Progress, and waste no time

On this day in 1969, progress on Led Zeppelin's third album was under way even though the band's previous album had only just been released and hit the U.K. charts.

Shortly after returning to England from its fourth U.S. tour of the year, Led Zeppelin went into Olympic Sound Studios in Barnes, London. It was there that Led Zeppelin had recorded its entire first album and parts of the second.

Led Zeppelin II was out for only a few weeks when Led Zeppelin III was in its infancy in the studio. The band, not content to rest on its laurels, pressed on to begin building up its third studio album in just over a year.

Among the new material tried out, one was a 12-bar blues in a minor key, which would become "Since I've Been Loving You." Featuring John Paul Jones on organ, the seven-and-a-half-minute track showcases all four band members at their bluesy best and darkest.

The band also recorded a pair of acoustic blues medleys, one of which was later given the title "Hats Off to (Roy) Harper." The other remains unreleased on any official Led Zeppelin album. Roy Harper was a friend of the band whose latest album at the time, Folkjokeopus, was another in a long line of the artist's catalog of experimental acoustic work.

Another piece recorded at Olympic during this time was titled "Jennings Farm Blues," named after Plant's farmhouse. The band recorded several takes of this electric rock number, none of which have ever turned up on any official Led Zeppelin collection. For the time being, "Jennings Farm Blues" did not have any lyrics. However, when the band attempted it again in 1970, the arrangement switched from electric guitars to acoustic guitars, and at that time Plant added lyrics about his beloved dog, Strider. The song was renamed "Bron-Y-Aur Stomp" by the time it was released on Led Zeppelin III.

Going to California

On this day in 1969, Led Zeppelin returned to California for the first time since early May, as part of a busy week that would see the band debuting in two other states and squeezing in a Los Angeles studio session on the only day off.

The success of Led Zeppelin's first album was becoming the big story for rock music fans all across the country as Led Zeppelin winded its way through California, New Mexico and Texas between this Friday night and the end of the first full week in August. The hopes for a second album that was just as compelling and satisfying as the first were becoming part of the Led Zeppelin saga.

During Led Zeppelin's two previous U.S. tours, the band had paid visits to the Calif. cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Irvine, Pasadena and Santa Monica. Now adding Santa Barbara to that list, Zeppelin played a Friday evening show at the Samuel E. Kramer Arena on the Earl Warren Showgrounds with the groups Jethro Tull and the Fraternity of Man. Ticket prices for this 7:30 p.m. performance were $3.50 in advance and $4 at the door. Promoter Jim Salzer commissioned a brightly colored poster to advertise the show. It depicts Moses gazing skyward at a zeppelin engulfed in flames. Unfortunately, the second "e" in "Zeppelin" was omitted on this poster and also on the concert tickets.

It is said that after this Aug. 1 show, Jimmy Page's longtime admirer in the L.A. area, Pamela Ann Miller, or "Miss P" as she was often called, finally met up with the guitarist and became his girlfriend. According to her account, they were joined at the hip, at least for as long as Page permitted it.

The next day, Led Zeppelin headed 900 miles almost due east to Albuquerque, N.M., for its first show there. The group met up again with the Vanilla Fudge, headliners for the evening. The two groups had toured together for nearly the entire previous week, mostly on shows booked by Concerts West. This Aug. 2 show was another one of those, and a handbill for the event was in red, featuring the names of both bands next to each other in white, with promotional photos of both fourpiece groups in monochrome.

Writer Rod Geer summed up both bands' performances in the Albuquerque Tribune two days later, offering that "bass guitarist John Paul Jones and drummer John Bonham were almost unnoticed" while Jimmy Page and Robert Plant "stole the show." Geer also said the Vanilla Fudge contributed to making this "one of the most exciting shows ever performed in Albuquerque."

From New Mexico, Led Zeppelin went to Texas for the first time ever to play on Sunday, Aug. 3. The show at the Houston Music Hall was another Concerts West event, this one promoted in part by the AM radio station KILT 610, which played Top 40 music. The handbill for this show is similar to the one from Albuquerque as it uses the same red motif and promo photo of the band, but the main difference is it does not feature the Vanilla Fudge. Led Zeppelin was the only band on this bill! The Houston Music Hall was situated next to the Sam Houston Coliseum, where Led Zeppelin would perform on return trips to the city through 1975.

The band remained in Texas on Aug. 4 for a performance at the State Fair Coliseum in Dallas, Texas. The week before the show, a hype-filled preview appeared in the Dallas Morning News with Ann Sack's byline that read more like a press release and less like a newspaper report. In expounding on the "phenomenal success" that "musical infant" Led Zeppelin had already reached, Sack's piece included a dubiously researched statement, unrepeated elsewhere in the canon of Zeppelin literature, that the group had "achieved two standing ovations and two encores after only six hours of rehearsal time at their first London show."

Sack's proselytizing rhetoric continued: "In these days of weeding and group shakeups, the Zeppelin has emerged as an experienced and musically attuned quartet. Headed by Jimmy Page, formerly of the Yardbirds, John Paul Jones, John Bonham and Robert Plank [sic] soon joined him in an experiment with the evolution of sound. Searching for a group which would allow them freedom of style and expression, they have struck paydirt by delving into the roots of music. They cut their first album after playing together only three weeks. Yet, it is heralded throughout the music world as one of the most exciting and pulsating collections of sound in the rock business."

However, Sack's tone in another Dallas Morning News article was exactly the opposite once Zeppelin had appeared. She wrote that she found them to be "somewhat of a disappointment" and that their "much of their stuff seemed to lack imagination" and "was emotion-packed but not aesthetically pleasing." Indeed, she favored Led Zeppelin's opening act, which was a local band of high school kids called Southwest F.O.B. that specialized in psychedelic rock cover versions of songs like "High Heeled Sneakers" and "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)." It seems from her writing that Sack did want to be a Zeppelin fan but a faulty sound system hampered the set, altogether ruining her Led Zeppelin experience. She mentioned "it is good to know" that fans in Dallas would have another chance to see Zeppelin at the end of the month, at the Texas International Pop Festival.

The sole day that week without a Led Zeppelin concert was on Tuesday, Aug. 5. The band is said to have taken this opportunity to head back to California for a quick overdubbing session at Mystic Studios in Los Angeles. There, they added to their recording of "The Lemon Song" being prepared since May for Led Zeppelin II. Following this day off, the group returned to live action on Aug. 6 with a performance at Memorial Auditorium in Sacramento and on Aug. 7 at the Community Theatre in Berkeley.

Ol' Blue Eyes, mudsharks and heavyweight fighters

On this day in 1969, Led Zeppelin's third North American tour moved across the U.S. border into Canada for one show. During this appearance in Vancouver, British Columbia, Led Zeppelin played at the PNE Agrodome for the second time in three months. This Vancouver show came about as part of a jam-packed touring itinerary on a day between the Midwest Rock Festival in the Milwaukee area and the Seattle Pop Festival.



The week's biggest achievement was not onstage, however, but off. The Recording Industry Association of America had just certified Led Zeppelin's first album Gold on Tuesday, July 22, and Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records met the band in New York to present each member with his own Gold record award. Jimmy Page happily reported to the New Musical Express, "We didn't tell Bonzo. He thought we were going to get one between us and we'd have to split it up, each of us getting it for three months at a time. I think he's speechless." Page said this was just after the band received watches from the owner of the Kinetic Playground in Chicago.

Of course, the pressure was on for Led Zeppelin to deliver a second album that was at least as good as the first. Work toward that end was nearing completion, with the final musical touches being added the following month. In the meantime, Led Zeppelin's focus was on the road -- and perhaps on a few fish stories collected along the way.

On July 25 at the State Fair Park in West Allis, Wis., Led Zeppelin headlined the opening night of the three-day Midwest Rock Festival. Also on that Friday bill alongside Led Zeppelin were acts including folk singer Buffy Saint Marie and rock group the First Edition, whose singer was Kenny Rogers. At the time, that band was enjoying success with its follow-up to the year-old hit single, "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)."

During Led Zeppelin's headlining set in Wisconsin, there wasn't much talking in between songs. Most of it came during the beginning of "How Many More Times," while Robert Plant introduced his fellow band members, and himself, by name. Instead, the group let the music do the talking, with a set of about 60 minutes culminating in an encore version of "Communication Breakdown" preceded by a rendition of "How Many More Times" with a lyrical insert from "I've Got You Under My Skin." It was at least the third time in a week that Plant found himself quoting a song popularized by Frank Sinatra; he had referenced "You Make Me Feel So Young" during the same spot in the performance on both July 20 and 21.

In Vancouver, Led Zeppelin headlined over the Vanilla Fudge and received favorable coverage in both of the city's major daily newspapers. Perhaps the writers were comparing notes, as both made reference to Janis Joplin, noting similarities between Plant's voice and hers.

Ken Spotswood, writing for the Province, hailed Zeppelin's appearance as "their third and best performance yet in Vancouver." He remarked about the first Vancouver show, back in the closing days of December 1968, when "they were then the supporting group of the featured Vinilla [sic] Fudge. It's not hard to see why they have since risen to the top," Spotswood opined. He also declared, "Greatest moment of the concert happened when Plant and the Zeppelin launched headfirst into Chuck Berry's old Rock and Roll [Music] for at least 15 glorious, ear-splitting minutes that conjured up a real nostalgia for the '50s."

For the Vancouver Sun, Jurgen Hesse paid compliments to all four members of the group, including John Bonham -- "a virtuoso, both brash and sensitive" -- and John Paul Jones for staying "in perfect accord with Page" to help him "provide the vibrant glissandi and cadences that make Led Zeppelin's sound unique." However, Hesse makes these positive comments only after lobbing a few insults at Page, who he said played unnervingly loudly and with barely "any compassion" or "feeling for lyricism."

Meanwhile, a young writer named Rick McGrath was just beginning his two-year tenure with an underground newspaper in Vancouver called the Georgia Straight. In an interview with LedZeppelinNews.com this year for an upcoming episode of the syndicated radio program "Get the Led Out," McGrath described the scene in Vancouver at the time: "In those days, Vancouver was very similar to 'Frisco. We had a really good local music scene. There was a lot of kids. The weather was good. There was money around. Marijuana had just managed to make its way into Canada, and everyone was having a great time." During his final year writing for the Georgia Straight, McGrath received a stage pass to a Led Zeppelin concert and recorded an interview backstage with Plant.



Led Zeppelin and the Vanilla Fudge traveled south from Vancouver to the Seattle Pop Festival for its final night, on July 27. There, at Gold Creek Park in Woodinville, Wash., Led Zeppelin headlined over the Youngbloods, the Guess Who, the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, and Chuck Berry himself -- they'd just been playing his music the previous night! The Led Zeppelin set immediately followed one by the Doors that both Page and Plant later described in the press as an embarrassing display for singer Jim Morrison.

