Story & Photos by Stuart Clugston
Special Thanks to Eric Von Schlippen

I think the last time I consciously thought about Led Zeppelin was a few years back when I was fiddling around with a 12-string acoustic in a guitar store near my house. Suddenly I found myself starting to play "Stairway to Heaven" when the owner said: "Don't even think about it. . ." which was his way of saying, "you're the third guy to try and play that today. . ." The fact that someone can recognize those notes almost instantly may help to explain the thrall the band has even today on whole new generations of fans who weren't even alive when they last performed.

I'm not particularly nostalgic, but from time to time I sift through the artifacts of my earlier life in the newspaper business and am reminded by a story or a photograph of events of years gone by. On almost every tour of these materials, I go by the photographs I took at various rock concerts during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The faces of Grace Slick, Jim Morrison, Johnny Winter and The Who bring back memories of many assignments and a lot of good music. Amongst the collection is a favorite set of photos that I took on a quite remarkable and long day exactly twenty-nine years ago this weekend (March 19, 1970) covering Led Zeppelin's visit to Vancouver.

It never dawned on me that anybody else in the world would have any interest in these mementos and so I was somewhat surprised to get a call on a Sunday night a while ago from Eric Von Schlippen. Eric was holding in his hand a yellowing copy of the March 23, 1970 edition of the Richmond Review, a community paper I had worked at in that time, featuring a full-page spread of Led Zeppelin photos that I taken in and around their concert appearance in Vancouver.

In 1970, I was 25 years old and working at a newspaper in Richmond, BC, which was then a relatively small suburban community near Vancouver. Most of the reporters and photographers on the paper were about the same age or younger and we pretty much ran the place (I became editor some time around then). Of course we were all poor and subsisted on miserable wages earned through very long hours. One of the few perks we had (other than scamming restaurant owners into free meals in exchange for positive remarks about their food) was the opportunity to review books, records and concerts. We devoted huge space to these reviews (at the expense of what was mundane community news in our view) and slowly the paper got a reputation and a following because of them.

When news of Led Zeppelin's fifth North America tour became known, we made a decision that we were going to cover the opening concert in Vancouver from start to finish. Other than the alternative (ok, hippie) newspaper The Georgia Straight, the mainstream media wasn't much interested in music period, let alone rock and roll. I guess this was a good thing because it left the door open for our little paper to have pretty much exclusive coverage of the whole event.

Our coverage started early in the day at the airport where we hung around waiting for the band's arrival from London. As they all walked through the arrivals hall at the airport after clearing customs, I was able to get a good shot of Page and Robert Plant, who were quite a bit ahead of the others in the party. Being somewhat of a private person myself, I was never very comfortable "intruding" on people's space and I would never have made it as a member of the paparazzi. But as they approached they broke into big smiles and nudged each other in the ribs as if to say "Check it out, they do have cameras in Vancouver and they don't wear skins after all." That was very reassuring and so I stepped forward and said something brilliant like "Welcome to Vancouver." I don't remember many folks around except some concert functionaries who were present to get the band to the hotel. There was a little shuffling about and then they were off to the Bayshore Inn, a luxury hotel on Coal Harbor in Vancouver.

Later in the afternoon, there was a press conference at the hotel, which I also covered with my colleagues Rick McGrath and John Cosway. There were only a few members of the media present that I remember-mostly radio-and us.

Robert Plant was by far the most charismatic and animated participant in the conference. He was very well spoken, very accommodating in his answers to spectacularly stupid questions and very excited about the tour. He moved very much like some one who had studied ballet, with very fluid and smooth movements. Later at the concert I had the impression that even under the heavy weight of the music, he was floating across the stage. Jimmy Page was also every engaging and fielded just about as many questions. He was in fact better known here and a lot of the questions were about his previous experiences in other bands. He too had very fine features, a warm personality and kind of a boyish quality. Of course all this is retrospective because these guys are more or less my age and at the time, I probably wouldn't have made these same observations.

I don't recall John Paul Jones or John Bonham really saying anything-they were quite happy to yield the stage to Page and Plant. Jones was nodding off from the long day's travel (let's give him the benefit of the doubt since he looks so clean and healthy today). Bonham looked a bit surly but was politely listening to the questions and the replies of Page and Plant.

One lasting impression I carried away was that these were pretty nice, ordinary guys who were serious about their music but were having fun with their new "fame." While there was an air of self-confidence, there was no "attitude" and they clearly were not drunk with their own self-importance. One got the sense that while they understood press conferences and publicity events were part of the business they really just wanted to get up and make music rather than talking about it.

The press conference lasted about a half an hour when Grant abruptly ended it. At the end of the conference, where I had been the only person taking photos, someone in the band management came up to me and said: "You were the guy at the airport right? Are you going to the concert tonight?" When I replied yes, he handed me a backstage pass and said I could shoot the performance as long as I didn't get in the way and wasn't crazy with the strobe.

The concert at the Pacific Coliseum, which was your basic hockey rink concert hall, was a virtual sell-out and the crowd was pumped for the show. The energy in the building was intense and as I stood behind this wall of speakers at the left side of the stage I felt my heart beating in anticipation and was really nervous. Plant was the first to show up at the side of the stage and he looked amazingly calm and relaxed, the others soon joined him and they walked out on to the centre of the stage to an unbelievable roar.

There will be others more knowledgeable sources than I who have commented on this legendary concert and quite frankly I don't remember much about the individual songs that were performed that night except for "Whole Lotta Love," which I liked and a "Moby Dick" featuring a 20-minute drum solo by Bonham which was brilliant.

Bonham was the hard drive of the band and this solo was an opportunity for everyone to understand why. I wasn't in a very good position to take pictures of him during the concert and in any event I didn't want to distract him with a blinding flash. (If this sounds prehistoric, concert lighting in 1970 wasn't anything like it is today so flash photography was required.)

 

Jones and Page leaving the stage after their 3/21/70 Vancouver concert. Peter Grant is in the background and if you look closely, Richard Cole is visible still on stage above and behind Grant. (photo by Stuart Clugston)

I was so busy concentrating on the technical aspects of photography and trying to focus on Plant and Page who were moving around a lot that unfortunately I couldn't sit back and enjoy the musical experience. The one takeaway that I still have however is how clean their sound was compared to other bands of the time-little distortion or gimmicks were employed except the use of a violin bow by Page on one number. Since I was behind the main speakers (which shook so severely I thought they were going to topple at one point) the sound I heard was through the stage monitors which is what the band heard. Somehow that created almost a studio like experience for me.

A few times during the concert several young women tried to climb on stage and sit down. Pretty soon it looked like there was going to be a problem as more people tried to get up from the pit area but Plant urged them to get down with a promise of an encore. Fortunately, he had a spell over these people and they obeyed.

It was one of the first experiences Led Zeppelin had of this mass adoration as best I could determine and it seemed to rattle the band a bit. It was obviously pretty distracting to keep things going when you see people scaling the stage in front of you and you aren't clear of what their intentions are.

The concert wrapped up after an encore or two and the band left the stage looking exhausted and exhilarated. I saw them again a year later but it didn't seem to have the same magic except for of course an excellent version of "Stairway to Heaven."

Maybe these pictures will stir some memories of others that were at that magical concert in 1970.

To see a full-page copy of the newspaper spread from
Vancouver 1970 (with photos by Stuart Clugston) click here. (130K file)

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