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Led Zeppelin's 1972 Australian Shows


LedZep123

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  • 7 months later...
1 hour ago, donb8 said:

I've come to look at this tour as being really overrated. The band never really gels. Jimmy's playing at 30% compared to the level he was playing at the us tour. No wonder the audience looks tame in that footage from Sydney.

Probably.  They're definitely transitional shows, much like the Japan shows later that year.

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I didn't look closely at this original post when I first read it, but I thought that there was no way that 80,000 people attended the Subiaco show. Not only would that have meant about 10% of the entire population of the city would have been in the one place, but Perth is one of the most isolated capital cities in the world, so it's not like people would have been traveling from all over to attend. I found a review of it here from the time that gives the much more realistic, but still extremely respectable, figure of 8,000.

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On 9/17/2022 at 3:44 PM, donb8 said:

I've come to look at this tour as being really overrated. The band never really gels. Jimmy's playing at 30% compared to the level he was playing at the us tour. No wonder the audience looks tame in that footage from Sydney.

It's not my favorite tour as a whole, but some of the heaviest concerts they played where done there. I love Adelaide 19th and the 2nd to last show in Sydney, great stuff and just hard driving ferocious playing, even Plant's voice was top-notch for many of those shows.

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  • 1 year later...
On 11/21/2020 at 9:36 AM, LedZep123 said:

Not very many people know about these shows as well as the Japanese shows that Led Zeppelin did in '71 and '72. But, in my opinion, the Australian shows are actually some of the most important in their career as a band. Why? Well, first off, it gave them an introduction to stadiums, which they played during '73 and '77 in North America, including their famous Atlanta, Tampa and Detroit shows. Heck, they played to some 80,000 people in a 50,000 seat stadium in Perth on the first night. In Sydney, they played to between 30,000 and 40,000 people. Maybe even more!!! Secondly, it proved that the band can actually rock in places that aren't just in America and Europe. Sure they played Japan just a few months before, but they were, to what, 10,000 people. They were the biggest thing to come to Australia since The Beatles in '64. They also set a record attendance for the highest attended show in New Zealand, when they played in Auckland to about 25,000 people. And that is pretty big. I'm from N.Z., and they're not the biggest rockers in the world. And imagine in 1972!!! All in all, these were definently some very important concerts in the band's career. Hear is the complete inteniary with the rounded attendance.

16th February - Perth, Australia - Subiaco Oval - 80,000 

19th February - Adelaide, Australia - Memorial Drive Park - 8,000

20th February - Melbourne, Australia - Kooyong Stadium - 14,000

25th February - Auckland, New Zealand - Western Springs Stadium - 25,000

27th February - Sydney, Australia - Sydney Showground - 38,000

29th February - Brisbane, Australia - Brisbane Festival Hall - 6,000

If anyone was here, please share your story. 

I have to agree. They were. at their peak at this one.

"Was overcast, even drizzling rain. Arrived in an overpacked Kombi (very cliche but true) smoking all the way in. No tickets, we grinned and walked passed the ticket guy fast as he frantically grabbed for a ticket from whoever may have had one. I slipped a $5 bill into his pockets for his efforts. Five bucks to see Led Zeppelin seemed more than fair.
Just after 2PM and I swear the sun broke through like a spotlight over the stage as they walked on. A mass of people jumped the racecourse fence from the power of the Immigrant Song kicking off as we looked on stunned.
A few hours later they finished their umpteenth encore (contrary to set lists) and left the stage to enormous applause. What a show and of course we had never seen anything so dynamic and powerful back in ’72. Simply amazing and one of their best (acknowledged years later by Page and Plant) concerts ever."

My comment from JPJ Audio Forum https://jpjaudio.com.au/1972/02/27/led-zeppelin-australian-tour-1972/

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  • 5 months later...
On 2/14/2024 at 12:05 AM, Hally said:

I have to agree. They were. at their peak at this one.

"Was overcast, even drizzling rain. Arrived in an overpacked Kombi (very cliche but true) smoking all the way in. No tickets, we grinned and walked passed the ticket guy fast as he frantically grabbed for a ticket from whoever may have had one. I slipped a $5 bill into his pockets for his efforts. Five bucks to see Led Zeppelin seemed more than fair.
Just after 2PM and I swear the sun broke through like a spotlight over the stage as they walked on. A mass of people jumped the racecourse fence from the power of the Immigrant Song kicking off as we looked on stunned.
A few hours later they finished their umpteenth encore (contrary to set lists) and left the stage to enormous applause. What a show and of course we had never seen anything so dynamic and powerful back in ’72. Simply amazing and one of their best (acknowledged years later by Page and Plant) concerts ever."

My comment from JPJ Audio Forum https://jpjaudio.com.au/1972/02/27/led-zeppelin-australian-tour-1972/

 

The link from the JPL Audio Forum has been deleted since this post.
Reading where they were overrated on the Australian tour I suppose maybe for some shows they were but they sure came together for Sydney. Luck maybe but they were tight, all playing at their best. Who stands (and sits) around watching a band playing crap for 3 hours 20 minutes then cheering them off the stage? 38,000 bored fans hoping the last song might be OK? Nah it was a cracker and you had to be there and happy to say I was.

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