Watch previously unseen Led Zeppelin concert footage from 1970
Led Zeppelin were a band on fire in 1970. Having released both Led Zeppelin I and Led Zeppelin II over the course of 1969, the group were already on their sixth American tour by the fall of 1970. They had officially moved up to stadiums and were looming large as one of the most popular rock acts in America. Just a month before the release of Led Zeppelin III, the band visited their favourite city of Los Angeles, California, to perform at The Forum.
An audience recording from that concert was later released as one of rock’s first bootlegs, Live on Blueberry Hill. Video footage of the legendary show has circulated, but now, seven minutes of previously unseen footage from Led Zeppelin in their prime has found its way onto the internet.
That’s thanks to concertgoer Eddie Vincent, who borrowed his parent’s windup 8mm camera and snuck it into the show. Only able to capture footage 30 seconds at a time, Vincent had to pick and choose what moments he wanted to capture.
“I had really great seats,” Vincent tells Classic Rock. “They were right behind the band. I had seats in the front row, right behind John Bonham’s kit. The only problem was that you couldn’t really see John because the gong was there, but he came around and chatted to us while they were doing the acoustic set.”
Vincent sat on the footage for over 50 years before getting intrigued over whether anybody wanted to see it. That’s when video bootleg trader John Waters got involved. “My collectors heart was racing,” says Waters. “A few days later, the reels arrive and the magic unfolds.”
The footage then found its way to another collector, a French Led Zeppelin expert named Etienne Marchand, who synchronised the silent footage to parts of Live on Blueberry Hill. The results were bits and pieces from the concert, including brief snippets of ‘Since I’ve Been Loving You’, ‘Thank You’, ‘What Is And What Should Never Be’, ‘Whole Lotta Love’, ‘Some Other Guy’, ‘The Lemon Song’, John Paul Jones’ organ solo, and Jimmy Page’s theremin solo.
“To write ourselves into a little bit of Led Zeppelin history is an honour,” Waters tells Classic Rock. “The music needs to be out there. I know a lot of collectors and traders that don’t give their stuff away, and that’s a shame to me. Music’s to be shared, and today you need it to get away from the crazy world. And if this film brings a lot of people happiness, hey, we did a good job.”
When Vincent attempted to capture additional footage of the band when they returned to the Forum the following year, he was met with an impediment familiar to hordes of tapers and bootleg recorders at Zeppelin concerts: the six-foot-five, three hundred pound band manager Peter Grant.
“I had a little mic I put on a floor stand under my seat,” says Vincent. “I guess at some point the light shined off this mic, and all of a sudden [Led Zeppelin manager] Peter Grant was by the side of the stage looking at me, and then he started walking over. I was thinking ‘Oh no!’, and he walked right up to me and started pulling at my microphone. You can hear it all on the tape. Finally you hear him go, ‘You’re not allowed to tape the concert’, and it goes dead.”
Below is the previously unseen footage from the band’s concert at the LA Forum on September 4th, 1970.
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