Keith Moon sat in with the band on 23 June 1977, at the Los Angeles Forum. He used this instrument on " Ten Years Gone" and the acoustic portion of the setlist. It was also on this tour that John Paul Jones introduced a custom triple-necked acoustic instrument which contained a mandolin, twelve-string guitar and six-string guitar. įor many of the concerts on this tour, Jimmy Page chose to wear a striking custom-made white silk dragon suit or as it was known as the "Poppy White Dragon Suit", as is captured in several famous photographs of the band. This plane should not be confused with the more famous Starship, which had been used by the band on its previous two concert stints in North America, but which was permanently grounded in 1977 due to engine problems. įor the tour, the band chartered Caesar's Chariot, a 45-seat Boeing 707 owned by the Caesars Palace Hotel in Las Vegas, to shuttle them between cities. The unwieldy scale of just how big the Zeppelin experience had become was encapsulated over those forty-four 1977 shows. Back then, though, Grant and Zeppelin were making their own rules as they went along. With its staggered itinerary and massive arena and stadium venues, became the blueprint for which the likes of Bruce Springsteen and U2 would base their multimillion dollar tours during the Eighties and Nineties. In New York, the band did not advertise the concerts, relying solely on street demand to sell out the shows enough ticket applications were received to sell out a further two nights had time permitted.ĭave Lewis, an expert on the band, considers that this tour, Lengthy stints were spent in New York City and Los Angeles, where the band performed six sold-out shows each at Madison Square Garden and the Los Angeles Forum. On 30 April they performed to 76,229 people at the Pontiac Silverdome a new world record attendance for a solo indoor attraction, beating the 75,962 that The Who attracted there on 6 December 1975 for Opening Night, and grossed $792,361.50 (also a record breaker).
Led Zeppelin's 1977 North American Tour was a massive financial success, as the band sold out large arenas and stadiums. Page (right) and Plant (left) on stage during the 1977 North American Tour at Chicago Stadium on April 10, 1977, performing " Stairway to Heaven". I was terrified at the prospect of the first few shows. All the equipment was shipped over there five days before we were due to go. We didn't have any instruments for a month.
The delay reduced the amount of time the band had available to rehearse, since all their equipment had already been airlifted to the United States. It eventually kicked off on 1 April, at the Dallas Memorial Auditorium in Dallas. The tour was scheduled to commence on 27 February at Fort Worth, Texas, but Plant contracted laryngitis and the schedule was postponed for a month. It was Led Zeppelin's biggest ever tour, and tickets sold at a rate of 72,000 a day. Fifty one concerts were scheduled over a three-leg period, for 1.3 million ticket holders.
#LED ZEPLIN ON TOUR SERIES#
Led Zeppelin's manager Peter Grant conceived this series of concerts as an effort that would reassert Led Zeppelin as the dominant band of the decade. Rehearsals for the tour eventually took place at Manticore Studios, Fulham in early 1977, where the band worked for two months on a new set list. During this sabbatical, the band had recorded their seventh studio album, Presence. This was the first tour embarked on by the band following their enforced lay-off caused by Plant's car accident in Greece in 1975.
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