Page Places: The Boston Tea Party

"I can tell you when I knew we'd broken through, which was at San Francisco. There were other gigs, like the Boston Tea Party and the Kinetic Circus in Chicago which have unfortunately disappeared as venues, where the response was so incredible we knew we'd made our impression"

- Jimmy Page 1974

The Boston Tea Party

Located at 53 Berkeley Street in Boston, Massachusetts, the Boston Tea Party was an historic Rock and Roll Concert venue in operation from 1967 to 1971 and played host to a number of the greatest acts in the history of music. The building was originally used as a synagogue (a Star of David adorns the building to this day), and then later changed into a street mission, it was purchased by Ray Riepen and David Hahn who converted it into a concert hall akin to New York's Fillmore East, or Los Angeles' Whisky A Go-Go.

The Boston Tea Party hosted many of Rock and Roll's elite acts from Jimi Hendrix to Pink Floyd, Neil Young to the Who, Cream and Jeff Beck, and many many more. One of the Tea Party's most frequent guests was The Velvet Underground who played the venue a number of times. Their most notable stint at the venue was on December 1968. The MC5 opened for the Velvets and after the MC5's energized performance, one of the members of the audience got on stage and started haranguing the audience; directing them to "...burn this place down and take to the streets..." After that display of anarchy, Lou Reed addressed the audience, telling their fans that "...we (Velvet Underground) have nothing to do with what just happened...we think it's dumb..." Sterling Morrison (Velvet Underground's bass & guitar player) is on record as saying that he "...always enjoyed the MC5 musically, but didn't like that they were surrounded by and exploited by leeches."

Ray Riepen Owner of the Boston Tea Party

Led Zeppelin played the venue a total of seven times, with four dates in January of 1969, and three dates in May later that same year. Playing Boston, along with other high population and youth culture centers such as San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles, and going over well were all a key part of Led Zeppelin's manager Peter Grant's plan to conquer America. John Paul Jones later elaborated on what winning over the crowd at the Boston Tea Party meant to him and the band in an interview with NME in 1974:

“As far as I’m concerned, the key Zeppelin gig, the one that put everything into focus, was one that we played on our first American tour at the Boston Tea Party. We’d played our usual one hour set, using all the material for the first album and Page’s White Summer guitar piece and by the end, the audience just wouldn’t let us offstage. It was in such a state that we had to start throwing ideas around, just thinking of songs that we might all know or that some of us knew a part of and work it out from there.So we’d go back on and play things like “I Saw Her Standing There” and “Please Please Me”, old Beatles favorites. I mean, just anything that would come into our head and the response was quite amazing. There were kids actually bashing their heads against the stage – I’ve never seen that a gig before or since, and when we finally left the stage, we’d played for four plus hours.Peter (Grant) was absolutely ecstatic. He was crying, if you can imagine that, and hugging us all. You know with this grizzly bear hug. I suppose it was then that we realized just what Led Zeppelin was going to become.”

With the proliferation of outdoor festivals and the need for bigger venues to house the burgeoning rock and roll market, The Boston Tea Party closed it's doors in 1971. Today unfortunately it is now a 7-11 convenience store, so if you happen to been in Boston, make sure you take a detour to 53 Berkely Street, pop in, buy a Rockstar energy drink, take a sip, and think about what kind of great bands had played here before you.

Cleanup on Aisle 3!

The Boston Tea Party Today

Here's the audio from a full Led Zeppelin show that took place on January 26th, 1969: