Com-Page-riots: Barry Fey (The Man Who Almost Downed Led Zeppelin)

Berry Fey with Mick Jagger

On brusque night, the day after Christmas in 1968, at the Denver Auditorium Colorado, Led Zeppelin made their American debut. However, what is not known by many is that it almost didn't happen. Legendary concert promoter Barry Fey was quite reluctant to book the act, and nearly took a pass on them, as he recounted in his new autobiography, "Backstage Past" and in an interview from the "Rocky Mountain Post":

From the "Rocky Mountain Post":
"About 10 days before the show, I got a call from the agent saying, 'Barry, I want to add an act to our show,' " Fey said. "I said, 'Ron (Terry), all the tickets are sold. He said, 'You've got to do this for me, Barry, this is a big, big act. Their name is Led Zeppelin.' I thought it was a joke." Fey turned Terry down, until the agent showed Fey the money. "Ten minutes later Ron called back and said 'Vanilla Fudge is going to give you $750, and if you give $750 of your own money, we still can put Led Zeppelin on the show." Fey caved in. The concert crowd had no idea that this new heavy-metal band from Britain was added to the show. That night marked the band's American debut. "I got up on the stage and said, 'Ladies and gentlemen, give a warm Denver welcome to Led Zeppelin,' " Fey said. "They started playing, and it was incredible. It was an unbelievable show; people were gasping. That was a big day in Denver history.

From "Backstage Past":
"The night of the concert, I get on stage to make the announcement to open the show. “Ladies and gentleman, please welcome, direct from England for their North America debut, Led Zeppelin!”
There was a smattering of polite applause. Then, Robert Plant let it rip and everybody in the audience was stunned. Frankly, I don’t know how Spirit went on after that. You didn’t have to be a genius to know Zeppelin was going to be a smash. Oh, my God. People were going crazy! The next morning, I get a call from Max Floyd, the program director at the Denver FM rock station, KLZ.  “Who did you have on last night? Our phone lines are jammed!” The band had given me a white copy of their album, one that hadn’t been released yet. I took the album to the radio station and they played it continuously, all day."

It's incredible to think that for a mere $750, Led Zeppelin almost missed their debut. That's not to say of course they wouldn't have debuted somewhere else, but Denver would have missed out on a huge piece of Rock and Roll history, and the footnotes of history would have been re-written.