The latest Doors album, The Soft Parade, had just been released on July 18, yielding among others the sexual anthem "Touch Me." So many young girls at that time were flocking to Doors shows to see the man they believed was a sex symbol but were disappointed to find him now bearded and unrecognizable. Morrison was suffering from an indifference to music, expressing his hatred of overexposure, and directing his energy not to entertaining but to ridiculing the audience.

Robert Plant watched with his wife Maureen during the Doors' set, eventually weighing in on it during an interview with Ritchie Yorke for the New Musical Express. "Morrison went on stage and said, 'F--- you all,' which didn't do anything except make a few girls scream," said Plant. "Then he hung on the side of the stage and nearly toppled into the audience and did all those things that I suppose were originally sexual things, but as he got fatter and dirtier and more screwed up, they became more bizarre. So it was really sickening to watch."

Of the few songs the Doors performed was the hit song, "Light my Fire." Although Morrison had sworn off that old Doors hit in interviews earlier that year, it was still an audience favorite. It remained in the set list, but Morrison was no longer performing it with conviction. The set opened, ironically, with "When the Music's Over" but concluded, appropriately, with "The End." In the interim, Morrison provoked the audience to respond unfavorably. The people who'd been his fans responded by hurling at him crushed cups and curses. Morrison only continued to antagonize them.

Dorian C. Smith, in a news piece covering proceedings at the festival, avoided discussing the rock bands that appeared onstage but focused on the atmosphere, with remarks on such mundane topics as the fireworks, the traffic, the concessions and the weather. "The sun shone down all three days, at times excessively hot. To compensate for the hot sun, several faucets spewed out cool, refreshing water to all who suffered a thirst."

It was on this trip to Seattle that Led Zeppelin's tour manager, Richard Cole, and a cast of characters that included members of the Vanilla Fudge or Led Zeppelin, or both, participated in or witnessed, or both, an infamous undertaking that is referred to as the shark episode or the mudshark incident. In providing fodder for Steven Davis's New York Times bestseller "Hammer of the Gods," published in 1985, Cole divulged the seedy details of this one particular stay at the Edgewater Inn, located conveniently on the Puget Sound and notorious at the time for the permission afforded guests to go fishing from the convenience of their hotel rooms, casting lines out of their windows.

Details vary with each retelling of this now-legendary and relentlessly fascinating tale but amount to the same premise, worded delicately here: A woman who was enticed by these rock 'n' roll fishermen paid them a visit and allowed herself to become a makeshift storage facility for the fish they caught.



Mark Stein of the Vanilla Fudge gladly filled in the few details of this incident that hadn't escaped his memory 40 years later when discussing the incident in a "Get the Led Out" interview. He said, "We were just partying! It was us, Fudge and Zeppelin, partying, and at the time I was -- I had a Super 8 camera, and I was taking pictures of -- you know, I'm on the road and everything -- shows, and this and that. ... Page and Bonham, being true Englishmen as they were, they loved to fish," he said. "I can't remember exactly whose room it was, but I walked in, and there's Richard Cole, their tour manager, and it was Bonham and Page fishing out the window. You know, just having a grand old time, drinking and fishing. So, they caught something. I don't know if it was a mudshark or a snapper, whatever it was.

"And, you know, there were some women around, the usual partying that was going on, and Plant's running around like crazy, you know, having fun. Honestly, what went on from there is over, under, sideways, down -- not to reference a Yardbirds song, but I'm gonna say it anyway. I don't remember specifically what happened. There's all kinds of stories that happened. If you talk to Robert, he'll say, 'I don't know. Something happened. Who knows -- maybe nothing happened!' But, you know, I'll leave that up to the imagination. But, um, that's all I'm gonna say about it."

Pressed to comment on his Super 8 footage, Stein had this to say: "Honestly, I don't really think they [other members of the Vanilla Fudge] were in the room. I was just taking pictures of everything that was happening while they were catching whatever -- a mudshark or a snapper or whatever the hell they caught. And they were just partying, there was a chick there doing the usual rock 'n' roll craziness, and, you know, I'll leave the rest to the imagination. ... I gave the Super 8 to Bruce Wayne [road manager for the Vanilla Fudge]. You know, it was -- I never at the time thought it was gonna turn into this majestic rock 'n' roll road story. I said, 'Here, take these things,' and I was just a kid myself. What was I -- 20, 21? [I] said, 'I don't know where I'm gonna get this developed. Take care of it!' And I never heard hyde nor hair after that. That's the truth!"

Led Zeppelin and the Vanilla Fudge were back in Canada again on July 29, playing at the Kinsmen Field House in Edmonton, Alberta. Concerts West, located in Seattle, organized the concert at the last minute and didn't count on many attendees due to the little advance promotion on local radio. One report said only 400 advance tickets were sold, but word of the double-billing spread nevertheless, and as many as 8,000 fans showed up for the event.

Bob Harvey had reviewed Led Zeppelin's May 9 show in the same city for the Edmonton Journal, when he wrote overwhelmingly positively: "Led Zeppelin is probably the most aggressive, masculine rock group anywhere. They batter at the mind and ear, insisting that they will penetrate." Now for his second Led Zeppelin concert review, Harvey included bits of interviews with Page and Plant to list the band's accomplishments over the preceding seven months since its formation. But the writer was much less positive this time around, saying: "Led Zeppelin wasn't quite as impressive Tuesday as they were at the Edmonton Gardens in May, but they were hampered by the sound system, as well as by having to go on stage first. It would have been better if Vanilla Fudge had played first. Their music's more intellectual, and more jazz-influenced than the gutsy Zeppelin's."

