people and I won’t have you humiliate me in front of a member of my staff!” The member of his “staff”: a blonde woman swathed in rabbit fur. On the way back to the plane, the reporter demanded that the radio be turned off in the car. “After two hours of that Led Zeppelin racket, I can’t stand any more!” Back on the Starship, people whispered in groups of twos and threes. Jimmy, who had been huddled under a red blanket, suddenly came to life and got right back into the argument. “You don’t want to know about my music—all you care about is the grosses and the interior of the plane. You’re a Communist!,” Jimmy exclaimed. Meanwhile, Robert was muttering under his breath, “I don’t think he’s such a bad bloke. Ten million people read the paper. Me mum and dad read the paper. The singer was good . . . ” Jimmy started yelling about the way he had voted in the last election, someone threw a drink at the reporter, and a scuffle ensued. The reporter got more belligerent. All of a sudden, Richard Cole stood in the aisle holding a gun. I had never seen a gun before. We were 25,000 feet in the air. I cowered in my seat. Nervous glances all around. Silence. Two of the band’s security guards (off-duty policemen) walked over and stood next to Richard. “for christ’s sake,” Bonzo yelled from the front of the plane, “will you all shut up? I’m trying to get some sleep!”

February 3, 1975, New York City: The band was ensconced in the Plaza hotel, where every so often, in the middle of the night, tour photographer Neal Preston had to give them a slide show of every picture he shot, for their approval. Shouts of “Flab!” could be heard as they made fun of one another during the cumbersome process that often took hours. Jimmy hated his suite, which he said looked like “the fucking Versailles palace.” The TV set didn’t work because the black candles he had in his room dripped down into it. The volume of the Lucifer Rising screenings was so loud he was afraid he’d be thrown out of the hotel. John Paul Jones either had a secret life or just kept to himself; most of the time, the only time anyone saw him was at the shows. Bonzo’s suite had a pool table. We all left the Plaza and walked down the street to the Nirvana restaurant for some Indian food. “Have you got any fresh dania?” Robert asked, showing off to the wait-ers. “I know about this food; I’m married to an Indian,” he said. Jimmy laughed: “So you tell them every time you come here.” I told them that John Lennon heard “Stairway to Heaven” and loved it. “He’s only just heard it now?,” Robert said.

February 1975, backstage at Madison Square Garden: Perhaps as an answer to Truman Capote’s hanging around the Stones, William Burroughs was there, enlisted to interview Jimmy for the underground rock magazine Crawdaddy. (Burroughs came to a show, spent two sessions interviewing Jimmy, then wrote mostly about himself and arcane black-magic practices.) Mick Jagger stopped by to check out the sound system. In Los Angeles, David Geffen came to see Peter Grant, and George Harrison showed up at a party and threw some cake at Bonzo—who then threw the former Beatle in the pool. But Zeppelin did not draw a celebrity crowd; no Andy Warhol or Liza Minnelli or the Studio 54 gang. Led Zeppelin was just not fashionable.

August 4, 1975: While vacationing in Greece, Robert Plant and his family were in a serious car crash. They were airlifted back to London. His wife, Maureen, was in intensive care with a broken pelvis and fractured skull, his seven-year-old daughter, Carmen, had a broken wrist, and his four-year-old son, Karac, a fractured leg. Robert suffered multiple fractures of the elbow, ankle, and other bones. All of the rest of the band’s concerts for 1975 were canceled.

In 1977, for the heavy-rock fan, there still was no greater group than Led Zeppelin. But the big news in England was the Sex Pistols and the Clash. In New York, it was the punk scene at CBGB. The members of Zeppelin were portrayed by some in the press as bloated, self-regarding dinosaurs. Self-doubt started to creep into the band’s conversations. And the heroin that became an unspoken fact of life around the band, management, and crew didn’t help. Doctors accompanied the band on tours to minister to their medical needs and write prescriptions. According to someone close to the band, the drugs were getting so out of hand that there were times onstage when Jimmy would be playing a completely different song than the rest of the band.

April 7, 1977, Chicago: Late at night after the show, Jimmy talked about the band’s reputation (“We haven’t really stopped”) and the rumors (“I must have had a good time”). Either very tired or very stoned, he slurred his words. Later, in another room, Robert, as always, joked: “All this stuff about us being barbarians is perpetuated by the road crew. They check into hotels under our names. They run up disgusting room-service bills and then they take the women of the town by storm by applying masks of the four members of the group. It gets us a bad name. And sells a lot of records.” He added, “I’ve met members of the opposite sex who were only eight or nine when we first went into a studio . . . and they’re great fucks.”

