★ThatOneMusicAddict★

They started February 27th in Fort Worth, Texas, and continued through Houston, Baton Rouge, Oklahoma City, Dallas, Tempe, San Diego, and Los Angeles through March 13th.

After a two week vacation break, Zep will be back for concerts in April in the Midwest and Canada. May 1st through 19th find Plant, Page, Bonham and Jones collapsed, at home in England, and then back here for Southern dates, ending up in New York City for multiple shows at Madison Square Garden in June.

That’s not all folks. Watch for the world’s biggest band to return in the summer for a few of those big, outdoor stadium concerts. While last summer’s stadium saturation proved a bomb for many bands, Led Zeppelin will surely have no trouble filling these massive places.

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The first time I saw Zeppelin close up was in Jacksonville, Florida, on their 1973 tour. Jacksonville was hot, and it was one of those cities where, when you got off the plane, it smelled as if they had a bread factory there. I had seen the band before, at Madison Square Garden years ago, but somehow I didn’t feel the power, the full force of this foursome … until I was actually up close (lucky enough to be able to watch from the side of the stage).

Of course, from then on, I was a fan, and I could have been at the back of the hall for all I care (well…) and loved Zep’s lengthy shows.

Zep fans realize how subtle those shows are… the heavy metal riffs that they can do in their sleep aside, the music has changed, developed, and constantly grows. I always get a kick out of watching Robert carry on onstage, and Jimmy’s guitar playing is in a class by itself.

So - I, along with all of you who go nuts over this group, am pleased that they’ll be back this year for such a major tour. They’ll cover the entire U.S. … and then be back in the summer for some special concerts.

Remembering some of the times I’ve been on the road with the band, these things come to mind:

New Orleans, 1973: Lounging around the pool at the top of the Royal Orleans Hotel. Robert wearing a red bikini, Jimmy fully dressed in red (I think) velvet trousers and a print shirt. I interviewed both of them for the first time, and Robert was so easy to talk to I was relieved. Jimmy was slightly more hesitant, revealing little, yet we talked about his music for over an hour and I felt comfortable with the band from that moment on.

After the New Orleans shows, we went to the Deja Vu, it was a full moon, everybody drank too much, and I’ll always think of New Orleans that way.

New York, 1973: I had seen the band a few times since the early New Orleans days - I think we flew in the Starship to Pittsburgh and I begged them to allow photographer Bob Gruen to take a group shot of them (something they never seemed to want to get together). Roy Harper was on the plane with the lads, and he and Robert posed for pix on the white (it’s since been dyed black) fake fur bedspread in the bedroom of the back of the Starship.

By the time they were to play Madison Square Garden, it was the end of the tour, they were tired. That Madison Square Garden set of gigs has been fully documented in Zep’s film, “The Song Remains the Same” - so it needn’t be discussed heavily here. But recalling the final night, and the robbery which lost Zep several hundred thousand dollars, Jimmy said to me recently:

“It was a night when we came offstage and Peter (Grant) had a funny expression on his face … But we knew, didn’t we … halfway through the gig. I was amazed that somebody had the balls to do it…”

Robert interjected: “Well, it was another one of those things that you don’t anticipate. What are you gonna do? Break down and cry? We’d just played a great gig, and that’s what we’d started for in the first place…”

***

1975 brought them back - and all I remember about that tour was a series of short hops on the Starship to various cities: Detroit, Montreal, and so forth. The band travels with a tight entourage; it’s really a very small group of people that go with Zeppelin, unlike other bands who seem to pick up new friends in every city. Richard Cole, tour manager, runs the show with a firm hand … indeed, it would be hard put to imagine Led Zeppelin without Cole or Peter Grant, the manager who is surely the fifth member of the band.

Chicago, 1975: I do remember John Bonham in the dressing room roaring, “I came in after Karen Carpenter on the Playboy drummer poll…” He didn’t seem amused. And John Paul Jones didn’t want to be quoted on a snide remark he’d made. “That’s not going to be my first quote in ten years,” he insisted, and I’ve forgotten what it was.

When the band came back to New York this year for the premiere of their movie, “The Song Remains the Same”, they seemed pleased with the film, and enthusiastic about their promoting it. But anyone who knew them could tell that they were just itching to get back on the road… playing onstage is what it’s about for this band, and nothing gets their adrenalin going quite so much.

Talking about the film, Jimmy said: “The pull of the music, well, it can’t be escaped, it’s there and it pulls one into it. There are points onstage where you can tell that concentration strays … or the mind fills up. But when you weigh the whole film, you’ve got musical sections, you’ve got a night frozen in time like a documentary of what it was, fantasy sequences, and then the documentary proper - which was the robbery. We don’t play that up much, in fact it was quite tongue in cheek if you really think about it.”

“But of course we want to get back on the road, that’s what it’s about, isn’t it? We just didn’t have any choice, what with the accident and all. You don’t start dictating to nature. But as soon as we can, we’ll be back.”