It was 52 years ago…

Next Tuesday marks the 52nd anniversary of one of the most famous Led Zeppelin performances -their bill topping appearance at the 1970 Bath Festival.

Too mark that event here’s the details of that performance as chronicled in the Evenings With Led Zeppelin book

June 28, 1970 – Bath Festival of Blues & Progressive Music ‘70 – Bath & West Showground – Shepton Mallet, England

Setlist:

Immigrant Song, Heartbreaker, Dazed And Confused, Bring It On Home, Since I’ve Been Loving You, Organ Solo/ Thank You, That’s The Way (introduced as ‘The Boy Next Door’), What Is And What Should Never Be, Moby Dick, How Many More Times Medley (inc. Rice Pudding, Mr. Soul, Beck’s Bolero, Down By The River, The Hunter, Think You Need A Shot (The Needle), Honey Bee, Long Distance Call, Boogie Chillun’, Hideaway, El Paso Blues, The Lemon Song, I Need Your Love Tonight, That’s All Right, etc.), Whole Lotta Love, Communication Breakdown (inc. Sing A Simple Song, It’s Your Thing, etc.), Long Tall Sally (inc. Say Mama, Johnny B. Goode, That’s All Right

 Background Info:

Much has been said and written about Led Zeppelin’s historic performance at the 1970 Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music. It was certainly a key turning point in the band’s career, especially in their homeland. Just over two months earlier, The Beatles had officially called it quits, and by the time the Bath Festival had wrapped up, it was clear that Led Zeppelin was now the most popular band in the world. “Official” declaration of this fact came in the form of the Melody Maker Poll Awards in September, when Zeppelin had seized the mantle from The Beatles and were named the World’s Top Group.

Unlike the 1969 Bath Festival which was held at the Recreation Ground in Bath, the 1970 Bath Festival was held at the Bath & West Showground in Shepton Mallet, 15 miles south west of Bath. The attendance at the 1970 Festival was significantly higher than the previous year, with over 150,000 fans in attendance (the 1969 Festival was considerably smaller, with Zeppelin performing to approximately 12,000 fans).

The band played on the second day of the festival, June 28, and started their performance at 8:30 pm. The set opener was the newly-penned Immigrant Song, which bore little resemblance to the LP track as Robert had ad-libbed much of the lyrics. For the next two hours and twenty minutes, the band put on one of the greatest performances of their storied career.

Press Reaction:

Melody Maker (July 4, 1970) – Cover Story: Five Encores for Zeppelin!

by Chris Welch & Chris Charlesworth:

 “Led Zeppelin stormed to huge success at the Bath Festival. 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.”

 Bootleg Recordings – 2 audience sources (129 & 119 minutes):

For years, the only bootleg recording available of Zeppelin’s set was a barely listenable audience recording. Fortunately, a major upgrade of the recording appeared in 2010 from a second generation tape. The taper recorded the performance on a Sony tape deck with a stereo microphone attached to a pole twelve feet in the air, 200 yards from center stage. While certainly not perfect, the recording captures the festival atmosphere and gives the listener more of an appreciation for the outstanding gig.

Beginning with a different lyrical arrangement of the recently written ‘Immigrant Song’ as the show opener, the band started strong and never let up in delivering one of their all-time greatest performances.

The encores were especially epic, with many rarities played during the ‘How Many More Times’ medley (with the total number of available concert recordings of each song in parentheses): Buffalo Springfield’s ‘Mr. Soul’ (1); Muddy Waters’ ‘Long Distance Call’ (6); Big Joe Williams’ ‘El Paso Blues’ (2); Elvis Presley’s ‘I Need Your Love Tonight’ (3). Little Richard’s ‘Long Tall Sally’ included Gene Vincent’s ‘Say Mama’ (2); Chuck Berry’s ‘Johnny B. Goode’ (1).

Many thanks to Mike Tremaglio  

Extract from the book Evenings With Led Zeppelin by Dave Lewis and Mike Tremaglio (Omnibus Press)

Staying with the Bath Festival…a report of the existence of film footage of the Bath appearance from 2017:

Icons of The Hall Event – Led Zeppelin Royal Albert Hall footage screened – Led Zeppelin at Bath 1970 film discussed…

Led Zeppelin

• Three snippets of Led Zeppelin’s August 19, 1971 performance in Vancouver, Canada have emerged online. Two clips from “Whole Lotta Love” were posted on Led Zeppelin’s official forum this week, joining another clip of “Rock And Roll” that was posted in 2020.

• Jason Bonham and his family saw an early screening of “Becoming Led Zeppelin,” the upcoming feature-length documentary about the origins of the band. Bonham told a podcast that he watched it along with his wife, while his mother also saw an early screening. He said he felt the audio recording of his father’s voice used sounded unfamiliar due to speed issues with the tape the audio was recorded on.

Jimmy Page

• Jimmy Page had dinner in London with Kiss frontman Paul Stanley and photographer Ross Halfin on June 8. Halfin posted two photographs of Page and Stanley together.

Robert Plant

• The first leg of Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’ world tour concluded on Friday when the pair performed at the Bonnaroo music festival in Manchester, Tennessee. Their June 16 show in Atlanta, Georgia was cut short after four songs due to severe weather and is now postponed until the autumn although the exact rescheduled date hasn’t been confirmed. Plant and Krauss were interviewed by The Washington Post about their work together and while on the road, Plant was photographed shopping for vinyl records at a record shop in Glens Falls, New York on June 3 and he attended the rededication of Muddy Waters Drive in Chicago, Illinois on June 8.

• There is now a short break in the world tour before Robert Plant and Alison Krauss kick off their European festival tour with a performance on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury Festival on June 24 from 6.15pm to 7.30pm UK time. The BBC has confirmed it will broadcast their performance online and on BBC Four at 8.30pm that evening.

• The latest episode of Robert Plant’s Digging Deep podcast discusses the song “Last Time I Saw Her (Remix)”.

• Patty Griffin released her latest album “TAPE” on June 10, a collection of archival recordings that includes a previously unreleased duet with Robert Plant titled “Don’t Mind”.

• Robert Plant reportedly attended a recent London performance by Deborah Bonham’s band Bonham-Bullick.

John Paul Jones

• John Paul Jones will perform at two tribute concerts being held to remember Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins. Jones will perform at the September 3 show in London as well as the September 27 show in Los Angeles. It’s possible that there may be a reunion of Them Crooked Vultures during the shows. All three core members of the band (Jones, Dave Grohl and Josh Homme) are scheduled to perform at both shows along with touring member Alain Johannes.

• Is John Paul Jones behind the Twitter account @JohnPaulJones? We dug into the clues that suggest he might be.

Upcoming events:

June 24 – Robert Plant and Alison Krauss will perform at Glastonbury Festival in Somerset, England on the Pyramid Stage from 6.15pm to 7.30pm UK time. It will be broadcast on BBC Four and on BBC iPlayer at 8.30pm UK time.
June 26 – Robert Plant and Alison Krauss will perform at BST Hyde Park in London, England.
June 29 – Robert Plant and Alison Krauss will perform at Roskilde Festival in Roskilde, Denmark.
July 1 – Robert Plant and Alison Krauss will perform in Hamar, Norway.
July 2 – Robert Plant and Alison Krauss will perform in Bergen, Norway.
July 5 – Robert Plant and Alison Krauss will perform in Rättvik, Sweden.
July 8 – Robert Plant and Alison Krauss will perform at Cactusfestival in Bruges, Belgium.
July 10 – Robert Plant and Alison Krauss will perform at the Royal Park Live festival in Baarn, Netherlands.
July 13 – Robert Plant and Alison Krauss will perform at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Montreux, Switzerland.
July 14 – Robert Plant and Alison Krauss will perform at the Lucca Summer Festival in Lucca, Italy.
July 16 – Robert Plant and Alison Krauss will perform at JazzOpen Stuttgart 2022 in Stuttgart, Germany.
July 18 – Robert Plant and Alison Krauss will perform in Sopot, Poland.
July 20 – Robert Plant and Alison Krauss will perform in Berlin, Germany.
August 15 – Robert Plant and Alison Krauss will perform in San Diego, California.
August 17 – Robert Plant and Alison Krauss will perform in Santa Barbara, California.
August 18 – Robert Plant and Alison Krauss will perform in Los Angeles, California.
August 20 – Robert Plant and Alison Krauss will perform in Stateline, Nevada.
August 21 – Robert Plant and Alison Krauss will perform in Berkeley, California.
August 23 – Robert Plant and Alison Krauss will perform in Napa, California.
August 25 – Robert Plant and Alison Krauss will perform in Bend, Oregon.
August 27 – Robert Plant and Alison Krauss will perform in Troutdale, Oregon.
August 28 – Robert Plant and Alison Krauss will perform in Redmond, Washington.
August 30 – Robert Plant and Alison Krauss will perform in Salt Lake City, Utah.
September 1 – Robert Plant and Alison Krauss will perform in Denver, Colorado.
September 3 – John Paul Jones will perform at the Taylor Hawkins tribute concert in London and Robert Plant and Alison Krauss will perform in Grand Prairie, Texas.
September 4 – Robert Plant and Alison Krauss will perform in Austin, Texas and the Black Country Beats exhibition at the Wolverhampton Art Gallery, which is set to include Robert Plant’s career, will close.
September 14 – The winners of the 2022 Americana Honors & Awards will be announced. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss are nominated in two categories.
September 27 – John Paul Jones will perform at the Taylor Hawkins tribute concert in Los Angeles.
October – The expanded edition of “Led Zeppelin – Five Glorious Nights” by Dave Lewis will be published.
October 19 – The French translation of “Led Zeppelin By Led Zeppelin” will be published.
December 22 – The paperback edition of “Beast: John Bonham and the Rise of Led Zeppelin” by C.M Kushins will be published.
Early 2023 – “A Whole Lotta Music: Life To My Ears,” the memoirs of Tight But Loose editor Dave Lewis, will be published.
2023 – The remastered and expanded 30th anniversary edition of “Coverdale–Page” will be released.

