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Professionally filmed Led Zeppelin concerts


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I just read Mick Wall's book Hammer of the Gods. As a Finn, I obviously read it in Finnish. In the end of the book, there is interviews about the gig in Helsinki 1970. Famous finnish musicians talked about the gig, they praised Zep members and etc. BUT what really made my eyes pop out was that the interviewer said the gig was pro shotted by the Finnish TV company YLE. He said the footage is/was black&white and he don't know if the tapes do still exist. But what I do know is that YLE had a really bad manner to wipe old tapes and use them again... For example, Jimi Hendrix's gig in Helsinki 1967 was wiped. The possibility of pro shotted footage from Helsinki 1970 still exists, it's not confirmed by the Finnish media that the tapes were used again.

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  • 2 months later...
9 hours ago, porgie66 said:

Is it safe to assume the RAH '69 concert was pro filmed based on the big camera seen in this pic? If so, who would've filmed it and where might the footage be? 

Screenshot_20180304-175726.png

I don't think that is a camera, I think it might be liquid light projector.

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Looking back at Grant's decision regarding TV performances, it sucks that he didn't allow the band to be filmed more often. There is so much more video material of other bands from that time. Queen is one of these bands that was filmed quite often. There is at least one profesionally filmed concert from each year starting in 1974. Now we are happy that so much footage of them exists.

Imagine HTWWW was filmed, :D or something from 71....

Is there any chance film footage of a festival gig from 1969 exists? There is so much festival footage of Hendrix for example. Or was Grant always there to prevent them from filming, even at such events?

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13 minutes ago, the-ocean87 said:

Looking back at Grant's decision regarding TV performances, it sucks that he didn't allow the band to be filmed more often. There is so much more video material of other bands from that time. Queen is one of these bands that was filmed quite often. There is at least one profesionally filmed concert from each year starting in 1974. Now we are happy that so much footage of them exists.

Imagine HTWWW was filmed, :D or something from 71....

Is there any chance film footage of a festival gig from 1969 exists? There is so much festival footage of Hendrix for example. Or was Grant always there to prevent them from filming, even at such events?

 

Perhaps this suggests that the entire performance is out there. I wouldn't be surprised if this were released in the coming years. 

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If Helsinki 1970 was filmed that would be really something. I dont think any of us have heard this before, and if it still exists that would be amazing.

I am surprised more people here did not comment on this. It was a great show and would rank near the top of Zeppelin finds on film, a holy grail maybe IMO.

I wonder if there is any way to find out if this show was filmed and then if it was the even bigger challenge would be to find out what happened to the tapes and if they exist where are they.

Maybe a someone from Finland would be up to take this on. one would think a Finnish person would have the best chance to find out.      

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17 hours ago, paplbojo said:

 

Perhaps this suggests that the entire performance is out there. I wouldn't be surprised if this were released in the coming years. 

Wow, I've never seen that performance in such great quality. I'd be absolutely shocked if this performance wasn't recorded on video in its entirety. That was great footage. I'd certainly buy it if it was released.

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  • 9 months later...
  • 1 year later...

Some good info on Bath 1970 below. The festival itself had 2 screens either side of the stage. Were these used for the Zeppelin performance? I've never read anything that confirms they were.

http://www.ukrockfestivals.com/bathvideo.html

So there are 3 possible sources of video. The black and white footage shown on the screens, the colour footage shot of the whole festival (or parts of it) and the 20-30 minute colour footage shot by Peter Whitehead contracted by the band, which is under exposed but still usable. 

http://www.tightbutloose.co.uk/tbl-news/a-memory-frozen-forever-berlin-1980-3-lp-reviewed-led-zeppelin-over-europe-1980-it-was-40-years-ago-lz-news-bath-1970-peoples-front-of-lz-latest-book-reviews-the-new-bob-dylan-album-on-the-playe/

So Peter Whitehead owned the footage he shot and has seen it. I was just starting a search for his contact details but it appears he died last year. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Whitehead_(filmmaker)

So it appears the only real chance of Peter's footage being released is via the upcoming (hopefully) documentary or by whoever inherited the footage. I am willing to investigate this further, does anyone have any information that could help?

