Great Zep Story

[buckeye <buckeye@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This was written by a gentleman named Iden Ford, who has had trouble
posting.  Great read!
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August 69, The Summer of Love, or to me:

LED ZEPPELIN LIVE AT TORONTO'S ROCKPILE!!

It was a very "hot August night" in the summer of 1969 and it we were not
headed to a Neil Diamond concert. A sensational power rock band, Led
Zeppelin, the latest version of "heavy bands" which started with Cream
back in 66,were in Toronto to do two sold out shows. My friends Donnie
Ditchburn, David Strawbridge who worked for John Gibb, a local Toronto
clothier (his store was later to become Longjohns, retailers of "rock
n'roll clothing", and I had tickets to the 7:00 p.m. show. Gibb was an old
school chum of Jimmy Page and he had had them over for dinner that
evening. Pagey as he was called by his mates, was the former front man and
lead guitarist for the now defunct Yardbirds, and since he had formed his
new band Led Zeppelin, they had sailed to the top of the album charts and
underground radio stations with their first record entitled Led Zepplin 1.
A previous gig at the s! ame venue earlier in the year (February) had
brought quite a lot of good press, especially from Ritchie Yorke, the
Toronto Telegram's resident writer for rock concert reviews back then.
Since the release of the first album, Led Zeppelin's popularity had
created a large cult following thanks to the incredible guitar playing of
Jimmy Page and the wailing, siren like voice of the lead singer, Robert
Plant.

The groups'giant leap in record sales and popularity was for the
promoters, both a blessing and a curse. Led Zeppelin's fee had jumped from
$2,000 in February to $8,000 for the two shows on this night, and Peter
Grant, Led Zeppelin's notorious manager was not prepared to honour the
agreement that was made with the promoters back in February. More about
this later.

    The venue for the concert was called the Rockpile, which in fact was
the old Masonic Temple located at Davenport and Yonge St. In the past year
(68-69), The Rockpile had been converted to Toronto's version of The
Fillmore East, and this was very much to the disgruntlement of the old
Masons who still had some sway and influence in the running of the hall.
What bothered them the most was all the Marijuana smoke enjoyed by the
stoned out hippies who attended these shows. To the Masons, this temple
was a sacred venue and they wanted to keep it that way, but in the end,
concerts meant the hall was rented out regularly so money talked as they
say.

The doors opened at 6:30 and the huge lineup piled in quickly so as to get
the best possible viewpoint in the place as there were no seats, you
either got to sit cross legged on the main floor, or stand in the Balcony.

    By the time my mates and I got inside, we headed straight up to the
balcony which by then, was jammed packed shoulder to shoulder and hot,
hot, hot. David was a bit of a dandy and would not have considered for a
minute sitting down in his finest Toronto version of Carnaby Street, garb.
We would regret that decision a bit later.

By the time the opening act came on, Edward Bear, the inside of the
building must have gone well into the 90 degree Fahrenheit range with very
high humidity and high smoke density. You surely didn't need to bring your
own stuff that night because the air was filled with the sweet smell of
pungent smoke. Edward Bear was a local pop trio and radio favourite who
had had a hit, You Me and Mexico". I found them to be very commercial and
in fact could not stand their veiled attempts to look the part with their
long hair and bell bottomed jeans, while at the same time they really
played forgettable commercial pop. We were here to see our heroes play
with the Marshall amps stacked to the ceiling, wailing away to the songs
from Led Zeppelin 1.

Once Edward Bear had finished their set, they were given a polite but
energetic hometown Toronto response and off they went.

Perhaps we only had a 20 minute wait for the main act, our heroes!!

I couldn't stand the excitement and anticipation, this was going to be my
first live experience to hear and see the most listened to band in my
repetoire of favourite albums, and it was all about to unfold in front of
my eyes, live and in the flesh.

And we waited, and we sweated some more, and we waited.

It suddenly dawned on us that there was a problem. Led Zeppelin was
backstage but Peter Grant would not let them go on. Seems the promoters
insisted that he honour the contractual option they had exercised from the
previous gig in February, and Peter Grant said no way. His attitude was
that the promoters had two sold out houses and in the 6 months since they
had been to Toronto, the band had climbed to the top of the charts. They
wanted their full fee. Otherwise they were going back to the hotel an onto
the next city.

A tug of war was going on while the 2000 or so of us sweated it out and
waited some more.

The promoters finally gave in and after about 1 1/2 hours of waiting,
which made it about 9:00 pm, we heard the roadies nailing down a drum kit
behind the curtain followed by a drummer slashing away at his drums
getting ready to play. Then we heard a guitar, and then a bass guitar.
Ooh, I couldn't take the excitement at that stage, we were moments away!

    Suddenly, there was the locomotive opening guitar intro to the song A
Train kept a Rollin, an old Yardbirds standby. A thundering drum sound
followed, and then the curtains exploded open. There they were. The place
was bedlam. The band looked very little like the group photo on the back
of the first album. Plant had hair down to the middle of his back in blond
curls, and was dressed in bell bottom blue jeans and a bright red tee
shirt. Page had hair down to his waist, dressed in pink pants and had a
Les Paul Sunburst guitar draped over his body, and Jones and Bonham also
had very, very long hair and wore the fashions of the day even in this
ridiculous hot house.

All I could think at that moment was how cool they looked. It was like a
wave of gigantic sound had hit you and we were on a journey to places I
had never been to before in a concert.

Marshall amps were piled to the ceiling. It was loud and that was fine by
me, how else was one to listen to Led Zeppelin except at ear splitting
volume.

Plant sang stronger and harder than anything I'd ever heard before on
record. He raced around the stage shaking his shoulders, whipping his head
around to shake all that hair, and periodically throwing back beer from
the Heinekins he had stashed on Jonesy's amp at the back of the stage,
while the maestro Jimmy Page leaned over his guitar, brought his knees
together in a weird sort of knock kneed pose, while rarely looking up from
behind all of that jet black cascading mop.

The music spoke to us, we were a part of history as far as I was concerned
because this group had more energy and spontaneity than any group I had
ever seen. It was raw energy, uninhibited,creative, and free from any
contrivances.

The segued to I Can't quit you Babe, You Shook Me, and then Dazed and
Confused where somewhere in the middle of the song, the violin bow came
out. It was a typical 18-20 minute version of the song from the early days
of the band.

What really blew my mind was the vocal and guitar interplay between Page
and Plant. Page would play some notes, Plant would sing them, Plant would
sing some notes, Page would play them. This was not typical stuff that
bands would do in concerts. This was taking improvisation out of the box
and never to return, Amazing. Then, after Plant inroduced the band to us
as Jimmy played the intro notes to another Yardbirds standby, Smokestack
Lightening, they jumped into the finale, How Many More Times complete with
the Lemon Song bit into the middle. This number number completely brought
the house down with the tradition blues rendition of Squeeze My Lemon
until the juice runs down my leg. Then as fast as they had arrived, Robert
said to us" We have another house to play to tonight, sorry we took so
long and see you soon". Then they were off, no encore . When I left the
venue and finally got onto the street&nb! sp;out of the hot house of the
Rockpile, I really thought that this group, Led Zeppelin would be bigger
than Beatles. I was close,and 34 years later I'm still a big fan.