The hip press

On this day in 1971, Led Zeppelin played at Leicester University in England, and one writer who was obviously with the times wrote a positive review of Zeppelin's show.

The piece said that all the tickets to the Zeppelin show had sold out within hours of the campus box-office opening and probably would again if Zeppelin would schedule another date there the following week.

This was in a newspaper at the university, far removed from the kind of scene Rolling Stone represented, that preferred instead to print negative reviews of Led Zeppelin and otherwise ignore the band.

An author named Robert Godwin conducted research to find and summarize hundreds of articles and reviews about Led Zeppelin from the '60s and '70s. Having published a book called "Led Zeppelin: The Press Reports," he says:

"The epiphanies that I had doing this [were] that the press that I found on Led Zeppelin did not support the historic contention that they were always slagged off by the press. I found that there were at least as many, but generally more, good write-ups than there were bad. That surprised me 'cause, you know, I'd bought into that for years myself, that the press had always been incredibly mean to them, and it turns out they really weren't -- especially the music press.

"They turned on them once punk rock came along, but they didn't just turn on Led Zeppelin. They turned on pretty much all classic rock. You know, if Led Zeppelin thought they had it bad, you should see the things they used to write about Emerson, Lake and Palmer, and Yes!"

Electric Magic

On this day in 1971, Led Zeppelin played the first of two shows at Wembley Empire Pool in London, with two opening acts and an array of circus-type attractions. There were trapeze artists, trampoline experts, saucer jugglers, and even costumed dancing pigs.

The pair of Electric Magic shows, held on a Saturday and Sunday, were unlike anything ever attempted before in the world of rock music, and it turned out to be highly successful in terms of ticket sales.

But in execution, there was at least one gaffe, when one pair of dancing swine refused to perform. Their trainer was quoted in the press as saying, "They were good in rehearsal!"

Led Zeppelin played two hours and 40 minutes each night. And counting all the other acts on the bill, each show lasted a total of five hours in all.

Shortly after the gigs, Robert Plant remembered them this way:

"We did two nights. The first night, we had nerves, and we were hopping up and down, saying, 'Let's get on,' because it was really cold there. It's an ice rink! An ice skater's paradise. And they hadn't put the heaters on until a half an hour before [laughs]. Nine and a half thousand people freezing, and we were freezing. But it was good. It was really good 'cause once we got started, everybody was up, you know, everywhere. On the second night, they left the heating on all night long, so everybody was in a different -- a different mood again. It went really, really well."

We'll drive our ships to new lands

On this day in 1971, Led Zeppelin performed its first-ever concert in Japan. At the Budokan Hall in Tokyo, Zeppelin opened with "Immigrant Song," which had been No. 1 on the charts for a record stretch.


Onstage, between songs, Robert Plant talked extensively to the crowd about how much fun Zeppelin was already having in the country, even before one show was underway. And it's no wonder, based on the stories that have been told since then of Zeppelin's stay at the Tokyo Hilton, which resulted in a ban of any further stays there by the group.

Evidently, there was some mistaken peeping tom activity going on -- and an incident with a samurai sword where John Bonham cut up the wall of the hotel and left John Paul Jones sleeping in the hall. And finally, a fruit fight among Zeppelin's entourage clinched the Tokyo Hilton ban on Led Zeppelin.

Grow hair and sweat

On this day in 1971, Led Zeppelin played the first of two consecutive nights at the Community Theatre in Berkeley, California. Before an encore version of "Communication Breakdown," Robert Plant reflected on the third anniversary of the band's live debut, saying they were celebrating "thirty-six months in which we've grown hair, and we sweat."

First of 22 for Larry

On this day in 1971, photographer Larry Ratner attended Led Zeppelin's performance at the International Amphitheater in Chicago. It was the first of 22 times he saw Led Zeppelin perform live -- more, he says, than any other photographer.

But Ratner wasn't snapping pictures that day. Instead, what he saw onstage inspired him to shoot some pictures the next time Zeppelin returned. He explained in an interview with Lemon Squeezings last month:

"I had been working for a company where most of my duties were working in modeling schools with young ladies, taking their photos, and I found that to be, um, very interesting and very fulfilling.

"Some friends of mine turned me on to Led Zeppelin, and the first time we went to see them, September of '71 at the International Amphitheater in Chicago, I was pretty amazed at the show. And I said to myself that I wanted to make a serious point of capturing this on film as far as still photos. I wanted to use whatever photographic skills I had to try to capture something special because the experience stayed with me so long and had such an impact, I said, 'If I can do this just from my memory, what can I do with an actual film record of it?'

"... I was at 22 shows. I've only met one person, outside of any member of the band, who's ever saw Led Zeppelin saw more times than that as Led Zeppelin. He was a gentleman whose name was Caesar. He was an artist who was actually friends with Robert. He had been to over 50 Led Zeppelin shows."

South Fla. switcheroo

On this day in 1971, Led Zeppelin played in Hollywood, Florida, at the Sportatorium at Speedway Park. Originally, the concert was scheduled to take place in nearby Miami at the Jai Alai Fronton, but a change of venue was announced locally in advance of the gig. Either way, a poster from Concerts West billed Led Zeppelin "the world's greatest group."

