The Led Zeppelin tour Robert Plant hated playing: “It was bollocks”
A life on the road is both the best and worst for musicians. Sure, it’s nice to be able to see the world and go to some places that most can’t even imagine seeing in their lives, but there comes a point where that homesickness starts to overtake even the most hardened road warriors after a while. The road can quickly turn into a prison without anyone noticing, and even at Led Zeppelin’s height, Robert Plant thought that going back to smaller venues for a tour was a huge step backwards.
Because by the beginning of the 1970s, things were already starting to move fast for Zeppelin. Although people were chomping at the bit to see what Jimmy Page would do outside of The Yardbirds, hearing their first two records sent shockwaves through the hard rock community.
After years of relying on The Rolling Stones for something heavy, this was beyond anyone’s conception of what rock could be. Now, with just a riff, millions of aspiring musicians were trying to make their own stabs at rock and roll, with Plant being looked at as one of the golden gods of the genre.
Coming off of their fourth self-titled record, though, the band had gone from great to almost untouchable. Even without putting their name on the album cover, they had made some of the most enduring anthems from the time, whether that was incredible riffs in ‘Black Dog’ or writing the ultimate ballad ‘Stairway to Heaven’.
If you’re up that high, then it’s natural to want to come back down to Earth, and the ‘Back to the Clubs’ tour in 1971 was Zeppelin’s way of getting back in touch with their roots. As opposed to taking to the stadium circuit, this was a chance to relate to the audience in a far more natural way, albeit with much more security to take care of them.
Despite the idea sounding great, Plant thought the entire thing was a massive failure, saying, “It was bollocks: Led Zeppelin go back to the people. All these great ideas and the great naivete of the time. Playing the King’s Hall in Aberystwyth was a very well-meant gesture on behalf of Jimmy and I. In fact, we gave it back to some very disinterested bearded thespians who were not impressed, and rightly so.”
Then again, it’s easy to see why this kind of project failed in the first place. Since the group had grown exponentially since the days of playing in clubs, half of the songs weren’t built for that kind of atmosphere. Sure, you can play a blues standard like ‘When the Levee Breaks’, but how the hell is anyone supposed to recreate the feeling of ‘Stairway to Heaven’ while playing in a tight-knit space?
‘Back to the Clubs’ might have been a decent marketing gimmick at the time, but Zeppelin had outgrown those venues long ago. It was time for them to dream bigger, and by the time they hit on Physical Graffiti, they were going from those simple blues tunes of their youth to some of the most ambitious projects any rock band had ever attempted.
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