Credit: Far Out / Heinrich Klaffs
British bands have obsessed over the concept of “breaking America”.
Climbing aboard the Western cash cow and submitting it to your musical mercy is supposedly the golden ticket to rock and roll immortality, but really, where did this concept all come from? Maybe it was The Beatles, maybe it was The Rolling Stones, but I can say with certainty that it definitely had to do with Led Zeppelin.
A British band has never had their way with America quite as quickly and seamlessly as Led Zeppelin. From the minute their debut album dropped in 1969, anticipation swirled in the United States, and its venues quickly prepared for the band to come and dominate them. But naturally, the band had to pay their dues and cosplay as a support act for the time being.
That opportunity came under the stewardship of Country Joe and The Fish, who, in January of 1969, invited the emerging British band to support them in San Francisco. With their debut album released that very month, the band arrived in the Bay Area, buoyed by the confidence of their inevitable stardom and put on a show that America would never forget. Nor would Country Joe, for Page remembered that Zeppelin “obliterated them in San Francisco on the first tour”.
In the next five years, they would stop off in every major American city and rip the roof of each arena, but the reverb of that American debut never stopped ringing in their ears. It was a moment in time that the entire band, including John Paul Jones, could simply never forget.
“Highlights? Well, the first San Francisco gig with Zeppelin was a highlight,” the bassist remembered. “That was a moment when we just thought it’s really coming together.”
Moments of intimate genius are fleeting for bands as big as Led Zeppelin. Their rapid rise to fame meant only a select few fans could boast an “I was there” moment, a moment that saw the band playing a show that felt like a secret. That San Francisco showed, played a mere days before their debut album, may have been the only time something like that existed, for when Led Zeppelin finally dropped, the secret was out, and every show thereafter would be a mass congregation of rock worship.
Further reading: From The Vault
But more than that, the show marked the changing of the guard. It was a year that would wave goodbye to The Beatles and leave space on the rock and roll throne. That night in San Francisco, Zeppelin wasted no time in seizing it, as Page boldly claimed.
Speaking of that night, he wrote, “With the final annihilation: out with the old, in with the new. It was now to be a blitzkrieg of America, provided by powerful shows and the underground FM radio, plus an army of whispers that would see us jam-packing venues from West Coast to East Coast.”
Moments in time have come and gone, ever since that night in 1969, but arguably none of them have been quite as big, triumphant or as exciting as the moment Zeppelin took the stage.
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