Around June 1977 everything started to go terribly wrong. Bill Graham, who escaped Nazi Germany, was the larger-than-life promoter in San Francisco, the founder of the Fillmores West and East, and a highly regarded man in the music business. He always thought that the band brought an unpleasant element of male aggression to their shows. When the band performed the first of two shows for Graham in Oakland on June 23, 1977, Peter Grant’s 11-year-old son, Warren, tried to remove a LED ZEPPELIN sign from a dressing-room trailer. According to Graham, one of his security guards told the child nicely that he couldn’t have it. According to Bonzo, who said he saw it from the stage, the guard hit the kid. A hideous, violent scene followed. Peter Grant, Bonzo, and John Bindon, a thug who’d been hired for extra security, beat up Graham’s man while Richard Cole stood guard outside the trailer. Graham’s staffer was rushed, bleeding, to the hospital. The band refused to do the next day’s show unless Graham signed a paper absolving the band of guilt. Graham, fearing a riot if Zeppelin didn’t play, signed the paper after being assured it was legally worthless. After the show, Peter Grant, Richard Cole, John Bonham, and John Bindon were arrested at their hotel. A civil case dragged on for more than a year, was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum, and Bill Graham—no pussycat himself when it came to intimidation (verbal, not physical)—devoted an entire chapter to the episode in his posthumously published 1992 autobiography. (Reportedly, when a sobered-up Peter Grant read it, he cried.)

The rumors continued. Limo drivers, always ready to blab, gossiped that the band’s hopped-up road managers and bodyguards stormed into drugstores and, threatening physical force, demanded that prescriptions be filled. A restaurant had been trashed and waiters humiliated in Pennsylvania. It was understood that (with the exception of Bonzo in Oakland) the band members were never involved in these incidents; it is likely that they didn’t even know about them at the time. Still, the crew was hired in the band’s name and represented them and it all took its toll.

Then, two weeks after the Oakland incident, as the band checked into the Maison Dupuy Hotel in New Orleans, Robert got a phone call at the front desk, took it upstairs in his room, and was told that after being rushed to the hospital with a mysterious respiratory infection his five-year-old son, Karac, had died.

Robert, accompanied by Richard, Bonzo, and assistant Dennis Sheehan, immediately flew back to England. The U.S. tour—a tour marked by increasing turmoil, tension, drug use, violence, and estrangement among band members—was over. Robert, devastated by his son’s death (and reportedly upset too that Jimmy and Peter had not attended the funeral), went into seclusion.

The press wrote about Jimmy’s “bad karma” and his interest in Aleister Crowley. They dredged up all sorts of crackpot theories about a “Zeppelin curse” and suggested that Page and the band (but especially Page)—like blues great Robert Johnson, supposedly, years before—had made a “deal with the devil.”

August 4, 1979, Knebworth, Hertfordshire: Peter Grant invited me to come see the band at Knebworth, site of one of the stately homes of England, where Zeppelin would do their first shows in two years—two concerts for 300,000 people. The band sent me a round-trip Concorde ticket, then put me up in a Holiday Inn. Typical Zeppelin: high-low. Before the show, Bonzo told me that he watched his 11-year-old son, Jason, sit in on drums during the sound check: “He can play ‘Trampled Underfoot’ perfectly,” he said. “It’s the first time I’ve ever seen Led Zeppelin.” Very few people were allowed in the closed-off backstage enclave that housed the dressing-room trailers. The band seemed nervous. “Now, don’t you go and say this is nostalgia,” Robert said to me. (In truth, with Blitz, the hottest club in London, drawing drag queens in science-fiction outfits, this massive denim-clad audience—10 years after Woodstock—did seem like a throwback to another age.) With Robert was his wife, Maureen, and daughter, Carmen. His six-month-old baby boy, Logan, was at home with his grandparents. Jimmy Page flew in by helicopter to the site a half-hour before the show with his girlfriend, Charlotte. No longer in his white satin pop-star outfit, he wore a blue silk shirt and baggy cream-colored trousers. The band played for three and a half hours, the audience sang “You’ll Never Walk Alone” for 15 minutes after the third encore, and Robert appeared to be crying backstage. I hung out for hours after the show with Jimmy Page and Ron Wood’s wife, Chrissie—both of whom seemed totally out of it. Zeppelin certainly was not the same band that had stepped onstage 10 years ago. For those of us who’d seen the band at their peak, they were more than just rusty; the wit and the wonder weren’t really there. But Knebworth was to be a new beginning, and everyone was excited about a 1980 tour.

