The Led Zeppelin show that made Jimmy Page sick: “The most ugly”
Drug-fueled debauchery, the confines of a smelly tour bus, and a different city every night; the hedonistic life of a rock and roll star might be a thing of fantasy for some people, but a few years spent in the driving seat is enough to render anybody slightly jaded to the seedy underbelly of the world, as Jimmy Page found out back in the 1970s.
Page always seemed destined to become a rock and roll titan, going back to an adolescence spent with a guitar practically glued to his hands. Throughout the 1960s, when the young guitarist had successfully established himself among the most sought-after session guitarists in the land, he was given a front-row view of that rockstar lifestyle, rubbing shoulders with everybody from The Who to the depraved band of merry misfits running Immediate Records.
Ultimately, though, nothing would compare to the heights of rock excess summited by Led Zeppelin. There had, after all, never really been another band like Led Zeppelin, both in terms of their progenitive hard rock sound and its lasting impact on the rock landscape, but also in terms of their unparalleled success.
They were, for instance, one of the very first rock bands to begin playing in colossal arenas and stadiums; with their 1975 run of dates at Earls Court being as unprecedented as they were iconic.
Still, playing those colossal gigs wasn’t without its issues. For starters, the global demand for Led Zeppelin gigs, when coupled with their exhaustive studio sessions and blossoming drug habits, risked burning the band out before they had truly begun. As the gigs grew bigger, too, they seemed to attract more and more problems, an issue which came to a head on one fateful night in Philadelphia.
Philadelphia crowds have a certain reputation for violence, with various high-profile performances and sporting events in the city having descended into riots over the years. When Zeppelin visited the Philadelphia Spectrum back in 1975, though, it wasn’t the crowd as much as it was the venue security causing all the trouble.
“The other night we played in the Philadelphia Spectrum, which really is a black hole as a concert hall,” Page told William S Burroughs during a 1975 edition of Crawdaddy. “The security there is the most ugly of anywhere in the States. I saw this incident happen, and I was almost physically sick.”
Recalling the incident in question, the guitarist continued, “What had happened, somebody came to the front of the stage to take a picture or something, and obviously somebody said, ‘Be off with you.’ And he wouldn’t go.” Quickly, that disagreement escalated, turning into a pile-on with fists flying everywhere. “They dragged him by his hair, and they were kicking him,” Page shared. “It was just sickening.”
Given the fact that Page was, presumably, in the middle of thrashing out one of his many legendary riffs at the point that this pile-on was occurring, it must have been fairly drastic to be that noticeable. Perhaps in response, Led Zeppelin didn’t return to the tumultuous city until their Live Aid reunion in 1985 – a gig which, if anything, was even more disastrous for the band.
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