Wednesday, October 16, 2013

VIDEOS: Led Zeppelin Plays One of Its Earliest Concerts (Danish TV, 1969)

by , Open Culture: http://www.openculture.com/2013/04/led_zeppelin_plays_one_of_its_earliest_concerts.html

Here’s a great record of what Led Zeppelin looked and sounded like in the first year of the band’s existence. The date was March 17, 1969.








The group’s debut album, Led Zeppelin, had been out in America for almost three months but would not be released in the UK for a couple more weeks.

Led Zeppelin was on a tour of the UK and Scandinavia when they stopped by the TV-Byen studios in Gladsaxe, Denmark, a suburb of Copenhagen, to play four songs from the new album: “Communication Breakdown” “Dazed and Confused” “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” “How Many More Times” Zeppelin had only been together a little more than half a year when the TV show was recorded (the band’s first gig, on September 7, 1968, also happened to have been in Gladsaxe) but they sound tight.

Some of the band’s trademark theatrics are already in place, including Jimmy Page’s ethereal violin-bow guitar solo. Page is playing his classic 1959 Fender Telecaster, a gift from Jeff Beck that Page had painted a dragon on and used as his main guitar during his days with the Yardbirds.

Only a month before this broadcast, during Zeppelin’s kickoff tour of America, Joe Walsh had given Page a Gibson Les Paul.

By the time Led Zeppelin II was finished, Page had switched to the Les Paul and basically retired the Telecaster, though he played it on his famous 1971 solo in “Stairway to Heaven.”

No comments:

Post a Comment