The story behind Led Zeppelin’s worst-ever show
During their vast and pioneering career, Led Zeppelin only touched down for a performance on Italian soil on one occiassion. The disastrous concert in 1971 prematurely ended because the police teargassed the band, and Zeppelin vowed never to return to the Mediterranean country after being scarred from the horrifying experience.
Zeppelin’s sole visit to Italy took place at the Velodromo Vigorelli on July 5th, 1971. What should have been a historical event turned out to be memorable for all the wrong reasons. The group were at the peak of their powers, and the concert in Milan could have potentially turned out to be one of their most iconic performances. However, they only had the opportunity to perform six songs before being forced to evacuate the stage, leaving 15,000 fans devastated.
Looking back on the show in 2020, Jimmy Page wrote on Instagram: “On this day in 1971, I played with Led Zeppelin in the Velodrome in Milan but only managed a few numbers before the police let loose with a salvo of teargas that flooded the audience and band. It was clearly a premeditated operation; we lost some equipment that night and also the enthusiasm to play in Italy again.”
The audience was treated as second-class citizens by the police, who didn’t try and resolve the crowd trouble peacefully but resorted to teargas. Italian crowds had a reputation for being rowdy and hostile towards acts, but nothing could prepare Led Zeppelin for what happened in Milan.
The band opened their set with ‘Immigrant Song’, and immediately, the crowd turned wild, which worried Led Zeppelin almost instantaneously. Rather than the usual jubilant scenes they usually saw during concerts, they knew something unusual was occurring in the audience upon seeing smoke. The situation soon escalated.
A few months after the show, Plant looked back at the concert during an interview with Rick McGrath and painfully recalled: “We went to Milan, and there was a big music festival with people from all countries contributing. They travel around, and we just came for one gig. And we were told that it was a cool thing, and even though there was a reputation for bottles being thrown in Rome, we were assured it wouldn’t happen to us. Anyway, we started playing in a big cycle arena, and they’d been booing everybody else, and as soon as we walked onstage, I noticed some smoke at the back of the arena. And there’s all this smoke, and there’s firemen behind us, and I was going ‘Fire! Fire’ in my finest Italian.”
He continued: “There were 250 stormtroopers there, in line, and I forgot to tell you, as we got there, there were wagons all alongside the road, and there were all these guys lined up by the front door. So I jumped out of the car, and I was saluting and shouting and checking the uniforms and walking up and down the ranks going (makes faces), and I saw something I’ve never seen before, because they were completely devoid of anything human. They just looked at me as if to say ‘Objective number one’ or something.”
Plant painfully added: “I cried for days and days, and everything I think about it, or I think of something gentle, I even saw a silly film with Cary Grant in it, and he was going on about what man must do to be man, and I was fucking crying. Because it just fucking hit me, and if I’m ever down in America all somebody has to do is say. ‘Are you a boy or a girl’ and I’ll fucking dive at him. Because it’s an animal reaction. I’ve already been in a rathole once.”
Thankfully, there were no casualties, and despite the riots, everyone somehow managed to retain their life. However, due to the mishandling of the situation by Italian police, Led Zeppelin’s performance in Milan could have become one of rock ‘n’ roll’s biggest-ever tragedies and scarred their legacy. While the night was still the lowest point of the band’s career and had a longstanding effect on Plant, at least there were no casualties.
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