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what the most longest Led Zeppelin concert?


Alex Depp

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The last Earl's Court show was close to 4 hours, wasn't it? On the '77 tour the last LA Forum show clocks in around 3 1/2 hours. Those are better documented shows, where as the Boston Tea Party is a speculated length of time. Anyway, I am sure the people who are better authorities on shows than I am will give you more precise information than I am able to do. Welcome to the forum!

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Off the top of my head, I think 5-25-75 and 6-27-77 are about neck and neck lengthwise... (Steve? Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong...)

Yep...damn close:

(from the complete show lengths on my computer)

6-27-77 is 3hrs 41min 37sec

5-25-75 is 3hrs 38min 41sec

( :P Shit...all of the LA'77 shows top out over three and a half hours- those are long fucking concerts - I'd say the punters got their money's worth B) )

Of course, long concerts were an artform Zeppelin perfected back around 1970 or so. Hell, I don't think the Stones ever played over two hours till 1975. Floyd, and some of the prog guys, probably...the first CSNY 1974 reunion tour show in Seattle was a marathon as well, they played like fourty songs...

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Melody Maker's Roy Hollingsworth wrote a review after one of the two Nassau, New York shows during the 1972 tour. He wrote of the show being a mammoth 4+ hour affair. The bootlegs are fragmentary, so it's hard to corroborate.

Same with the Seattle 6-19-72 show...the recording's got a few cuts, but that's an epic concert as well. "The one where we did a thousand encores" as Robert Plant put it.

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Is that the one where they played Dancing Days twice?

Too bad the sound quality on the tapes wasn't better. Too bad, the guy who recorded L.A. on June 25th and the other L.A. shows in 1977, didn't make the trek up to Seattle to record that show. It would have been epic if we had a good quality AUD of this show.

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  • 1 month later...

Same with the Seattle 6-19-72 show...the recording's got a few cuts, but that's an epic concert as well. "The one where we did a thousand encores" as Robert Plant put it.

They played seven encores at the Inglewood 6/25/72 show. Plant said "...they[audience] just wouldn't leave."

Off the top of my head, I think 5-25-75 and 6-27-77 are about neck and neck lengthwise... (Steve? Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong...)

Yep...damn close:

(from the complete show lengths on my computer)

6-27-77 is 3hrs 41min 37sec

5-25-75 is 3hrs 38min 41sec

( :P Shit...all of the LA'77 shows top out over three and a half hours- those are long fucking concerts - I'd say the punters got their money's worth B) )

Of course, long concerts were an artform Zeppelin perfected back around 1970 or so. Hell, I don't think the Stones ever played over two hours till 1975. Floyd, and some of the prog guys, probably...the first CSNY 1974 reunion tour show in Seattle was a marathon as well, they played like fourty songs...

Pink Floyd's shows were pretty much as long as the album's they played. For instance, in 1977, they opened with the Animals album and then played Wish You Were Here. Their encores were usually Us and Them and Money but like I said, the shows were about as long as the albums. Unlike Zep, they also took a twenty minute intermission.

As far as the longest Zep shows, you're right, the above two shows were the longest. Oh ansd the Boston '69 show

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Re: Pink Floyd, they didn't start playing full albums in their shows until 1972. That's when they premiered the Eclipse suite, which became The Dark Side of the Moon. Prior to that, they'd play bits and pieces from the albums that were currently out, and also debut new songs they were working on (which they famously did with Echoes). So before they started doing albums straight through in each set, their shows were very long.

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Re: Pink Floyd, they didn't start playing full albums in their shows until 1972. That's when they premiered the Eclipse suite, which became The Dark Side of the Moon. Prior to that, they'd play bits and pieces from the albums that were currently out, and also debut new songs they were working on (which they famously did with Echoes). So before they started doing albums straight through in each set, their shows were very long.

Ah ok makes sense. thanks for the correction. I have later Pink Floyd boots from 1974-1977 where they would play whole albums.

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Ah ok makes sense. thanks for the correction. I have later Pink Floyd boots from 1974-1977 where they would play whole albums.

the '77 Floyd shows are around the two, two and half hour mark, give or take...I'm guessing, but I'd reckon the Montreal show is one of the longest, if not the longest of the In The Flesh concerts. :D In spite of Waters' freakout they sorta let it all hang out that night...as usual, the songs/improvs got longer as the tour went on.

I likes me some Floyd from any era, but for me their '77 tour is up there with Zeppelin's.