Many thanks to James Cook 

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss  at Glastonbury…

Robert Plant and The Sensational Space Shifters at Glastonbury 2014:

On Saturday I watched the truly excellent Robert Plant appearance at Glastonbury in 2014 on the BBC iPlayer.- this was part of the BBC’s superb Glastonbury retrospective coverage over the weekend. It prompted me to search out these original reviews from the time:

Robert Plant – Glastonbury Appearance Feedback:

Here’s a couple of reviews from Robert’s very well received Glastonbury appearance:

‘A whole lotta love for Robert Plant’ On the evidence of Glastonbury 2014 –

Robert Plant’s still got the vocal chops as well as the stadium charisma. By Neil McCormick

There was a whole lotta love for Robert Plant earlier on Saturday evening, although I suspect more than a few were secretly wishing he’d turned up with former compatriots Led Zeppelin, who never played Glastonbury.

His new band, the Sensational Space Shifters, concoct a fascinating hybrid of dub, jazz, afrobeat and blues well suited to such an eclectic festival, and an appreciative audience swayed in the setting sun to blissful world grooves. Still, it’s when they hit those familiar power chords and Jimmy Page riffs at the end of the set that everyone got to their feet.

It may have been a long, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time since he rock and rolled, but on this evidence Plant’s still got the vocal chops and stadium charisma, even with Gambian musician Juldeh Camara unconventionally soloing on a single string African fiddle.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/glastonbury/10933880/Robert-Plant-Metallica-Jack-White-at-Glastonbury-review-a-whole-lotta-love-for-Robert-Plant.html

Robert Plant at Glastonbury 2014 review – no Stairway, but storm-summoning moods from rock hero

Plant balances his own swampy blues with a handful of Zep classics for an affecting set from a man remoulding his history by mark Beaumont

Where and when: Pyramid stage, 5.30pm, Saturday.

Dress code: Guru shirts and wizardly beards

What happened: For a second, it really feels like he might do it. As the opening flamenco flurries of Joan Baez’s Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You – covered by Led Zeppelin on their 1969 debut – give way to a burst of pastoral arpeggios, a field full of blues-rock space cadets psychically will it as one: “make it Stairway …” Even Robert Plant himself, staring reverently at the whirling fingers of Liam “Skin” Tyson – a man with a beard James Hetfield might hunt – seems to want it to happen so he can forget all the mystical world-blues guff and pile into a full-throttle Zep-only set that would upend the Tor.

Instead, Plant grabs a shallow drum and announces “a jam of country and eastern music”, but one with enough twists to stop it being banished forthwith to the West Holts stage. On exotic instruments strung, bowed, plucked and thumped, Plant and his Sensational Space Shifters build storm-summoning moods on Tin Pan Valley, carve out affecting Afrobeat pop on the new track Rainbow and tinker with a handful of Zep classics. Black Dog becomes a dark, hippy vision of Glastos of yore, Going to California a mandolin meander, and What Is and What Should Never Be fracks directly into the ley line and syphons off the stone circle’s elemental charge. And just as the swampy blues numbers, played on guitars encrusted in actual moss, are getting to be too much, Plant ploughs into Whole Lotta Love – mashed into an Afrobeat Who Do You Love? – like a man at one with remoulding his own history to suit his whims. Hero.

High point: The crowd chant Plant back onstage for “One! Last! Song!” only for him to announce they’ll do an “old English folk song”. It’s Rock and Roll. The cad.

Low point: When Plant launches into a precise and pretentious handclap solo, as if his palms were hand-carved by Stradivarius.

In a tweet: No Stairway!

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/jun/29/robert-plant-at-glastonbury-2014-review

It was 42 years ago – Led Zeppelin Over Europe 1980: 

This month marks the 41st anniversary of the first dates of the final Led Zeppelin tour – a low key 14 date trek taking in Germany, Belgium, Holland, Austria and Switzerland. I was lucky enough to attend five of those gigs. This is all chronicled in my Led Zeppelin Feather In The Wind Over Europe 1980 book

Here’s is a further extract – my on the road account written at the time and first featured in TBL issue 5…

Led Zeppelin Over Europe 1980:

Frankfurt Festhalle – It was 42 years ago …

Flashback to the Frankfurt Festhalle, Germany – on the evening of June 30th, 1980 around 8pm:

I am in the confines of the grand Festhalle venue in the heart of Frankfurt and I am standing no more than ten feet away from the four members of Led Zeppelin. The occasion is the tenth gig on the current tour of the band who have reigned supreme as the world’s greatest live rock attraction for much of the past decade. However the 1980s are upon us, and many things have happened since Led Zeppelin undertook their last full scale tour some three years ago.

