Led Zeppelin's 1973 North American Tour was the ninth concert tour of North America by the English rockband. The tour was divided into two legs, with performances commencing on 4 May and concluding on 29 July 1973. Rehearsals took place at Old Street Film Studios in London.
History
The tour took place shortly after the release of Led Zeppelin's chart-topping fifth album, Houses of the Holy. Prior to its commencement, Led Zeppelin's manager Peter Grant hired PR consultant Danny Goldberg for promotion and booked large stadium venues.[1] The resulting tour broke box office records across North America.[2] On May 5 at Tampa Stadium, Florida, they played to 56,800 fans (breaking the record set by The Beatles at Shea Stadium in 1965), and grossed $309,000 (US$2,120,843 in 2023 dollars[3]).[4][5] In total, this tour grossed over $4,000,000 (US$27,454,273 in 2023 dollars[3]).[1]
Led Zeppelin's shows evolved from those on previous tours, with the introduction of dry ice, laser effects, backdrop mirrors, hanging mirror balls and Catherine wheel pyrotechnics.[1][6] Their dress attire also took on a more flamboyant nature, evidenced in particular by guitarist Jimmy Page's hummingbird jacket and John Paul Jones' Spanish matador jacket.[1] This increase in on-stage theatricality was later referred to by Page during an interview he gave with rock journalist Mick Wall:
Originally, we saw the whole essence of our live performance as something that the audience listened to very carefully, picking up on what was going on, the spontaneity and musicianship. And you can’t do that if you’re running around the stage all night, or at least we couldn’t back then." By 1973, however, "we were much more ambitious, in that respect. We really wanted to take the live performances as far as they could go.[7]
Promotional poster of Led Zeppelin, 1973
Three sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden in New York City that concluded the tour were filmed for a motion picture, but the theatrical release of this project (The Song Remains the Same) was delayed until 1976. The film documents the theft of $203,000 of the group's money from a safe deposit box at the Drake Hotel in New York, just before their final show.[6] The theft was discovered by Led Zeppelin tour manager Richard Cole, who was immediately interrogated by police as a suspect. The sum of money was the band's takings from their three New York concerts. It was never recovered and the identity of the thief or thieves has never been discovered.[8] The band later sued the Drake Hotel for the theft.[9]
Led Zeppelin hired for the first time The Starship – a former United AirlinesBoeing 720Bpassenger jet. During the early part of the tour the band had hired a small private Falcon Jet to journey from city to city, but these aircraft are comparatively light and susceptible to air turbulence. After performing at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco on June 2,[10] they encountered bad turbulence on a flight back to Los Angeles. As a result, Grant resolved to hire The Starship for the remainder of the tour, at a cost for $30,000.[11][12] The exterior of the plane was re-sprayed with Led Zeppelin emblazoned down the side of the fuselage.
Flying on The Starship, Led Zeppelin was now no longer required to change hotels so often. They could base themselves in large cities and travel to and from concerts within flying distance.[11] After each show, the band members would be transported directly by limousine from the concert venue to the airport, as depicted in the concert film, The Song Remains the Same.
In an interview with William Burroughs in 1975, Page commented on the exhausting nature of the 1973 tour:
[W]e were playing [sets] for three hours solid, and physically that was a real... I mean, when I came back from the last tour I didn't know where I was. I didn't even know where I was going. We ended up in New York and the only thing that I could relate to was the instrument onstage. It was like swinging on liana from one city to the other… I was just totally and completely spaced out.[13]
In a more recent interview, Page recalled:
We arrived in America and we did 53,000 at Atlanta and then 55,000 at the following concert in Tampa, Florida — it was quite clear that if people were going to come along to see us in those kind of numbers we weren’t going to have problems doing concerts that would fulfil the demand. It was phenomenal though — the audience reaction was just so with us, y’know.[14]
I remember that tour rather like the lyrics to "The Battle of Evermore". A flash. Really fast. Lots of battles and conquests. And the din of the hordes. So much happened in such a short time. It was phenomenal.[15]
The kind of speed we were moving at, the creative juices in the air, the whole thing was just an absolute mixture of adrenaline, chemical, euphoria ... and there were no brakes. We couldn't stop what was happening. We had no idea what it even was. But we just kept trying, pushing forward, every show.[8]
"I got to see Led Zeppelin at very close quarters on that tour, travelling as part of their entourage," recalled Roy Harper. "The level of their success then was unbelievable… Being so close to them at the time, it was difficult to be objective about it all – you know, I was going along on the bus. But Zeppelin in full flight was an incredibly intense experience."[16]
Tour set list
The song "No Quarter" from the band's recent album release, Houses of the Holy, was played for the first time on this tour. The band also dropped their acoustic set, which was not revived until the Earl's Court shows in May 1975.
