Page on the Road: LZ First American Tour, 1968-1969

Review of Led Zeppelin's fist show in the U.S.

Led Zeppelin's first tour of the United States kicked off the day after Christmas in Denver, Colorado at the Denver Auditorium Arena. The tour itself came about after The Jeff Beck Group cancelled their own tour of America. Peter Grant, Led Zeppelin's manager, contacted the promoters of the various venues that were to host The Jeff Beck Group and convinced them to host his boys instead. This tour was part of Page and Grant's larger strategy of breaking the group through a series of live events rather than relying on chart busting singles. This strategy was a complete inverse of popular industry convention at the time where it was thought you released a single and toured on the popularity of it, rather than touring to build up popularity.

The tour itself was financed completely out of the pockets of Jimmy Page and Peter Grant, with the other band members receiving a salary for the efforts. The band began the tour as a supporting act for groups such as Vanilla Fudge, Country Joe and the Fish, and Iron Butterfly, but as time wore on, Led Zeppelin began to outshine the headliners, and the groups they opened for began to drop from the billing. Jimmy Page, "By the time we reached San Francisco, the other groups on the bill just weren't turning up. Country Joe & the Fish backed out of playing with us on the West Coast and Iron Butterfly didn't turn up on the East."

Iron Butterfly couldn't stand the weight of Led Zeppelin

Audiences weren't ready for the tight but powerful act from the U.K., and the other acts on the bill didn't really stand much of a chance. John Paul Jones reflected on this later, "To be honest, most of what Country Joe [and the Fish] was doing was just a band of friends going on stage. They would play, start a song and drift into another song, which sounded really great. And we would just go on and go "bang, bang, bang" with three driven songs with solos, and people must have thought, "What did we just see?" And there was nobody else doing that at that time. I'm sure it had a lot to do with the success. We got four numbers in by the time most bands had tuned up ... We were very tight and close as well. It was always kind of "us against the world" back then."

Peter Grant, who was unable to go with the group initially, but he gave the group instruction on exactly what they needed to do to score in America, which was the vital market he knew the band needed to break to become a success. "I couldn't go with them, but it was a fantastic 12 date tour, and they said "Great, if that's what we've gotta do, we'll go and do it" ... Three of the group had never been to America before and didn't know what to expect. They did a week with the Vanilla Fudge. My instructions were for them to go over there and blast them out. Make each performance something everybody remembered. They really did that." Grant would reflect.

Peter Grant "Go over there and blast them out."

The band only had one albums worth of material to tour behind, as well as some Yardbirds tunes, and a few blues standards the boys could recollect, nevertheless, the were called for encore after encore each night. The pinnacle for the group occurred in Boston where they played on four separate nights. John Paul Jones recalled the furor for the group, "We played four nights at The Tea Party, and by then we had an hour and a half's music to play; we played four and a half hours on the last night - we played the act twice, and then did everybody else's act with Who, Rolling Stones and Beatles numbers. Peter hugged us at the end of the gig, picked all four of us up at once. We knew we were actually going to make it."

Led Zeppelin raked in an average of $1,500 a night for their services, but the work they put in on this tour resulted in bigger pay days further down the road as their reputation as a ferocious live act began to spread.

The tour began on December 26th 1968, and went on for a little under two months with the last date being on February 15th, 1969. Below is the itinerary for the tour:

• 26/12/1968: Denver Auditorium Arena - Denver, CO
• 27/12/1968: Seattle Center Arena - Seattle, WA
• 28/12/1968: Pacific Coliseum - Vancouver, BC
• 29/12/1968: Civic Auditorium - Portland, OR
• 30/12/1968: Kennedy Pavilion - Spokane, WA
• 02/01/1969: Whisky a Go Go - West Hollywood, CA
• 03/01/1969: Whisky a Go Go - West Hollywood, CA
• 04/01/1969: Whisky a Go Go - West Hollywood, CA
• 05/01/1969: Whisky a Go Go - West Hollywood, CA
• 09/01/1969: Fillmore West - San Francisco, CA
• 10/01/1969: Fillmore West - San Francisco, CA
• 11/01/1969: Fillmore West - San Francisco, CA
• 12/01/1969: Fillmore West - San Francisco, CA
• 13/01/1969: Fox Theater - San Diego, CA
• 15/01/1969: Iowa Memorial Union - Ballroom - Iowa City, IA
• 16/01/1969: Baltimore Civic Center - Baltimore, MD
• 17/01/1969: Grande Ballroom - Detroit, MI
• 18/01/1969: Grande Ballroom - Detroit, MI
• 19/01/1969: Grande Ballroom - Detroit, MI
• 20/01/1969: Wheaton Youth Center - Wheaton, MD
• 21/01/1969: Hunt Armory - Pittsburgh, PA
• 23/01/1969: Boston Tea Party - Boston, MA
• 24/01/1969: Boston Tea Party - Boston, MA
• 25/01/1969: Boston Tea Party - Boston, MA
• 26/01/1969: Boston Tea Party - Boston, MA
• 27/01/1969: Symphony Hall - Springfield, MA
• 29/01/1969: Electric Factory - Philadelphia, PA
• 31/01/1969: Fillmore East - New York City, NY
• 01/02/1969: Fillmore East - New York City, NY
• 02/02/1969: Rockpile - Toronto, ON
• 07/02/1969: Kinetic Playground - Chicago, IL
• 08/02/1969: Kinetic Playground - Chicago, IL
• 10/02/1969: Elma Roane Fieldhouse - Memphis, TN
• 14/02/1969: Thee Image Club - North Miami Beach, FL
• 15/02/1969: Thee Image Club - North Miami Beach, FL

Jimmy Page at the Boston Tea Party, 1969