The musical landscape they one stood over like a colossus, has changed radically. The onset of punk rock and new wave has challenged the status quo of the mega-bands – the so called dinosaur acts.
In fact, Robert Plant will make reference to the dinosaur tag on more than one occasion on this tour. Aside from the new wave of bands who rely on sharp, incisive three minute blasts of power pop, a new movement of rock outfits, spawned on the hard and heavy riffs that powered Zeppelin to the top, are in the wings ready to take dislodge their crown.
Within the next twelve months, the likes of Def Leppard, Iron Maiden, Saxon, Diamond Head, etc., will begin to dominate the music press in a similar manner in which Zeppelin were once courted, ushering in a movement that will be termed ‘’The new wave of British heavy metal.’’

Led Zeppelin are performing in Europe in an attempt to thwart such challenges and re-establish themselves as a working band. That aforementioned last tour, a gargantuous trek across America in the summer of 1977, attracted a combined audience of nearly one million. Last August over 200,000 came to pay homage to them over two Saturday gigs at Knebworth.
Things, though, have moved on considerably, even since then. This tour has garnered little publicity back home, and though a hardcore of UK followers have made the trip over, by their standard this is a very low key affair.

Tonight, though, they are playing one of the larger venues on the tour. The 13,500 capacity Festhalle . Ten years ago, Zeppelin became the first band ever to play this venue and their return is much anticipated by the German audience. Tonight’s crowd is also boosted by the presence of a number of US servicemen based at the nearby US Army base where Elvis Presley did some of his time for Uncle Sam way back when.

Understandably, the four members look a little apprehensive as they mill around the short stairway that will soon usher them on to the stage. This is the second show of the tour that my friend Tom and I are taking in. Twelve days ago, we witnessed their vibrant second night in Cologne. Since then the tour has not been without it’s problems. Last Friday, John Bonham collapsed on stage in Nuremberg after just 16 minutes and the show was cancelled.
When we met with security man Dave Moulder earlier in the day, he was keen to play down the events saying John had merely suffered from nervous exhaustion. A show in Zurich last night appears to have gone well. The heavily bearded drummer seems his boisterous self as he banters with Robert Plant. Plant is again wearing the green cap sleeve top and jeans attire that has been his ever present uniform for the tour. He too looks upbeat, if a little bit nervous. John Paul Jones, with suave short hair and smart shirt, is interacting with them. Jimmy Page is dressed in a white suit with a green top and matching green sneakers. He looks slightly sweaty, but is smiling warmly as the imposing frame of manager Peter Grant points out the all important presence of Atlantic Records Ahmet Ertegun – the man who has guided their career at the label from the very beginning.

The lights are dimmed, and road manager Phil Carlo shines a torch through the dark and leads them up to the stage. Bonzo climbs the rostrum to the drums, Jonesy turns right where his tech assistant Andy Ledbetter straps on the Alembic bass, and Jimmy Page walks onto the stage to the left, followed by Robert Plant.

As they walk into the glare of the spotlights, those assembled in the Frankfurt Festhalle finally view all four members of Led Zeppelin and the place erupts.

Guitar tech Ray Thomas straps on the Gibson and Jimmy moves to the effects pedals. A few snare shots and bass shuffles from John Bonham is the signal for the guitarist to lean back and exhort a fierce moaning wail from the Gibson. Robert stakes a stance to his immediate right –the spotlights pick out the pair in regal splendour  and then BLAM!

They launch into Train Kept A Rollin’, the old Johnny Burnette barnstormer The Yardbirds used in their heyday, and indeed Zep played on their first US tours. Now it is being revived to kick start what will be two hours of full-on power and excitement.

Tom and I are extremely fortunate to be watching all this action unfold just a few mere feet from the stage. As the band begin their ascent to the stage, Peter Grant acknowledges us and nods approvingly as Dave Moulder ushers us to the side of the stage. In effect, we have been allowed into their tight-knit inner sanctum.

Watching Led Zeppelin live on stage from this ultimate vantage point is, unsurprisingly, an astonishing experience and one that we will repeat in Mannheim and Munich later in the week.

To be continued…

Extract from the book Led Zeppelin Feather In The Wind – Over Europe 1980 by Dave Lewis.

Thanks for listening – stay safe and well you very lovely people…