After that, Led Zeppelin and the Vanilla Fudge returned to the United States once again and traveled to Salt Lake City, Utah, for two shows on July 30 at the Terrace Ballroom. Stein remembered the following taking place in Salt Lake City: "I was standing out in the audience watching the show. I think it was the first time I actually was totally focused on what they were doing from A to Z. So they went on stage, and I'm standing in the audience, and they played the most incredible, powerful show. I was just, like, just blown away. I was scared to go on after that! I'm standing next to Richard Cole. I said to Cole, I said, 'How do you follow that?' He said, 'Look, just go up and play.' You know? But we went up, and I'll tell you what. They inspired us to probably play one of the most intense shows that we ever played. So it was kind of like two heavyweight fighters on the same bill that night."

An amazing experience

On this day in 1969, Led Zeppelin made another return trip to Chicago, spending the weekend playing gigs at the Kinetic Playground for the third time this year.

This time, Zeppelin topped a bill over the British blues group Savoy Brown and American underground rockers the Litter.

A review in the Chicago Tribune heralded the talent of all four members of Led Zeppelin both individually and collectively. It hailed the accomplishments of each guy, especially making the point that John bonham's drum solo was not at all boring. And it said, "The ecstasy inherent in The Doors is due for the most part to Jim Morrison, but with Led Zeppelin it's all four of them; they all exude this tremendous energy force."

Led Zeppelin's encounters with the Chicago scene over four visits this year led Robert Plant to tell a grown-up Chicago audience in 2001, "The Kinetic Playground here in 1969 was truly an amazing experience."

In Cleveland on July 20, James Gang opened for Led Zeppelin at the Musicarnival. Near the venue was a house with a television set where the members of the band went to watch live coverage of the moon landing. Watch http://ledzeppelin.com/video/cleveland-7-20-69-slideshow for a slideshow marking this occasion.

On the following day, Led Zeppelin was back in New York, playing the Schaefer Music Festival in Central Park along with B.B. King.

The band had just been to New York the previous week, when all but John Paul Jones appeared onstage at a Jeff Beck Group concert.

It was also during part of 1969 in New York, at Electric Lady Studios with the assistance of engineer Eddie Kramer, that the band managed to squeeze in some recording sessions for Led Zeppelin II. Recording and mixing of the album would be completed with Kramer the following month.

Pop festivals

On this day in 1969, Led Zeppelin continued its third North American tour with a performance at the Laurel Pop Festival in Maryland, followed the next day with another at the Spectrum Pop Festival. While Led Zeppelin was continuing to amaze young American audiences with sets including "Train Kept a Rollin'," expanded versions of material from the debut album, and medleys of blues songs, an external torment was taking place within the company producing these festivals.

Both festivals were produced by the same company that had just pulled off the 16th annual Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island. That meant Led Zeppelin was again working for promoter George Wein, who'd been pressured into canceling Led Zeppelin's appearance -- a cancellation that didn't stick when the band performed anyway.

Wein, in his autobiography "Myself Among Others: A Life in Music," writes that he "was thoroughly fed up with the rock world" following the experimentation at Newport that drew record crowds but which he still deemed a failure. He was probably just beginning to realize the implications of producing festivals with rock acts. "Jazz -- the music I loved -- was being poisoned and stamped out," writes Wein, "and I had served as an unwitting, but willing, accomplice in the murder."

Wein believes he could have pioneered rock concerts in the Northeast if only his heart had been in it. He said the rock scene "had nothing to do with my passion as a promoter or as a musician." Nevertheless, the famous jazz promoter still had a pair of two-day "pop" festivals going on this weekend, 100 miles apart.

Because it was the same company producing both festivals, there were several similarities, beginning first with the acts that were billed to appear, many of which, like Led Zeppelin, were themselves holdovers from the Newport Jazz Festival's more experimental billing of rock and R&B acts. Led Zeppelin headlined Friday night, July 11, at the Laurel Pop Festival, appearing with Johnny Winter, Jethro Tull, Al Kooper and Buddy Guy. The same lineup appeared the following night at the Spectrum Pop Festival. The groups performing the alternate dates were Sly and the Family Stone, Ten Years After, Jeff Beck, the Mothers of Invention, and the Savoy Brown Blues Band. In addition, the Guess Who played the Laurel Pop Festival on Saturday.

Although he was not yet a groundbreaking political reporter, the Washington Post's Carl Bernstein was on assignment at the two-day festival held at what was then known as the Laurel Race Course, located about halfway between Baltimore and the nation's capital. The 25-year-old part-time music critic deemed most of the groups at the Laurel Pop Festival unmusical, claiming their guitarists were merely "capable of laying down a few good riffs but each usually unable to resolve his fretwork into real music synthesis."

Bernstein did find Led Zeppelin to be "mildly interesting, if not musically original." (He also said the same of Sly and the Family Stone, but his highest praise was reserved for Johnny Winter, Al Kooper and the Mothers of Invention; only those acts, he said, could be considered "first-rate artists.") Almost nothing is noted about Led Zeppelin's set, except one can only assume Bernstein had Jimmy Page in mind for at least part of Bernstein's sentence that criticized the guitarists who "abandon picking with their fingers and instead use handkerchiefs, violin bows, drumsticks, microphones and other artifacts that have less to do with music than with theatrics."

No recordings exist of either Led Zeppelin performance 40 years ago this weekend, but Led Zeppelin's official Web site says the set lists for both shows likely included "Train Kept a Rollin'," "I Can't Quit You Baby," "Dazed and Confused," "You Shook Me," "How Many More Times" and "Communication Breakdown."

