The Led Zeppelin’s 1969 US tour and the cities they claimed to have “destroyed”
Forget turntables, vinyl collections, and even noise-cancelling headphones, a working time machine would be the real prized possession of any music fan worth their salt. Just imagine what a chance to travel back to the moment when the 1960s crossed over into the ‘70s, and Led Zeppelin were playing a string of world-beating shows that made them the band they are today would feel like.
1969 in particular was a truly iconic time in Zeppelin’s musical trajectory. Allow me to set the scene: The Beatles had just released Abbey Road, arguably their magnum opus, a record that crystallised the very best ideas of rock and roll, but they weren’t able to tour it, and unbeknownst to the music public, that would end in their swift break-up.
So the appetite for rock and roll in a live context was at an all-time high, and the world essentially needed a band to satiate it. In stepped Led Zeppelin, who, unshackled by the confines of Beatlemania, dove headfirst into the live aspect of their musicianship and garnered a swift reputation for being the fiercest live act on the planet.
“We just went in and just destroyed San Francisco, and that was it,” Jimmy Page recalled of their first trip to America in 1969, “The first album wasn’t even out. And it just spreads like wildfire that this band was just incredible, and then they hear the album.”
The fateful show in question was a support slot for Country Joe & the Fish, two days before their self-titled debut album was released. ‘Babe I’m Gonna Leave You’ and ‘Dazed And Confused’ were complete unknown entities to these hungry blues fans, yet firm favourites in their record collections just two days later.
The band could have quite easily rested on their laurels at that point and milked a year of American touring off the back of the soaring popularity of this one album. But in doing so, they would have driven their popularity into the ground, fatiguing fans with one show at a time.
Instead, they cemented their legacy by playing a summer headline tour of North America, with a setlist of tracks from their upcoming album. ‘Whole Lotta Love’ and ‘Ramble On’ were thrust onto this rock-hungry audience, and the anticipation for their follow-up record was at an all-time high. And so, within one swift year, from supporting Country Joe & the Fish to releasing two albums, Led Zeppelin had not only broken America, but the entire world.
Page remembered those times as “like being on a permanent adrenaline drip, do you know what I mean? [Playing live was] to be right on the edge of the moment”. But the beauty of Zeppelin was that the feeling transcended the barriers and into the crowd.
A live Led Zeppelin show wasn’t just exhilarating for the members of the band on stage but also for the fans in the audience, who completely lost themselves to the spiralling riffs of Page and the rolling drumbeats of Bonham. A decade of unbeatable rock and roll beckoned in the ‘70s, but it may never have existed without Zeppelin.
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