Electric Magic 35th anniversary

On this day in 1971, Led Zeppelin was the headlining attraction playing alongside circus acts, among others, for the first of two six-hour spectacles dubbed Electric Magic.

The Nov. 20 and 21 shows incorporated the best acts in the realms of circus, vaudeville and rock music. Electric Magic was the first show of its kind with any live music groups. It featured three rock bands each night. Just preceding Led Zeppelin's sets was Stone the Crows, a group that shared Zep's manager, Peter Grant. Stone the Crows' singer was Maggie Bell, who again qualified as a footnote later in Led Zeppelin's history when she signed as a solo artist onto the Swan Song label.

On Nov. 21, taking the stage before Stone the Crows and Led Zeppelin, was a band called Home; that group's bassist, Cliff Williams, would join AC/DC six years later. On Nov. 20, the opening act was Bronco. Two members of that band, guitarist Kevyn Gammond and bassist John Pasternak, had been bandmates with Robert Plant and John Bonham in the Band of Joy. Another Bronco guitarist, Robbie Blunt, would play for Plant's solo outings between 1981 and 1985.

Aside from the musical acts, the Electric Magic shows feature an array of everything from trapeze artists to a pair of performing pigs. In the case of the Nov. 20 show, the pigs were non-performing; the swine refused to act on cue that night, and their trainer insisted in the British press that "they were good in rehearsal!" At least the press reported that the pigs were well dressed. During the changeover between Stone the Crows' set and Led Zeppelin's, oddball attractions were on tap, including trampoline experts and saucer jugglers.

Led Zeppelin's sets are said to have lasted more than two hours and 40 minutes each night. They performed songs both old and new. The band's untitled fourth album was fresh out on the streets, and half of that new material made the set list. In fact, all of that new material was pushed toward the beginning of the concert.

Opener "Immigrant Song" led directly into "Heartbreaker." The band paused for Plant to welcome the audience with a hearty "Good evening!" before launching into the new "Black Dog." The third album's "Since I've Been Loving You" made an appearance next, before two fourth-album cuts, "Rock and Roll" and "Stairway to Heaven" -- yes, "Stairway" was only the sixth song in a show that would last so long!

Next up was another new song -- so new that the band hadn't yet recorded it! The Electric Magic audience on Nov. 20 was treated to the first-ever sneak preview performance of "Dancing Days." This early version lacked the instrumental bridge portion that appears between the last two verses on future versions, including the one Zeppelin eventually recorded and released a year and a half later on its followup LP, Houses of the Holy.

"Going to California" from the fourth album ushered in a three-song acoustic set also featuring "That's the Way" and "Tangerine." Next was the showstopping "Dazed and Confused," during which Page's violin bow solo included an altered portion of the Bouree lute suite by Johann Sebastien Bach, which he had also teased during his guitar solo in "Heartbreaker." "Dazed" lasted about 24 minutes and was followed by the refreshingly brief "What Is and What Should Never Be" and "Celebration Day." A version of the drum solo "Moby Dick" that verged on 20 minutes in length was next, and a marathon medley of "Whole Lotta Love" and classic covers finished out Zeppelin's set on the first Electric Magic concert.

Originally, that date was the only Electric Magic show scheduled, but a high demand for tickets dictated otherwise. For a price of 75 pence apiece, tickets to the first show had gone onsale at Harlequin Records locations across England, at 11 a.m. on Nov. 5. The supply of 9,500 tickets was depleted within 54 minutes.

Ray Moss, manager of one Harlequin location, reported that lines of people were forming outside his shop the night before tickets were to go on sale. Moss said that the people in the lines were courteous. "Their behavior was quite incredible," he remarked. "Even those who could not get tickets behaved perfectly."

"We have never known such an amazing demand for tickets," said Buffalo Concert Presentations' Rikki Farr, "and that includes the Isle of Wight concerts." Farr was referring to the U.K. music festival held over three days in June 1970, featuring some of the top rock acts from all around the world -- but not Led Zeppelin.

Farr continued, "It is a sure sign of the huge following Zeppelin have in Britain. Because of this, we've decided to stage a second concert at Wembley." The statement quickly announced the date of the second night of Electric Magic; tickets were on sale Nov. 12.

Live set?

On this day in 1971, Led Zeppelin performed at the Mayfair "Fillmore North" in Newcastle, as part of the "Return To The Clubs" U.K. tour.

No audience recordings were made of the show, but it is very possible that Led Zeppelin had the concert recorded. Jimmy Page mentioned throughout the following years that his vault of live Led Zeppelin recordings include a number of professionally recorded concerts from the era. He frequently mentioned an amazing gig captured at Southampton University, which preceded the Fillmore North show by exactly one week.

These tapes, he repeated again and again over the years, could be released someday on a Led Zeppelin live box set. Although no official chronological live compilation has ever emerged from Page, he's never forgotten his words. In early 2000, he would state that he would hate to spend a lot of time working on such a set, only to have it vetoed by another former member of Led Zeppelin.

However, there's still hope that there will be some sort of a chronological live compilation. The DVD format opens up new possibilities for this, which I'm sure Page has explored at great lengths. There was talk in December 2001 of such a set being released in spring 2002. John Paul Jones told me on Dec. 10, "I can't imagine it will be out by the spring -- not the way we make decisions, anyway!" He turned out to be correct.