Led Zeppelin: Under The Hood – A Backstage Chronicle Of The Historic 1975 Tour

This article originally appeared on Circus, May 1975

THERE WAS an historic purple aura in the clouds that hung over the audience at Madison Square that evening in February.

It wasn't simply the fact that it had been 18 months since Zep had set foot on an American stage. Or the fact that Physical Graffiti had been dangling like a giant luscious carrot before the eager beasts of rock. It was that the Led Zeppelin fever was breaking now at last. It had been a fever of wildfire contagion, catching and spreading across the U.S. in a fashion spectacular, even to the hysteria-fed regulars.

'Stairway To Heaven' was getting more airplay in those weeks before Zeppelin arrived than it had when the song broke four years ago. Phones had been jangling continuously in the Swan Song offices since the tour was announced with voices on the other end asking endless questions about tour dates, arenas, tickets. Fans lined up days before box offices even thought of opening in freezing January conditions. Long before the opening chords at Madison Square Garden, or the Civic Auditorium or the War Memorial, Led Zeppelin knew they were up for the biggest challenge of their lives. They had to live up to their own precedent, their own image; they had to break their own record. No one else had come near them. And they couldn't delay any longer; performance time had arrived.

Since that magical tour there have been many speculations about what happened, but few actual facts recorded. After he returned to New York, and began to catch his breath, Danny Goldberg, the pony-tailed Vice President of Zep's Swan Song Records, decided to chronicle some of the behind the scene highlights of the Zep zenith juggernaut. The story presented to Circus Magazine revealed a calm in the midst of the hurricane – a unique perspective on the affair. – K.S.

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BEING THE biggest has its difficulties. You constantly have to outdo yourself and then the hours of hard work are merely taken for granted. While other companies strive for success as a goal, with Swan Song success was taken for granted. Our major concern and effort was to avoid disaster.

Led Zeppelin was in the same position in terms of their musical responsibility. Their enormous popularity was based on what they had done in the past. Ticket sales were reassuring but the challenge was to give the crowds even more than they expected – an incredibly difficult task considering the Zeppelin fans who view them almost as gods. Yet Zeppelin had always topped themselves – with each album a musical departure – with each tour a new show. They had built what a manager of another big rock group called "the biggest audience anyone has ever had in the history of the world" – the challenge was to expand and to keep taking the fans they had higher with their music rather than merely rehashing old memories. The Beatles had always changed their music and expanded their art – but only on records – never live.

One fan of Zeppelin compared their concerts to the Stones as follows: on a scale of one to ten, the Stones would start at 10 and keep you there all the way through – satisfying and powerful. Zeppelin would start at nine – occasionally dip to eight or seven – but wind up at 13 – higher than even their most devoted fans could have predicted.

Elastic set: One night in Cleveland, Jimmy warned Robert that he was tired and to expect short solos – then he went out and did more than eight minutes in 'Over The Hills And Far Away'. Afterwards Robert said "short solos, huh" and Jimmy just grinned and shrugged. The interaction with the crowd had given him a tremendous spurt of new energy. Zeppelin's show was planned to last two and a half hours. When a song was taken out at the very beginning because of the bone broken in Jimmy's finger, the set for the first show in Minneapolis was two hours and fifteen minutes. Just a little over three weeks later it was running more than three and a half hours with the same number of songs. The band had simply created that much more pure music by playing live.

Zep arrived at Chicago's O'Hare Airport on January 16th, and no one except Jonesy had a coat. Somehow it hadn't occurred to the others that it would be cold in the midwest in January. Robert with his typically half-open shirt, caught a cold draft that became the flu that was to affect his singing for the first week and cause the postponement of the St. Louis gig. Jimmy had broken that bone in his finger on an English train two weeks before. After a night of rehearsal in Minneapolis, and a concert there the following night which the band agreed was "good for an opening night gig," they played their first of three dates in Chicago with Robert's voice faltering and without 'Dazed and Confused', traditionally the improvisational highpoint of Zeppelin's show. Jimmy's finger wasn't up to it – thus no violin bow – and no extended solo adventure. The reviews were good. They cited the band – even when sick – as being still the best in the world. The crowd roared and insisted on two encores. The new material – not to be heard on radio for a month – went over great. They did 'Kashmir', 'In My Time Of Dying', 'Wanton Song', 'Sick Again' and 'Trampled Under Foot' from the new album but the band in a state rare for them, was depressed and disappointed in their own show. After hours of discussion the set was changed. 'When The Levee Breaks' was dropped. 'In My Time Of Dying' was moved to the beginning of the show; and 'How Many More Times', which the band hadn't played in five years, was put in near the end before 'Stairway'. It became the replacement vehicle for the band to improvise – on which Jimmy could do his violin bow guitar solo. I mentioned to Jonesy that the audience liked to be taken on a trip with the music. "So do we," he said.

Those first two shows were really carried by Jones and Bonzo whose drum solo 'Moby Dick' was described by Robert as "the life preserver that kept the show afloat." "I've lengthened the solo," said Bonzo that night, "so that the lads can have a rest."