One Laurel attendee, Tommy Keene, recently published his remembrances of Led Zeppelin at the Laurel Pop Festival. Keene had just turned 12 years old a few days before that concert, which was his second time seeing Led Zeppelin near his home town in as many months. The first had been at the Merriweather Post Pavilion on May 25, when Zeppelin was opening for the Who. At the Laurel Pop Festival, Keene remembers the band opening not with "Train Kept a Rollin'" but with the Ben E. King song "We're Gonna Groove." Keene also recalls "What Is and What Should Never Be," one of the songs that had been recorded for Led Zeppelin II and would be mixed the following month.

It's not absurd to think he could be right about either song being played that night. "We're Gonna Groove" became Zep's concert staple the following year, and the rendition of it on Jan. 9, 1970, was ultimately destined for the posthumous Led Zeppelin album Coda and the 2003 DVD release. As for "What Is and What Should Never Be," the song is not known to have been performed live until after the release of Led Zeppelin II in October 1969, but it had been part of the band's BBC studio repertoire twice in June. An early rendition is not unthinkable, especially considering bits of "The Lemon Song" had become a near-nightly occurrence during renditions of "How Many More Times" by the time of this third American tour.

A bit older than Keene were two 17-year-old pals who now go by the names B.R. and Tom B. They've also posted their concert memories and photographs online. Through their Web page, they have also attracted others who were in attendance to write in about the concerts. One guy, Mike Dolan, wrote in to say, "The era being what it was, it made perfect sense to be drenched in so much live excellent music for such a pittance. I still remember vividly Led Zeppelin leaving the stage at the end of their set and, from behind the amplifier bank, starting 'Communication Breakdown' as an encore, with Plant leaping like a superhero over the Marshalls, only to have someone cut the power at mid-verse."

Festival express

On this day in 1969, Led Zeppelin played the first date of its third North American tour, one of a handful of festival appearances the group made that year.

Just a week after playing the Bath Festival and the Pop Proms on back-to-back nights in England, the band was now kicking off its next set of U.S. tour dates by playing a pair of festivals. This started in front of a crowd of 40,000 at the Atlanta Pop Festival on Saturday, July 5. After a travel of about 1,100 miles, Led Zeppelin closed out the Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island on Sunday, July 6.

It was, of course, one month before Woodstock, and some of the bands sharing the bill with Led Zeppelin were synonymous with the festival scene. The Atlanta Pop Festival, held July 4 and 5, included the likes of Janis Joplin, Canned Heat, Joe Cocker, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Blood Sweat and Tears, Sweetwater, the Butterfield Blues Band and Johnny Winter, all acts that appeared at Woodstock the following month. Also at the Atlanta Pop Festival were the bands Chicago Transit Authority, Grand Funk Railroad and Spirit, R&B acts the Staple Singers and Booker T & the MGs, and the jazz trio of pianist Dave Brubeck.

Brubeck, the only jazz act at the Atlanta Pop Festival, also performed during the four-day Newport Pop Festival, his part taking place on July 5, the same night as sets from Art Blakey Quintet, R&B act Sly and the Family Stone, and the female-fronted Danish progressive rock group the Savage Rose. Promoter George Wein, deciding to experiment with the festival in its 16th year running, had agreed to bring in several rock acts to diversify the billing. The Associated Press called it "an attempt to lure more youngsters to the festival."



Joshua White was the man who created the Joshua Light Show that was used as the stunning visual backdrop for bands performing at the Fillmore East. When the syndicated radio show "Get the Led Out" had the opportunity to interview White recently, he discussed how it was that his light show was brought into the Newport Jazz Festival 40 years ago, first laying a great description of the factors that came into play at the time. "The Newport Jazz Festival was an old, classic institution," said White, referencing its formation in 1955 -- "in this wonderful old-world social community. It was very modest. It was just, people got up and played in an enclosed area, but the Newport Jazz Festival was a perfect example of people and institutions caught up in the transitions of the time.

"And let's place that transition," White continued. "It's now 1969. It's already two years after the Summer of Love was announced on the cover of Time and Newsweek. It's already a year since the Fillmore opened, and the Fillmore and other establishments around the country made it possible for these very focused acts to perform. And so, it was decided by George Wein, and whoever his people were, that the Newport Jazz Festival -- classic old-world jazz festival -- had to acknowledge and accept and embrace the new music. And one of the things that they did was they booked serious rock 'n' roll acts onto their normal bill. So, side by side with Miles Davis and Dave Brubeck, there was a rock act on.

"And to make it even better, they decided they really needed to put on a light show. So, the Joshua Light Show was invited in July of 1969 to perform at Newport, which we were very honored. I was not particularly old, but I was old enough to know what the Newport Jazz Festival meant. I took it as a great honor, and we went.

"So, it was very popular at that moment for a lot of these institutions to try to embrace the new. But, like everything else, they didn't necessarily know how to do it. They were kind of looking for the turn-key solution. The Joshua Light Show presented itself as a turn-key solution: You call Josh, you talk to him, I quote you a price, I show up, and don't worry. As long as you can give us the power, the room to change our clothes in, we'll be fine. And they booked several acts into the Newport Jazz Festival mixed in with the classic and establishment jazz. This moment in time was really not significantly different than the moment Bob Dylan went electric at the Newport Folk Festival."

Wein peppered a number of rock acts throughout the festival, most of them appearing after 8 p.m. on Friday, July 4, which was advertised as "An Evening of Jazz Rock." Sets that night came from Jeff Beck, Blood Sweat and Tears, Ten Years After and Jethro Tull. Some 25,000 people had showed up for these rock acts on Friday night, June Harris reported in the New Musical Express. Those who were unable to purchase tickets rioted, and crowds threatened to disturb the peace by crashing the gates and rushing in.