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Why did Zep play Dancing Days twice? blink.gif

Well, as I recall, they loved the song and were justifiably proud of it (witness Eddie Kramer's anecdote about them dancing around the Stargroves garden after they'd finished cutting the track). Why they played it twice that night...possibly they just wanted to show it off, or they had run out of ideas for encores.

Oddly, "Dancing Days" didn't get much of an airing after 1973...the two impromptu 1977 acoustic performances (May 26 in Landover; June 27 in L.A.) were about it, I think...

"Well, we haven't played 'Dancing Days' in about four years...and I don't think we will again, either!" - Robert Plant, L.A. Forum, 27-6-77

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I think they played Dancing Days in one of the New York shows also. Or at least the music anyway. I can't remember if Robert sang it.

True, there are a couple occasions in '77 where Jimmy starts playing -or at least quotes the 'Dancing Days' riff- during "Bron Y Aur Stomp". Tempe being one of them...and just when Bonzo decides to join in, that's when Jimmy goes off in another direction entirely :o

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Save for Japan 1971 and Seattle 1972, I think that the band's longer shows were a little too over the top, even for Zeppelin. The standard 1977 show was a great journey, as was the 1975 set. But on those shows like the last LA 77 gig or the last Earls Court gig, the energy doesn't really keep up. In nearly all cases, it's usually Page pulling out the stops and going on and on and on during Dazed and Confused (1975) or with his noise solo or some other aspect of the jams in 77. Some of them are great. But the whole "long show=legendary gig" thing really doesn't apply to any gig post 1972. And for those 1975 and 1977 gigs, Page's playing was nowhere near what it used to be in the previous years. So, those long solos don't do the show the justice that they used to. Besides, by that point, the band obviously knew that they had a reputation for playing for hours on end, and I think it was that very fact which kind of killed the spontaneity of their live show. They no longer played long gigs as a special thing, since it was now a part of their act. The best marathons of 1970-1972 were based around spontaneity, and you could hear the entire band in it together. Not the same at all for the 73-77 gigs.

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Save for Japan 1971 and Seattle 1972, I think that the band's longer shows were a little too over the top, even for Zeppelin. The standard 1977 show was a great journey, as was the 1975 set. But on those shows like the last LA 77 gig or the last Earls Court gig, the energy doesn't really keep up. In nearly all cases, it's usually Page pulling out the stops and going on and on and on during Dazed and Confused (1975) or with his noise solo or some other aspect of the jams in 77. Some of them are great. But the whole "long show=legendary gig" thing really doesn't apply to any gig post 1972. And for those 1975 and 1977 gigs, Page's playing was nowhere near what it used to be in the previous years. So, those long solos don't do the show the justice that they used to. Besides, by that point, the band obviously knew that they had a reputation for playing for hours on end, and I think it was that very fact which kind of killed the spontaneity of their live show. They no longer played long gigs as a special thing, since it was now a part of their act. The best marathons of 1970-1972 were based around spontaneity, and you could hear the entire band in it together. Not the same at all for the 73-77 gigs.

Theres certainly a case to be made that Page declined in the bands latter years and there were some long shows where the band seemed to tire towards the end(the last LA 77 show for example) but I disagree that the "standard" shows from those years had more energy. At the start of the latter tours espeically I don't think it was a case of more intense shorter shows but rather the band feeling there way back and not having either the confidence to strench out nore the same energy. NQ from MSG in 75 maybe under 20 mins for example but the 25 min version from the second Seattle show blows it out of the water for energy and inspiration.

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  • 2 months later...

Did they really play 4 1/2 hours in Boston on the 26th? I find this hard to believe

It wasn't in January. That was a mis-date due to JPJ having talked about the gig sometime later in the early 70's. The real date of the "long" Boston show was in May 1969. A journalist touring with the band at the time wrote a book and mentioned it in there. But it's not likely that they really played 3-4 hours in any case. Even with a bunch of covers in there, and all of Zep I and Zep II, they wouldn't have come anywhere close to that length. Consider that even Blueberry Hill or Madison Square Garden in 1970 were just over two hours.

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It wasn't in January. That was a mis-date due to JPJ having talked about the gig sometime later in the early 70's. The real date of the "long" Boston show was in May 1969. A journalist touring with the band at the time wrote a book and mentioned it in there. But it's not likely that they really played 3-4 hours in any case. Even with a bunch of covers in there, and all of Zep I and Zep II, they wouldn't have come anywhere close to that length. Consider that even Blueberry Hill or Madison Square Garden in 1970 were just over two hours.

Thx Cookieshoes

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