The second night in Chicago – the third night of the tour – turned it all around. From the opening notes of 'Rock And Roll', Zeppelin was out there fighting – not only to please the audience who was thrilled just to have gotten tickets – but to please themselves. They succeeded. "There was a minute there when I thought we'd lost it after that first Chicago show," admitted Robert later. "The whole idea of Zeppelin has always been getting each other off – and that was missing until the second night. Then it suddenly came together – we looked at each other and we all knew it – we were there again. The magic had returned."

Magic. One of the causes of Zeppelin magic is surely their daring. "We've got to keep the new material in the show," said Bonzo the night before "because otherwise we're not growing." He had gotten to the concert halls earlier than the others on the first few gigs, not satisfied until he got his drum sound perfect. "If the drums sound like thunder, I play like thunder," he told Jimmy – "if they sound just OK I play that way too." 'Moby Dick', the longest drum solo in rock got the most applause nightly of any drum solo in rock as Bonzo's physical output equalled that of an Olympian athlete. Each night at the end of the solo – after he has played the 'Whole Lotta Love' melody on the timpany, Bonzo makes an air-gushing sound into one of his mikes. A friend asked him one night what that meant. "It's a train pulling into the station," he grinned.

Page gives the finger: Jimmy's "two-and-a-half fingered playing" was truly a tribute to his greatness, he fought back physical pain night after night to put forth the brilliance that Zeppelin fans have come to take for granted. His musical loves are as diverse as James Brown, Joni Mitchell, and the classical composer Ravel. In New York he rented a film projector and showed several films including Lucifer Rising by Kenneth Anger for which he did the music. He was particularly happy when John Paul Jones complimented him on it "because Jonesy's got such high standards musically." By the New York show Jimmy was ready for 'Dazed And Confused'. That's the quintessential song which in Robert's words "cut across many colors of the spectrum of what we do...." having grown incalculably since the first album when it was recorded. "It was in writing that song that we knew we were going to stay together," he remembered. It unquestionably is Page's vehicle. There is no guitar part like it in rock and roll.

Banned in Boston: When tickets went on sale in Boston, an unfortunate set of circumstances caused a small number of those standing on line for tickets all night to do some damage to the Boston Gardens. Having been plagued by racial problems for several months, the city government of Boston had cancelled several concerts including those scheduled by the Jackson Five and Marvin Gaye. Zeppelin was also cancelled there. As a result – several reporters asked the group if they felt there was any "violence" in their music. "What our music is about is positivity," said Robert many times, "just trying to put across an energy which we feel to lift an audience and ourselves. The idea is to communicate with 20,000. And to see by the end of the show that people are satisfied – that they've gotten off."

From my point of view, as amazing as the artistic striving of the band, was the unpredictably intense reactions they create among fans. There was, for instance, the girl who called up several times and finally got through. I was indignant that there had been any problem. "I know that the band is going to want to talk to me," she said, "because I've been told they wrote 'Stairway To Heaven' about me." I asked who told her, but she wouldn't say. "Did anybody in the band know her?" I asked. "I think so," was the reply – "You're not sure if they know you or not?" "Well I'm pretty sure – they should know me if they wrote that song about me." I asked Robert who wrote 'Stairway's' lyrics and he has a perfectly good memory for such things; he shrugged his shoulders in bewilderment.

Another girl called up and demanded that the group play in Clinton, New Jersey. She didn't know of any particular building in that town for them, she just felt that they owed it to their fans to play somewhere in the town. She was positive if only she could talk to a member of the group she could convince them. One interesting new trend was the appearance of kids with paintings of the band – some psychedelic – some copied carefully from photographs. Most of the artists just wanted to give the people in the band the paintings – or occasionally sell them for a small nominal fee. One girl, however, left a painting with Robert and then had her father call the next day demanding $10,000 for it! The painting was returned.

The subject of money always comes up concerning Zeppelin especially since the robbery in 1973 of almost $200,000 from a safe deposit box at the Drake Hotel, money the group had earned at Madison Square Garden. Ironically, those gigs were the only ones in Zeppelin's career where they were holding so much cash because of a technical mix-up with the promoter of those concerts whose deal with the Garden forced payment to the group in cash. During all of the 1975 tour – as in previous tours, no cash was used. At early Zeppelin concerts in 1975, as Peter Grant would walk around the back of the arenas to see and hear the group at a distance, several fans came up to him and said "We were afraid that you would never want to come back to our country after what happened last year. Thank you and Zeppelin for playing here again."

Merely to live up to the Led Zeppelin image they created was the task of the 1975 tour but satisfaction – for both group and fans demanded that the reality be better than the image – otherwise Zeppelin would be another "nostalgia" band – from the early seventies yet. Personally, I think they pulled it off mainly through the new material – the hypnotic 'Kashmir', the sex-motorcar analogy 'Trampled Under Foot', the definitive statement about groupies and fans in 'Sick Again', and especially the amazing slide guitar work and blues vocal on 'In My Time Of Dying'. There's no question that the roar at the history of rock – I don't think there has ever been a more popular song; but one great song is not the reason for Zeppelin's greatness – rather I think it is their unpredictability, their constant state of change. In the song called 'Houses Of the Holy', from the new album, Robert Plant asks "If the music be your master, will you heed the master's call?" It is a question that Zeppelin asks itself as often as it asks its audience.