A little over a year later, on September 25, 1980, after a night of overeating and drinking, John Bonham choked to death in his sleep at age 32 at Jimmy Page’s house. Two weeks later, the three surviving members of Led Zeppelin met with Peter Grant at the Savoy hotel in London and issued a statement that said, in part, “We can no longer continue the way we were.” Because of the ambiguity of that statement, speculation ran rampant for months that the band would reunite with another drummer. And even though no one involved would admit it, it was rumored that the three did get together and rehearse with other drummers to see if it would work. But nothing ever came of it. No one had the interest, or the heart, for Zeppelin without Bonham. “When John died, there was a big hole in Zeppelin,” John Paul Jones told me years later. “The Who and the Stones are song-based bands, but Zeppelin wasn’t like that. We did things differently every night, and we were all tied to each other onstage. I couldn’t even think how to do this without John.”

The few “spontaneous” reunions of the three surviving Zeppelin members—1985’s Live Aid concert and Atlantic Records’ 40th anniversary in 1988—were abysmal. The band was out of practice, out of time, and out of tune. But most of the audience, who had never seen the group in its heyday, didn’t know the difference. In 1994, Plant and Page did an Unledded show together for MTV, toured with Egyptian musicians, and released two albums (and did not include a very displeased Jones). All three stood together for Zep’s 1995 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (where Jones pointedly thanked “my friends for finally remembering my phone number”). Plant, who told me he “refused to be one of the dying embers of poodle rock,” always insisted that there could be no Zeppelin reunion, because “no one could ever replace Bonzo” and “we weren’t going to give anyone the opportunity.”

2003: Richard Cole is a recovering alcoholic who hasn’t had a drink since 1986. He’s worked closely with Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne and is in demand to tour-manage young bands. Peter Grant died of a heart attack in 1995 at age 60. John Bindon, the bodyguard involved in the Oakland incident, died of pneumonia in 1993. Bill Graham died in a helicopter crash in 1991. In the past 23 years, Jimmy Page has worked with musicians as diverse as singer David Coverdale (a Robert Plant imitator) and former Bad Company singer Paul Rodgers, and recently toured with the Black Crowes. John Paul Jones has done string arrangements for, among others, R.E.M. and has toured with avant-garde vocalist Diamanda Galas. Of all the members of Zeppelin, Robert Plant has had the most successful solo career.

However, last year, the word was that Robert was not happy opening up arena shows for the Who. His manager reportedly said to him, “Here’s a phone number of a guitarist. Here’s a phone number of a bass player. Call them up and you can headline any stadium anywhere in the world.” Rumors of Zeppelin reunions surface as regularly as Elvis Presley sightings. When all three came to New York last May for the premiere of the DVD and CD live archival sets (featuring material Page bought from bootleggers and then spent more than a year synching up, mixing, producing, and remastering), the reunion buzz started all over again. But those who knew Page and Plant wondered if their egos could coexist for a week’s worth of promotional activities, much less a prolonged reunion concert tour.MOST POPULAR

May 28, 2003, the Plaza Hotel, New York City: A very clear-eyed Jimmy Page still only wants to talk about the music. “I can understand why we got bad reviews,” he says. “We went right over people’s heads. One album would follow another and would have nothing to do with what we’d done before. People didn’t know what was going on.” He coyly referred to the band’s reputation as “offstage antics” and said, “We were doing -a-half-hour concerts. We unleashed floodgates of music. By the end of that, you come offstage and you’re not going back to the hotel to have a cup of cocoa. Of course it was crazy; of course it was a mad life.” Later, in another room, Robert Plant said, “How can we be reviled in so many different generations and then find out that we were people’s favorite band? We were considered underground, and I’ve got band members whose parents wouldn’t let them listen to us; they thought it was the devil’s music. We questioned the whole order of things, and not just for one or two albums, but for 10 years. We took a whole core of people who knew we were nothing like Bobby Goldsboro, or Rod Stewart. Led Zeppelin wasn’t an aerobics session. It was dealing with the devil, taking all that beautiful blues music, and screwing around with it.”