Zeppelin and Me

Guest Post by starfcker

I’ve been thinking about this subject for a long time. I got a shirt for Christmas that says, “I may be old, but I got to see all the great bands.” That’s a true statement. Kids nowadays have no idea how good we had it in the seventies and eighties. Before digital, bands had to go out there and make music. Much tougher thing to do consistently and with excellence than you might imagine. My first musical influences were country. I had a radio, and basically that was what the channels were in my area. A lot of songs that every country fan knows came out of that late sixties early seventies era that are still around today. Music can be timeless. But when I was 12 years old at summer camp, there was another kid with a radio and he had it on the rock station in Palm Beach county.

First rock song I remember was “Reelin In The Years”, by Steely Dan. I loved that song. By the time I went home a week later I forgotten all about country music, and started listening almost exclusively to rock. I was completely drawn in by it. I had never heard anything like it. That early 70s was a great time for that kind of music. Lots of bands hit their peak then. Bands were mysterious, there wasn’t much press about them, most of what you knew about them came from studying album covers. I started going to concerts when I was about 15. Being at the south end of Florida, most big tours skipped us. It was just too far to drive for one show. When bands played Florida, they played Jacksonville or Orlando or Tampa.

Our venue down here was terrible also. The Hollywood Sportatorium. What a dump. The walls and roof from about halfway up were made of corrugated sheet metal , which  most of you can figure out is a fine acoustic surface. Now throw in maximum volume, and you have an echo that never stopped. But it was all we had. And most bands that you’ve ever heard of made it through the sportatorium in their early years. The roster of shows there is very impressive, but the place was hot, loud, crowded and insane. South Florida was pretty redneck back in those days. Fights were very common, but even when it was very peaceful we lacked any veneer of sophistication.

One of the bands that I liked most back in those days was Led Zeppelin. They had a lot of albums and a lot of good songs. They received heavy play on our local rock station, and I was very intrigued by them. Physical Graffiti was the first album I ever bought, and still one of my favorites. In 1975, they scheduled a Led Zeppelin concert in West Palm Beach. It was the talk of my high school, everybody was planning on going. Unfortunately for us, the sheriff of Palm Beach County decided that there was no way in hell that sort of garbage was coming to his county, and cancelled the show. We were bummed. He went on TV and said he felt that a concert like that would be trouble.

I remember my parents being happy that it was cancelled. I had no way idea why. Maybe they suspected  I was planning on attending, I certainly hadn’t mentioned it to them . That was only the first of my many Led Zeppelin disappointments. They continued to crank out albums in the next couple of years, Presence and Song Remains the Same came out, so there was plenty of new music to keep us satisfied, but no shows. Finally in 1977, they decided to tour again, and scheduled a concert at Tampa Stadium. Well by this point I could drive. I was 16 or 17, and there was no way I was going to miss this. Neither was anybody in my high school. The concert was set for June 3rd.

The prospect of the whole thing, especially after getting crushed in 1975, was exciting. So we waited patiently for information about where to buy tickets, and finally got the word that they would sell them at the Orange Bowl Stadium in Miami, at 8 o’clock one morning. So myself and most of my friends went off to the Orange Bowl, to spend the night waiting in line. When we got there, there were thousands of people already. We had brought lawn chairs , but quickly wished we had brought chaise lounges, like the smarter people had. Tough to sleep in a chair. We dozed our way through a very uncomfortable night, and I’ll never forget right around dawn somebody screamed “Look!” And there just outside the fence, was 100 cops in full riot gear.

Unbeknownst to us peacefully sleeping in line, other fans had broken into the Orange Bowl and rampaged through the stadium, doing tremendous damage. The problem was now, there were all these riot cops, and we all looked the same to them. And mind you, there was five or ten thousand people out there, so a clash look inevitable. They broke out the bullhorns, and ordered everyone off the stadium grounds, and to line up outside. They then closed the chain link gates, and weren’t going to open them until 8 a.m., when the tickets went on sale. Bad plan. When you have 5000 people at least, in a line twenty or thirty people across, and everybody’s pushing forward, a chain link fence becomes very flimsy stuff.

