Led Zeppelin's 1977 North American Tour was the eleventh and final concert tour of North America by the Englishrockband. The tour was divided into three legs, with performances commencing on April 1 and concluding on July 24, 1977. The tour was originally intended to finish on August 13, but was cut short following the death of vocalist Robert Plant's son.
History
This was the first tour embarked on by the band following their enforced layoff caused by Plant's car accident in Greece in 1975. During this sabbatical, the band had recorded their seventh studio album, Presence. Rehearsals for the tour eventually took place at Manticore Studios, Fulham in early 1977, where the band worked for two months on a new set list.[1]
Led Zeppelin's manager Peter Grant conceived this series of concerts as an effort that would reassert Led Zeppelin as the dominant band of the decade.[2] Fifty one concerts were scheduled over a three-leg period, for 1.3 million ticket holders. The tour was scheduled to commence on February 27 at Fort Worth, Texas, but Plant contracted laryngitis and the schedule was postponed for a month. It eventually kicked off on April 1, at the Dallas Memorial Auditorium in Dallas, Texas.[3]
Led Zeppelin's 1977 North American Tour was a massive fiscal success, as the band sold out large arenas and stadiums. On April 30 they performed to 76,229 people at the Pontiac Silverdome, a new world record attendance for a solo indoor attraction, beating the 75,962 that The Who attracted there in December 1975, and grossed $792,361.50 (also a record breaker).[4][5][6] Lengthy stints were spent in New York and Los Angeles, where the band performed six sold out shows each at Madison Square Garden and the Los Angeles Forum. In New York alone, the band spent no money on advertising for the gigs, relying on street demand to sell out the shows, and enough ticket applications were received to sell out a further two nights had time permitted.
For the tour, the band chartered Caesar's Chariot, a 45-seat Boeing 707 owned by the Caesars Palace Hotel in Las Vegas, to shuttle them between cities. This plane should not be confused with the more famous Starship, which had been used by the band on its previous two concert stints in North America, but which was permanently grounded in 1977 due to engine problems.
File:LedZep77.JPGLed Zeppelin backstage during their 1977 North American Tour
For many of the concerts on this tour, Jimmy Page chose to wear a striking custom-made white silk dragon suit, as is captured in several famous photographs of the band.
Though profitable financially, the tour was beset with difficulties. On June 3, after a concert at Tampa Stadium was cut short because of a severe thunderstorm, a riot broke out amongst the audience, resulting in several arrests and injuries. Police ultimately resorted to tear gas to break up the crowd.[7][8] Guitarist Jimmy Page's ongoing heroin addiction also caused him to lose a noticeable amount of weight on this tour, and arguably began to hamper his on-stage playing performances.[2][9] During a performance in Chicago on April 9, Page fell ill and needed to sit in a chair to play "Ten Years Gone" before leaving the stage with severe stomach cramps. The show was canceled after only sixty-five minutes, with Page's illness later being attributed to a case of food poisoning.[10][9]
The tour also experienced some unsavory off-stage problems, exacerbated by the the hiring of London gangster John Bindon as Led Zeppelin's security coordinator. After a July 23 show[11] at the "Days on the Green" festival at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum in Oakland, California, Bindon, band manager Peter Grant and band member John Bonham were arrested after a member of promoter Bill Graham's staff was badly beaten during the performance. A member of the staff had allegedly slapped Grant's son when he was taking down a dressing room sign. This was seen by John Bonham, who then walked over and kicked the man. Later, when Grant heard about this, he went into the trailer, along with Bindon and savagely assaulted the man with tour manager Richard Cole guarding the door and also roughing up another member of Graham's staff. Later after the incident, Bill Graham was reported to have flatly stated he could never book Led Zeppelin again in good conscience. [12][13]
The following day's second Oakland concert[14] would prove be the band's final live appearance in the United States. After the performance, news came that Plant's five year old son, Karac, had died from a stomach virus. The rest of the tour was immediately cancelled.[12]
In recent years, Plant has reflected on the negative dynamics which increasingly became evident as the 1977 tour progressed:
By 1977, I was 29, just prior to Karac's passing, and that sort of wild energy that was there in the beginning had come to the point where we were showboating a bit. Unfortunately, we had no choice. We were on tours where places were going ape-shit. There was no way of containing the energy in those buildings. It was insane. And we became more and more victims of our own success. And the whole deal about the goldfish bowl and living in it, that kicked in.[15]
Recordings
At least one concert from this tour (at Seattle on July 17) was professionally filmed for the band. It is also possible that several of the concerts of this tour were filmed, but to date only the Seattle video has been made available on Led Zeppelin bootleg recordings. When reviewing material for the Led Zeppelin DVD in 2003, some 1977 footage was considered, but it was not ultimately included. Producer Jimmy Page was unable to locate multi-track sound recordings from any 1977 shows, and it is unknown if any exist.
However, audio recordings from many of the tour's shows have been preserved on unofficial bootleg recordings. Notable bootlegs from this tour include The Destroyer (the soundboard recording from Cleveland on April 27), Listen To This Eddie (an audience recording from Los Angeles on June 21) and For Badgeholders Only (an audience recording from Los Angeles on June 23).
The second disc of the Led Zeppelin DVD contains semi-hidden bootleg footage from the show at the Los Angeles Forum (under the promos menu). The menu background audio features the complete opening number from the 21st June 1977 show ("The Song Remains the Same") with visuals bootlegged from various shows on the 1977 tour.[16]
Tour set list
The set list played on this tour included an acoustic section, which had originally been revived by the band at their previous concerts at Earl's Court in 1975 and was retained for the 1977 concerts. Only two songs from their most recent album, Presence (1976), were performed: "Nobody's Fault But Mine" and "Achilles Last Stand"
