Vol 4, No. 11, Oct '93
JULY 17, 1977
©1995 Proximity/HJR Productions
(From Proximity #11)
By the time of their eleventh US Tour in 1977, Led Zeppelin were universally recognized as the top live rock act in the world; front page news in every town they played and the most eagerly anticipated show of the Summer for every rock fan of the day. Their previous tour of the states two years earlier in 1975 had broken attendance records and firmly established them as the biggest band in the world, but somehow on that tour they had remained in the domain of the true affictionado (if such a thing can even be considered plausible when selling out 20,000 seat arenas every night). Media coverage was limited to the rock press, concert reviews in the daily papers were tucked away in the entertainment section instead of being featured on the front page or as an item on the evening TV news.
Not so in '77. Not only was there a huge original fan base still young enough to be interested in seeing the band band live; now all the younger brothers and sisters wanted to find out what the fuss was about, not to mention many more casual music fans and rowdy rockers who would go to any show as long as it was loud and they were stoned.
Seattle was a town Led Zeppelin particularly enjoyed playing in, and was the site of at least two of the band's all-time legendary greatest gigs (June '72 and March '75, both at the Seattle Coliseum), thus the anticipation especially keen. As the day of the show approached, media coverage increased both on the band and their reputation for drawing problematic crowds, and by the sixteenth of July it seemed everyone in town was holding their breath as people started showing up in front of the Kingdome with their sleeping bags, lawn chairs and coolers.
The Kingdome itself was (and still is) a huge, ugly concrete monstrosity; one of those cultural aberrations that inspires dislike but cannot be ignored. Built in the early '70s, the 65,000-seat covered stadium was still the subject of some controversy in 1977, both for its problematic construction history and its questionable characteristics as a concert venue. Zeppelin were only the fifth rock band to play there; Paul McCartney christened the place on his "Wings Over America" tour in 1976 and Aerosmith, The Eagles and Peter Frampton had all battled the terrible acoustics with generally miserable results. None of this bode well for the mighty Zep, as their legendary ability to make a 20,000 seat hall feel intimate was sure to be put to a difficult test by the King County Domed Stadium.
Things got off to a bad start on the day of the show, as the newspapers screamed about a railroad workman who had been hospitalized after being hit by a bottle thrown from the crowd waiting outside the dome early on the morning of the 17th. By showtime, thousands of people were still on line outside the building, being herded into a few narrow gates and put through a rigorous search for bottles, drugs and fireworks that apparently did little good. Many people didn't even get into the hall until the middle of "Nobody's Fault But Mine", the third song in the set.
The band hit the stage a bit late to tremendous crowd response, Jimmy in his white dragon suit brandishing the impossibly large double-neck and Robert looking very rock star in blue satin trousers and the usual open shirt. Unfortunately, the sound was terrible from the opening chords and only improved slightly as the evening progressed. Robert called for adjustments to the monitors several times during the set and in addition to audible PA problems the dome's boomy acoustics wreaked havoc on the sound from just about anywhere in the place - I remember standing right in front of the mixing board for a while and wondering how in hell a sound crew could deal with the mush they were hearing.
From a technical standpoint, the best part of the show was the huge video monitor broadcasting excellent quality images from the stage; many people spent the whole show watching the screen rather the broadcasting excellent quality images from the stage; many people spent the whole show watching the screen rather then the little specks on the stage, so far away from most of the seats.
Led Zeppelin as a live band were prone to extremes, especially in the latter days of their reign; either you got a super-charged, special performance or a lackluster, excessive affair with sub-standard individual performances from one or more members of the band. Rarely did they put on a simply average concert, but this was the case at the Kingdome. Well rested after a three-week break in the tour, Robert's voice was in good form, and Page, Jones and Bonham all played particularly well at various points during the show - Jimmy's solos in "Sick Again" and "No Quarter" were especially sharp and inspired. As a whole, however, the band just never really took off.
The source of the problem was simply the size of the venue, which muted the audience's response and destroyed the sound; in the battle of "Led Zep vs. The Dome", the dome ended up winning because it refused to let Led Zeppelin establish the intimate, relaxed atmosphere that usually led to the mighty airship taking off and flying high for 3 hours.
In Robert's customary greeting to the crowd after "Sick Again", he shouted "good evening" three times before being satisfied with the response, and even then seemed a little dubious, as if he couldn't really hear the response from the enormous stage. A little later he remarked, somewhat wistfully, "Things changed a bit since the little building up the road. Anybody remember the one... we used to do a thousand encores, remember?" An obvious reference to the "little" 17,000-seat Seattle Coliseum, site of a four-hour, multi-encore extravaganza two years previous.
Despite Robert's claim of deafness in one ear and what he described as a "touch of sleeping sickness" in Jimmy Page, the band gamely soldiered on, almost hitting their stride a few times but ultimately failing to bring the show anywhere close to true Zeppelin peak level.
The wind really went out of their sails about mid-set by increasing barrages of fireworks, and by the time Robert introduced the acoustic set he sounded positively unenthusiastic. After "Going To California", he made a strong effort to stem the tide of pyromania by addressing the crowd, "It's very seldom that we make any comment about, ah, sort of... conduct and things like that, but I think it's about the lousiest thing that you can possibly do to throw firecrackers, right? It would be really about the best thing that you could do on a Sunday night not to throw firecrackers. Everybody agree?".
This seemed to slow down the frequency of the explosions, and actually the second half of the set picked up steam with brutal versions of "Kashmir" and "Achilles Last Stand". The usual show-closer of "Stairway" was carefully delivered, but as if to underscore their disappointment in the evening, they blasted through a single encore consisting of very short versions of "Whole Lotta Love" and "Rock & Roll".
When it was over, 65,000 people shuffled out of the stadium with their ears ringing, and the general reaction around town over the next few days was one of disappointment. It was frustrating to me that my friends who had never seen Zeppelin before got no affirmation of my ravings about their incredible performances of the past, and though no one knew it at the time, this was to be their last visit to Seattle as a band. Three shows later, the tour was cut short and America bid goodbye to Led Zeppelin for good.
Go back to the Proximity BACK Pages
Go back to the Proximity HOME Page
