Super kind words. Thanks. It's been a real joy to discover them and share them.

Funny you should mention shots at Stones shows. That's my other favorite band and some of the other shows where investing time paid off with great seats. I was front row at the Forum for the '75 show too. There was a photographer from the LA times who took this great shot from the corner of the stage, and she missed me by about 2 seats. I tried to find other shots that may have included me, but no luck. Oh well.

Wow. Very cool. As I mentioned to someone else, I shared these freely and happily. But I'd rather that they or their derivatives don't become commercial products. But if you feel like sharing here, I can't wait to see what you come up with.

I'm pretty sure I went on 8/22/71 based on what they're wearing in these pictures. There's a video of that night with a picture that seems to match their clothes in these. Of course, if they wore the same things both nights than I can't be sure. These are the slides I found from that night and they were mixed in with my '75 shots. Super frustrating that I can't find the rest. As for '72, it was June 25, as I'm pretty sure that was the only show in L.A. that year.

The one hesitation I had in sharing these is that someone else would use them commercially. I'm sure I could have taken the real hi res images and sold prints etc. But what I really wanted to do was share them with other fans for their enjoyment. I love what you're creativity, but I won't grant permission for anyone to sell these or any variation of them. That's just not in the spirit of how and why I shared them. Thank you for respecting that.

It was slide film, may 64. So I had to shoot at 1/60. I don't recall any photographers, but I know some were there. I'll tell you this... I'd pay a fortune for a decent shot from behind the amps showing me at one of these shows. I've been on the hunt for a long time. Kind of my holy grail. Pretty sure it's not out there... but I'll never stop looking!

Yeah, that was the problem. I think I was shooting at 1/60, so you totally get it. I think it was six rolls of 36 over two nights, so 216 shots. About half of them were way too blurry for even the biggest fans. Then another 50 were just bad shots, for a variety of reasons. That left about 60 which were decent including the ones I shared here. Of course these days with digital, you can shoot all you want with no development costs. I was in the pit for the Rolling Stones in Phoenix last year. I probably took 300 shots between my camera and my phone + a handful of videos. So much easier these days.

Yep. I still have the stuff. Honeywell Pentax H1a with a Vivitar 85-205 zoom lens (about a foot long). Keep in mind that there were no metal detectors and no pat downs way back then. I just put it under my jacket and hoped for the best. Still stunned that the security people didn't take it during the show or confiscate my film.

Yeah, concert ticket inflation, especially for great seats has been ridiculous. I think a gallon of gas was something like 60 cents a gallon here in California. Now, it's about $3.50, almost 6X more than it was then. If those spectacular seats were only 6X more now, it would be about $53. Good luck getting nosebleeds for that now. Supply and demand, I guess.

Take from this 66 year old guy... You play the hand you're dealt. You'll get opportunities that I'll never get. If there's a lesson to be learned here, it's to recognize special opportunities and pounce on them, because they don't come along too often.

Thanks! The reactions from everyone here are very gratifying. What drives me crazy is that I have more from 71 and maybe 72 somewhere. Not the same seats to be sure, but still. Probably still in the attic at the home I grew up in!

Actually front row for 2 shows, second row for the other one. $8.75 per ticket, so crazy by today's standards. I still can't get my head around it. There are quite a few more, but lots of blurs from them moving too fast for my shutter speed, some just out of focus, sometimes they turned their heads, so it's just hair. The ones I posted were the best shots. I shot three rolls of Ektachrome, 36 shots per roll. To be totally honest, they were all shot in color. Some of them just looked better when I removed the color on my computer. Some of them needed virtually no touch up in the computer. Others required a lot of work. Most are full frame, but some were cropped. I'll go back over them and see if there are more that are close to the quality of these.

No problem. Happy to share. So happy you and the others here are enjoying them.

Well, it was a long time ago, but I can tell you this for sure... My ears were ringing for days. But you won't hear me complaining then or now!

Here are the other half of my pix.

Hi everyone, I was up in my attic and discovered a gold mine... I found the slides I had taken in the final nights of the North American tour in March of 1975. I was 21 and determined to get great seats to see Led Zeppelin. As crazy as it sounds (and it was), we camped out for 3 nights at the Forum in Los Angeles to be first in line when tickets went on sale for the final 3 shows of their tour. My friends and I had it all planned out. We wanted to be sure to end up with tickets to all three shows, so we each were to buy tickets for a specific date. When the ticket windows opened, I asked for the best possible seats for my date. I was stunned when she handed me Section B, Row 1. Front row, almost dead center. She had no idea why I was yelling and jumping up and down and why there were hundreds of people lined up to get tickets to these shows. Our seats for all three nights were in the first two rows. The top ticket price was $8.75. That was 45 years ago. I snuck my camera in. I was sure they'd confiscate it. Fortunately, they didn't. This was way before cell phones and digital cameras. I had a Honeywell Pentax with a zoom lens and three rolls of Ektachrome for the first two nights. Real SLR camera. Real slide film. I left my camera home on the final night so that I could totally take in the spectacle. I hope you can see these well enough here. I've had to reduce the size of the images to meet the upload limit. I'll divide them over two posts. Here's the first batch. The rest will follow right after this.