The police started whacking people’s fingers stuck through the chain link with their billy clubs, the poor people at the very front were so smashed up against the fence that they couldn’t do anything about it. It was very unfair thing to do. This enraged the crowd, and since most people had beer bottles in their hands, the police very quickly became the target of a massive aerial barrage. Since we decided to fight, the police decided that they would fight also. They opened the gate and headed into the crowd swinging those clubs. They also started putting on their gas masks, and sure enough, started firing tear gas as fast as they could.

Now you had an almost surreal situation, as five or ten thousand crazed Zeppelin fans spread out through the neighborhood around the Orange Bowl, running for their lives, with the police in hot pursuit. The neighborhood around the Orange Bowl at that time was all Cuban immigrants, and we could see them peeking out from behind their blinds as we stormed through their yards. They had no idea what was going on outside. After about a half hour 45 minutes of intense battle, 8 o’clock was approaching and everybody sort of calmed down. That was fun and all, but we had to get back to the serious business of buying tickets. The police had gotten tired also, running out of tear gas, and all that equipment was kind of hot to wear, so they were pretty much spent, too.

So somehow, in pretty short order, everyone ended up in a nice orderly line, tears streaming down their faces from the gas, and all the nice officers that have been busting our heads 15 minutes before, were politely letting us into the ticket window. Bygones, you know? Nobody got arrested. Nobody. Almost hard to believe. Nobody found a single complaint against the cops. Like I said, it was exciting and kind of fun, actually. Probably the most excitement those cops that had in a long time. We all bought the maximum amount of tickets allowable, 6 or 8, I can’t remember. But we knew they were gold. Face value was 10 bucks, I don’t think I said sold any of my spares for less than $50.

That was a lot of money in 1977 to go to a concert. Most shows were 5 or 6 bucks. The oversized tickets were beautiful things, shiny silver paper, with purple writing and graphics. Front and back, they also stated, rain or shine. More on that later. June came quickly enough and everyone going to the show was getting more exited about it. The concert was on a Friday, me and all my friends left Thursday night. We slept in a parking lot at Tampa Stadium, there were a lot of cars already there. When we woke up the parking lot had been transformed into a city. That Stadium holds about 75,000 people. Kids had come from all over the state to see the show.

Florida only had about 8 or 9 million residents at that point, in time, so almost 1% of the state showed up to see Zeppelin. They opened the gates and let us into the stadium at about 10 or 11 . The setup Zeppelin had was massive. Huge stage, huge light show, huge speaker banks, way bigger than anything I had seen in my life. It was awesome. The show didn’t start till 8 o’clock, it was basically a big summer party all day in the stadium. Back in those days the drinking age in Florida was 18, but it was never strictly enforced, and you were allowed to bring coolers full of glass bottles into a concert like that, which we did. We drank dark Becks in those days, very tasty beer when ice cold. That day was lots and lots of fun.

As showtime drew near, the crowd became very focused and restless. I remember thinking, I’m finally going to get to see Led Zeppelin. We had spectacular seats off to the right of the stage, about 10 rows up. Perfect view. Our plan was to migrate to the front, eventually. In those days they had what they called festival seating, no seats on the field, and first come first serve on everything else. Your ticket got you in the gate, and then you’re on your own. The day was growing long as 8 o’clock approached, the sun going down was relief from the heat. Unknown to us, an enormous black cloud was approaching from the west. And then suddenly there they were. Right on time, no announcement, no drama, Led Zeppelin just walked out and took their places on stage.