Joshua White picks up with further explanation of the atmosphere in Newport. "Now, the back story that people don't remember is the Newport Jazz Festival took place in basically what was a seaport, and it was actually staged by the water. ... There were a lot of sailors there. It was a port. And this is 1969, so people are having identity crises. Everything they knew doesn't exist anymore, or it's changing. Or, if you're over 30, you're out of it; if you have short hair you're a narc or a cop; if you have long hair, you're cool. Everything was very black and white. And what always had been a problem at Newport was that people liked to get drunk, and try to ... crash the festival, and get drunk. It was not unlike St. Patrick's Day in New York, where people come from somewhere else, put on green clothes, get really drunk, and throw up on your shoes, and that's what it was like.

"So, there was always this terror outside the gates," White continued, "more than we felt certainly at the Fillmore, more than we felt at Woodstock. There was always this sense that the heathen, drunken hordes who wanted to smash up the hippies and hated everything were just out there trying to make trouble. And who better to put into that mix than Led Zeppelin!"

As a result of the palpable tensions, Harris wrote, "local authorities ... demanded that Led Zeppelin be canceled from the final bill on Sunday." She quoted local authorities as saying this demand was supposedly made "in the interest of public safety." White added to his previous comments about Newport, saying, "I always considered Boston to be a particularly provincial place, and if Boston is difficult and a provincial place, then Newport, Rhode Island, was times ten. ... There [were] rumors in the air that there would be Armageddon. And at this point, Led Zeppelin had been on the scene for a year and had already made a few of these lifestyle and choice experiments, so Led Zeppelin was already notorious, so it was really pouring gasoline on the fire."

Wein, the promoter, decided he had to act, and in order to do so, he had to cancel Led Zeppelin's appearance. So, near the 8 p.m. start of the July 6 evening portion, he improvised an onstage announcement: One of the members of Led Zeppelin was sick, and so the group wouldn't be performing, he said. His announcement caused many thousands of younger fans to go home since they believed there would be no Led Zeppelin set. As the Associated Press put it, "many young rock fans ... packed their sleeping bags and guitars and left the city." The evening carried on with acts including B.B. King, the Willie Bobo Sextet, the Herbie Hancock Sextet and the Buddy Rich Orchestra.

However, Led Zeppelin showed up at Newport and refused to have its act canceled. Jimmy Page, furious about the cancellation, told the New Musical Express, "You don't blow a date like this one. Not after all that. The Newport Jazz Festival was far too important to us to just cancel out and I'm very upset at the whole thing. Wein should never have announced once of us was ill." Led Zeppelin's rescheduled set took place before a smaller audience than they were planning on performing to.

White said, "I remember standing on the stage and Led Zeppelin came on to perform and people started rioting outside the gates and they really weren't equipped to deal with this, and I remember just standing there next to George Wein and watching him try to deal with it. They got through their show, and we got through our show, but it was a very important social moment because the very next thing that would happen to us would be Woodstock, in which the audience would be unlimited. Anybody who showed up could basically be there, and it was so big that the scope of the event [over]shadowed the details."

The Associated Press described one Newport city council member, David Fenton, as "a supporter of the jazz and folk festival" but quoted him as saying, "I don't think there should be any more rock concerts here." In fact, the city voted to revoke its permit for the concert shortly thereafter that would have kicked off Blind Faith's U.S. tour.

After these two shows, Led Zeppelin would have four days off until the weekend, which would see the group playing another pair of festival dates in Maryland and Pennsylvania. More on those shows, and on the recording of the second Led Zeppelin album, to come in another special 40th anniversary edition of "On This Day In Led Zeppelin History."

I call that a bargain

This newsletter edition focused on a music festival Led Zeppelin played two years in a row (1969 and 1970) on exactly the same date (June 28).

On this day in 1969, Led Zeppelin participated for the first time in a music festival, one of 19 bands appearing on two different stages.

Blues bands Fleetwood Mac, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers and Ten Years After were the headliners at the Bath Festival of Blues. Zep was fourth on the bill, ahead of the Nice.

Led Zeppelin's popularity in England having just taken off over the course of its first proper tour of the country that month, the band's booking as the fourth act on the bill is a remnant of the final days Zeppelin would support other bands. Promoter Freddy Bannister recalls in his memoir, "There Must Be a Better Way," that he heard the people attending the festival all talking about Zeppelin on their way out -- not any of the three acts that closed the festival.

In fact, it now made sense to him why Zeppelin manager Peter Grant had been keen on renegotiating the band's fee, which was originally booked to play the festival for the minuscule amount of £125. Bannister, who mentions this nonchalantly in his book, agreed to a renegotiated fee of £200 for the band. He said this was still a bargain, particularly in light of the fees the group would eventually be demanding.

It is easy to demonstrate the progress Led Zeppelin made within the following year by comparing its appearances on this June 28 and on the same date the following year. The 1969 event, held on one day, was called the Bath Festival of Blues, and the 1970 event was called the Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music. Led Zeppelin returned to headline a three-day festival over Santana, the Byrds, Pink Floyd and Frank Zappa, to name a few. The crowd in 1970 was five times larger, and most people arrived just in time on the third day only to see Led Zeppelin.

Zep's longtime tour manager, Richard Cole, remembered the Bath Festival in a recent interview with Dave Lewis conducted for the syndicated U.S. radio show "Get the Led Out." "The [Bath Festival] in 1970 was enormous," said Cole. "It was outside in a big field. That was, I should think, their biggest show to date at that time." It was, in fact, held not at the Recreation Showground as in 1969 but at the Royal Bath & West Showground in Shepton Mallet.