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28 minutes ago, SilverVishnu said:

Some good info on Bath 1970 below. The festival itself had 2 screens either side of the stage. Were these used for the Zeppelin performance? I've never read anything that confirms they were.

http://www.ukrockfestivals.com/bathvideo.html

So there are 3 possible sources of video. The black and white footage shown on the screens, the colour footage shot of the whole festival (or parts of it) and the 20-30 minute colour footage shot by Peter Whitehead contracted by the band, which is under exposed but still usable. 

http://www.tightbutloose.co.uk/tbl-news/a-memory-frozen-forever-berlin-1980-3-lp-reviewed-led-zeppelin-over-europe-1980-it-was-40-years-ago-lz-news-bath-1970-peoples-front-of-lz-latest-book-reviews-the-new-bob-dylan-album-on-the-playe/

So Peter Whitehead owned the footage he shot and has seen it. I was just starting a search for his contact details but it appears he died last year. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Whitehead_(filmmaker)

So it appears the only real chance of Peter's footage being released is via the upcoming (hopefully) documentary or by whoever inherited the footage. I am willing to investigate this further, does anyone have any information that could help?

The only pro Zep footage is the Peter Whitehead film, which was the only one the band authorized that day. The video screens and all other film & video cameras were ordered turned off by Peter Grant.

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2 minutes ago, zeplz71 said:

The only pro Zep footage is the Peter Whitehead film, which was the only one the band authorized that day. The video screens and all other film & video cameras were ordered turned off by Peter Grant.

Ah ok, you might have a point. 

From http://www.ukrockfestivals.com/bathvideo.html :

Led Zepplin heavies physically removed us from the stage - even though we had no tape in the recorders! We were only allowed to shoot the crowd when Zappa was on.
The huge broadcast camera was I think from British Lion (who also were at Phun City) and TVX basically hijacked the credit for the system.
Oh those were the days..
Jim Pickford-Perry

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From Chris Welch's excellent peter Grant book "The Man Who Led Zeppelin":

PG: "Some people were trying to videotape the Bath Festival and they’d already been told beforehand they couldn’t, so I had no qualms about throwing a bucket of water on to the tape machine which blew the whole lot up. Whoosh! It made a horrible smell and then it melted."

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46 minutes ago, zeplz71 said:

From Chris Welch's excellent peter Grant book "The Man Who Led Zeppelin":

PG: "Some people were trying to videotape the Bath Festival and they’d already been told beforehand they couldn’t, so I had no qualms about throwing a bucket of water on to the tape machine which blew the whole lot up. Whoosh! It made a horrible smell and then it melted."

Yeah I'm familiar with that quote, could be typical PG hyperbole, could be true verbatim.

I've read both and Mark Blake's 2018 PG biography Bring it on Home is SO much better than Welch's. It's actually my favourite Zepp book alongside the one by Barney Hoskyns.

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Dave Lewis questioned a Professor Chibnall 3 years ago about the status of the Whitehead film. "There’s 20 to 30 minutes and a lot of it is backstage. I’ve only seen the footage, I haven’t seen it with sound...when Led Zeppelin played, they played in the dark and there was insufficient stage lighting for (Whitehead's) cameras. So he reckoned that the footage, the live footage, was not usable. It is usable because, I mean, it can be, it can be restored now. So you can raise those lighting levels, you can see more digitally...I think it would be a really good project for 2020."

Gotcha!

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  • 1 year later...
On 12/27/2017 at 2:14 PM, Robert John Paul Page said:

I just read Mick Wall's book Hammer of the Gods. As a Finn, I obviously read it in Finnish. In the end of the book, there is interviews about the gig in Helsinki 1970. Famous finnish musicians talked about the gig, they praised Zep members and etc. BUT what really made my eyes pop out was that the interviewer said the gig was pro shotted by the Finnish TV company YLE. He said the footage is/was black&white and he don't know if the tapes do still exist. But what I do know is that YLE had a really bad manner to wipe old tapes and use them again... For example, Jimi Hendrix's gig in Helsinki 1967 was wiped. The possibility of pro shotted footage from Helsinki 1970 still exists, it's not confirmed by the Finnish media that the tapes were used again.

This intrigued me to the extent that I actually wrote to YLE last week. The unfortunate answer is as follows:

 

unfortunately there was no mention (nor video material) in the Yles archive's TV database of Led Zeppelin's appearance in Helsinki on February 23, 1970.

With king regards,

J, Yle Archive Sales

 

Edited by Danneman Lundström
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