This Concert Flew Like a Led Zeppelin
Most music I like, some music I love.
Live music?
Not so much.
It has nothing to do with some of the bad experiences I’ve had at concerts. For example, lost my ticket to a Bob Seger concert at Madison Square Garden and watched the show from a railing.
Slept outside RFK Stadium to see Foreigner, Peter Tosh, and the Stones only to watch the Stones play a forty-five minute set then took off in their helicopter (The Stones drum kit destroyed by the angry concert goers’ beer bottle missiles hurled at the stage).
Was arrested (twice) at an Ian Hunter concert at Convention Hall in Asbury Park, New Jersey.
However, none of those incidents are the reason I don’t like live concerts. The reason I don’t like live concerts is because I saw Led Zeppelin at Madison Square Garden June of nineteen-seventy-seven.
I was sixteen-years-old when I started my senior year in high school for the class of nineteen-seventy-six. Younger than most, the majority of my class was a year or two older than me. That being the case, outside of high school, most of my friends were in the junior class.
With that said, the majority of the concert goers with me that night in nineteen-seventy-seven were seniors and needed to get up for school the next day.
It was going to be a long night (for them).
I’m sure drinking was definitely involved prior to the concert, so I was already compromised for what happened next.
After a few classic Zeppelin songs something odd happened. All four members of the band left the stage. It wasn’t time for an intermission, but it was time for something else.
Solos.
(I hate solos)
Eventually, one at a time, each member returned to the stage alone and played.
Jimmy Page played guitar, but he didn’t just play guitar with his hands, he played with his teeth.
He played guitar with a violin bow.
He played guitar behind his back.
It went on and on and on (twenty minutes or more)...
After that, exit Page, and cue John Paul Jones and whatever tricks he did with his bass (another twenty minutes).
Not sure when I started to fall asleep, probably during John Bonham’s slow motion drum solo (you guessed it, twenty minutes).
In hindsight, glad I never went to a Grateful Dead concert because I probably would have killed myself.
So what was going on backstage during those solos? I don’t know.
But was this going on backstage during those solos? Yeah, probably.
After a long (and surprisingly boring) concert we headed home. It’s a long ride from Madison Square Garden to Old Bridge, New Jersey via train, bus, and car. I was lucky, I just had to go to work the next day and there were plenty of places to take a quick nap in a warehouse.
My friends, on the other hand, would spend the next day in their high school classes, fighting off sleep and their teacher’s numerous inquiries of, “What the hell did you guys do last night?”
When I write these posts, sometimes I wonder if my memories are correct. The next two conversations I had about this concert recently did nothing to clear those doubts.
In a bar one night (of course) I mentioned this Zeppelin concert I saw in New York City. A friend at the table asked, “Nineteen-seventy-seven?”
“Yeah,” I answered.
He said his brother was at that show and told him, “it was the worst concert he ever went to.”
Jump to different night, different friend, same bar.
When I told this friend about the concert he also told me he was there.
“Best concert ever,” he said.
I replied, “That was the worst concert I ever went to.”
He seemed surprised.
“Well,” he said, “you must have been stoned.”
I assured him I wasn’t.
“Well,” he beamed, “I sure was!”
To each their own, I guess.
Album Cover Designed by George Hardie
Linked article from Vanity Fair ‘Stairway to Excess’ by Lisa Robinson