As for the band's act on this day in 1970, it may have been the first concert with the newly written "Immigrant Song." At that time, Led Zeppelin had just "come from the land of the ice and snow," where they performed a single concert in Reykjavik, Iceland. Robert Plant has said the show in the unusual destination of Reykjavik gave the band some much-needed street cred to fend off the endless stream of naysayers. "It was always like that with Led Zeppelin: 'Who do they think they are to be so pompous?' And we weren't being pompous. We did come from the land of the ice and snow. We were guests of the Icelandic government. We were on a cultural mission representing the musicians of Britain, and we were invited to Reykjavik to play a concert."

After Led Zeppelin kicked off its concert at the Bath Festival in 1970 with "Immigrant Song," it then proceeded to open shows with the same tune at every show for exactly the next two years: Today's date not only marks the Bath festivals of both 1969 and 1970, with the first known performance of "Immigrant Song" taking place on the latter; it also marks the last time "Immigrant Song" opened a Led Zeppelin concert, on June 28, 1972.

One final thing to mention about the Bath Festival in 1969 is the poster, which Bannister said had an image of a stereotypical female flower child whose waistcoat was blowing around in the wind, revealing an abundant amount of flesh. He recalls in his book being told some ticket outlets considered the poster obscene and therefore weren't displaying it. This didn't hurt ticket sales, however, as he was elated to find out tickets for the 1969 festival had completely sold out.

This poster image is now available on a T-shirt than can be ordered through the Bannister family's online store at www.rockmusicmemorabilia.com. The site also has replica posters available, including for the 1969 Bath Festival and the later Knebworth festivals, including the two Led Zeppelin performances whose 30th anniversaries approach just over two months from now. In fact, the Bath Festival in 1970 was the last major outdoor U.K. gig for Led Zeppelin until the Knebworth Festival in 1979.

No more TV

On this day in 1969, Led Zeppelin performed in front of a live studio audience in Paris in what turned out to be the new group's last scheduled TV appearance anywhere.

From the beginning, Led Zeppelin never felt there was much reason to rely on the TV format to promote its music. This is in part because Led Zeppelin wasn't going to release singles and therefore didn't feel the need to take the same approach singles-oriented groups would. But on those rare occasions that Led Zeppelin appeared, or tried to appear, on TV during its first year, the experiences left the group with nothing positive.

The explanation often given by manager Peter Grant as to why Led Zeppelin had stopped showing up on TV after 1969 hinged on the deficiencies of the medium at the time, an argument Jimmy Page still made in a promotional interview in 2003. Upon the release of the Led Zeppelin DVD that year, Page said the band did "not [want] to be seen to be heard through a two-inch speaker because you've got to remember the technology on TVs was pretty dire and grim and appalling in those days."

Page remembered Led Zeppelin's "Tous en Scene" guest spot as being the catalyst for the band's decision to avoid television from then on. He said, "There's this French show that we did ... You can see us playing in front of, like, a Salvation Army audience that is sitting there waiting to do their part. And I remember they had odd silly bits where there was a chap dressed up like a hall porter peeping through a peep hole, and there were things like a comedy bit. And then during the broadcast, even though we did the soundcheck of it, they're turning up the level of Robert Plant! And the band's going down, and all of this. ...

"Quite clearly," Page continued, "we couldn't be portrayed in this sort of way as a band that was doing these amazing live performances. And so, we took the decision not to do live material on television." In fact, Peter Grant had nearly disavowed TV appearances altogether three months earlier, after the BBC failed to appear at the Marquee Club in London to film a full Led Zeppelin concert there. The network stood them up without any explanation, leaving Grant and the band members extremely upset.

One song from the French TV appearance made it to Led Zeppelin DVD, and that's "Dazed and Confused." Scenes involving the hall porter, as Page mentioned, were replaced on the DVD with still images of the group presented as a slide show with the musical backing. The band's performance of "Communication Breakdown" from the same show was omitted from the official DVD but can be found on some bootlegs.

What is evident on the DVD is the strange crowd Page was referring to; the costumes on the audience members are almost as strange as their unmoving demeanor. Many look frozen to their seats, while a handful are somehow engaged in side conversation. It's a stark contrast to what's happening onstage: Plant and Page are belting out their aggression in harmonious cacophony, and John Paul Jones is bouncing around next to a flailing John Bonham.

"We decided to stand up and be counted purely by live albums and live appearances," Page said in 2003, long after Led Zeppelin accomplished what it set out to do.

Another one of the relics from just before this decision was recorded only a few days before the French TV show. Using the BBC's recording studio at Aeolian Hall in London on June 16, 1969, Led Zeppelin recorded some songs and an interview for BBC Radio One's Sunday morning radio show "Tasty Pop Sundae."

As for the music, the group was certainly inspired that day, unleashing an improvised blues-rock piece based on a riff similar to the one being tossed around at the time intended for the "Moby Dick" drum solo on Led Zeppelin II, inventively combining with the lyrics of a Sleepy John Estes number called "The Girl I Love." The band also churned out a clever rendition of the Eddie Cochran tune "Somethin' Else" that day, with Jones helping himself to a piano solo between verses. Both of these songs were released on the 2-CD set BBC Sessions in 1997.