Jimmy Page was the craziest looking thing I’ve ever seen. He had on a white silk suit with embroidered dragons and other things. He was wearing sunglasses and he had his famous Gibson double-neck guitar. They checked that they were plugged in, Bonzo settled in behind the drums and off they went. They started with Song Remains the Same, which has a long guitar intro, and watching Jimmy Page high step across the stage shredding that intro will be burned into my mind forever. It was the loudest thing I ever heard in my life. When it came time for Robert Plant to start singing, the crowd was cheering so loudly it drowned out the band. One of the bootleg recordings from the show catches that moment perfectly.

The place was going nuts. The band was in the mood, it looked like it was going to be a great show. On that tour, they usually played in excess of three hours. They also had spent big money on lasers and other things that while common nowadays, back then where a real big deal. next they played the intro to The Rover, and then segued right into Sick Again. The crowd was still in full frenzy as they finished that song and Robert took a few moments to address the crowd while Jimmy changed guitars. Now he had his Les Paul #1, the most iconic guitar in his collection. They started playing Nobody’s Fault But Mine, and as they did, that big black cloud started creeping over the edge of the stadium.

Weather in Florida is very immediate, you can go from clear sky to monsoon in the blink of an eye. Judging from the color of that cloud, it was about to get ugly. And it did. About exactly the time Robert Plant broke out his harmonica, the sky let loose, and it started pouring like there was no tomorrow. Talk about a kick in the teeth. We had the best band in the world in front of us, and they had brought their A-game, and now it’s raining so hard you couldn’t see five feet in front of you. Everyone basically headed under the stadium, soaking wet, and we could hear the band finishing the song behind us. Robert said that they were going to retreat and wait it out because they didn’t want to get electrocuted.

The rain stopped after 45 minutes or so, and by now it was fully night time. Everyone headed back into the stadium, to be met head on by our old friends the riot cops. The Tampa cops did not have as much gear as the Miami ones, but they had the night sticks and they were a hell of a lot meaner. But once again my team had beer bottles, which made for a fairly good fight. They drove everybody out of the stadium, and turned 75,000 soaking wet, pissed off Zeppelin fans loose in the city of Tampa. Word was that the show was going to be rescheduled for the next night, Saturday night. So everyone just kind of hunkered down and made the best of it. The next morning the radio gave us the bad news.

The mayor of Tampa had decided, because of the rioting, they were not going to allow Zeppelin to reschedule the show, and in fact had banned them from ever coming back. We were so screwed. Some friends of mine from school decided to shoot over to Orlando and go to Disney World. They ran into Robert Plant and his entourage, and while he posed for some pictures, they said he was pretty shook up and depressed about the whole thing. 10 weeks later, Robert’s son died suddenly back in England, and they cancelled the rest of the tour. Snake bit again. The band laid low for a few years, and then in 1979 put out another album and played the Knebworth Festival in England. They then did a little summer tour of Europe in 1980.

I always came home from college and worked construction for the summers, and one of my friends called me and told me that Zeppelin was going to play three shows at the Capitol Center in DC in October, and he had some good info as to when tickets went on sale. I came back for school a little late that year, as I had some business in New York City, but I made it back the day before tickets went on sale. My buddy called me the next day, and said he would pick me up and we would go camp out to buy tickets. I lived out in the country at that time, and when he showed up he had bad news. He had heard on the radio on the drive over that John Bonham had died, and that the tour was cancelled. I guess it was fate. I never was supposed to see Led Zeppelin.

I’m 55 years old. It would be very difficult to be any younger than me and have seen them live. 10 weeks after the aborted Tampa show, they played their last concert in the United States, and never came back. So I got my 20 minutes, and it was a blazing 20 minutes. And a great memory. Now with the internet it’s much easier to understand how fragile that band was, by that point in time anyway. I went to Philadelphia in 1985 to the Live Aid show specifically to see what a reformatted Led Zeppelin might look like. Although I have great memories of that show too, they are more nostalgia than amazing. The magic was gone. I saw both Plant and Page several times as they toured the states in subsequent years, i don’t remember anything about those shows. I may be old but I got to see the greatest band of all time. (For 20 minutes)