But as for the interview with host Chris Grant, Jones started things off on a bad note, speaking just off microphone and insiting that he be labeled "a musical arranger as well as a bass guitarist" rather than "a musical arranger as well as a composer" or "a composer as well as a musical arranger." (In truth, he was all three things.) Throughout it all, Page strummed his guitar audibly in the background and Plant blew into a harmonica, while Bonham and Jones struggled to think of anything interesting to say. The two chattier members of the group, Page and Plant, didn't really have much chemistry with the host. Despite continuing with the full band's interview for six minutes, the show ultimately scrapped the entire conversation when the broadcast took place on June 22, 1969.

In that interview Plant said the band's second album was about "half finished." But even this subject didn't appeal to a mostly subdued Plant. When asked whether there would be a new direction, Plant wouldn't project; he merely stated, "We can't tell until it's finished when we can play the two side by side." Page did chime in, "There are a lot of new sounds on it that weren't on the old one."

Just about the only enthusiasm expressed by the band during this interview emerged when Plant said, "We're going back [to America] again in about a week's time, in about a fortnight." Judging from his apparent boredom, as well as the disappointment he experienced in France three days later, he probably couldn't wait.

Supershow

On this day in 1969, Led Zeppelin recorded a session for the first feature film in which the group ever participated, Supershow.

The only Led Zeppelin song performed for the movie was "Dazed and Confused." Jimmy Page remembers being sandwiched between many other artists that the director preferred, and so only the one Led Zeppelin song was necessary.

Other musicians there included two ex-members of Cream: Eric Clapton, who was then recording with Blind Faith, and Jack Bruce, who had gone on to his own project, Jack Bruce Band.

Another British drummer, Jon Hiseman from Colosseum, was there, but most of the Supershow participants were from America: singer Stephen Stills, eccentric woodwind jazzman Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Electric Flag/Band of Gypsys drummer Buddy Miles, and blues guitarist Buddy Guy.

Page, in 2003, couldn't even remember if the project was for a movie or TV. Supershow was indeed a movie, and it premiered on Nov. 14, 1969, at the Lyceum Ballroom in London. Led Zeppelin's second album was being released at the time, and the group did not make an appearance at the premiere.

Heck, I wouldn't either -- only because that November was the band's first real time off after recording two albums and performing nearly 200 concerts, all in one year's work. Go rest up!

BBC - Balk Being Conventional

On this day in 1969, British radio presenter John Peel aired a session by the one pop band perhaps least interested in traditional pop success, Led Zeppelin.

The band, which had not released any singles within England since forming late the previous year, was finally receiving some airplay from the British Broadcasting Corporation.

Three songs recorded in March 3 sessions for the BBC were aired on Peel's radio show, Top Gear. Those three takes on the songs -- "You Shook Me," "Dazed and Confused" and "I Can't Quit You Baby" -- all "went into the red," so to speak.

Whereas the customary length of a single is within three minutes, the shortest one of these Led Zeppelin tracks was four minutes and 22 seconds. The longest, "Dazed and Confused," was six minutes and 29 seconds, which exceeded the version on Led Zeppelin's debut album by only three seconds.

Despite the British blues boom spearheaded in 1968 by such bands as Fleetwood Mac, Ten Years After and Jethro Tull, the British airwaves in 1969 rarely contained anything more experimental in blues-rock music.

Thanks to BBC presenters like Peel and Pete Drummond, rock music was getting at least some exposure on the otherwise strict British radio format.

"It's only John Peel and that other guy, Pete Drummond, who can play any of the good stuff," said Jimmy Page said in an interview slamming British radio. "The BBC have effectively killed the progress of 'underground' music."

Beginning in September 1966, Drummond had been a presenter for the pirate station Radio London until the station was closed on Aug. 14, 1967. More information on him -- and his final broadcast for Radio London, are available when you visit http://www.offshoreradio.co.uk/djsd.htm#drummond.

Listeners to Top Gear heard six-and-a-half minutes of "Dazed and Confused," complete with its instrumental break during which Page attacked and ground his guitar with a violin bow. This was anything but conventional British radio.

The other two songs aired were the album's two blues standards. They were written by Willie Dixon, the noted songwriter and bass player whose music was recorded in the 1950s by such blues singers as Howlin' Wolf, Bo Diddley, Sonny Boy Williamson, Little Milton, Otis Rush and Muddy Waters, to name a few.

Robert Plant showed he knew his history. As an impromptu utterance, during "I Can't Quit You Baby," he sang a verse from Waters's tune, "19 Years Old."

The band's take of Dixon's "You Shook Me" was a bit shorter than the album version, with John Paul Jones' organ and Plant's harmonica solos combined into one 12-bar blues repetition instead of two repetitions.

Either the BBC as a whole was getting more used to groundbreaking music, or a few individuals were making moves to be more accepting of challenging progressive formats.

After Led Zeppelin's initial session at the BBC's Maida Vale studio on March 3, the band was invited back to London two weeks later for an additional pair of BBC appearances.

On March 19, AM radio's World Service R&B aired new Led Zeppelin takes of their album's two Willie Dixon blues numbers, "I Can't Quit You Baby" and "You Shook Me." In addition, the program contained an unreleased catchy blues-rock tune called "Sunshine Woman." Its lyrics were culled from various sources such as Robert Johnson and Sleepy John Estes. The track contained a harmonica solo from Plant, a piano solo from Jones and a guitar solo from Page.

On March 21, Led Zeppelin appeared live on BBC 2's late night TV show, How Late It Is. Performing the B-side of the U.S. single, "Communication Breakdown," it turned out to be the band's one and only live U.K. television appearance. Sadly, the clip may have been erased, as the BBC did not always keep tapes of its broadcasts. It could not be found in 1982 when it was to be shown on the program Pop Quiz.