ZepFanatic Posted February 13, 2009 Author Share Posted February 13, 2009 I saw a '77 show and anyone who did will tell you they were great. Page staggerin' around junked out making a few mistakes didn't ruin a damned thing for me, let alone a whole freakin' concert. I love the 1977 tour as well but their finest moment it wasn't... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dirigible Posted February 13, 2009 Share Posted February 13, 2009 One of the first things Page did was tailor his Zeppelin tunes to 're-play well' in the big boomy rooms the music was performed in. This helped the band deliver the big infrastucture of their music---even if some of the nuances flailed in the wind. Some of the '77 leads sound like chicken-scratchin' compared to leads in '75, especially on the soundboards and I'm not terribly keen on Plant's harmonizer---but Bonzo & Jonesy are stellar, even better than they were in '75. Better set-list too than '75. Believe it or not the acoustic set was a spirited romp and not a lull in the middle of the concert. Fanatic, do you think '77 was worse/better than '79/'80? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nutrocker Posted February 13, 2009 Share Posted February 13, 2009 I'm not Fanatic, but my answer would be, damn right I think 1977 was better than 1980, at least. The four 1979 shows were better than expected, though the second Copenhagen gig and first Knebworth beat the other two by a good country mile. In 1980 Led Zeppelin was a shell of a shadow of its former self...Page was at death's fucking doorstep, Plant clearly wanted OUT and even Jonesy and Bonzo sound bored with it all. The US '80 tour would have been a disaster, certainly a bigger blot on Zeppelin's reputation than the 1977 detractors make that tour out to be. BTW, Dirigible, your analysis of the '77 tour is spot on. (AHEM...) On topic...I (rather shamefully) admit I've never had the priviledge of reading any of the issues of Luis Rey's book, but, considering the last issue was over ten years ago, I daresay unless he does another update damn quick they'll be totally obsolete. Now, having said that, I think THIS chap's blog, if extended to book form, could very likely be THE "Definitive guide to Led Zeppelin live recordings": http://www.theyearofledzeppelin.com/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dirigible Posted February 13, 2009 Share Posted February 13, 2009 The US '80 tour would have been a disaster, certainly a bigger blot on Zeppelin's reputation than the 1977 detractors make that tour out to be. You got that right! A streamlined Zep American tour in '80 (read that a compact two-hour set minus bloated warhorses like No Quarter and Moby Dick) I think would have quickly become three-hour forays of excess. Not that that's a bad thing. I always thought Zep's extended instumentals showcased their individual talents live. If concert-goers didn't care for those parts of the presentation may I remind them of long beer and restroom lines. Also I don't wanna sound like I'm slaggin' off Luis Rey. His Final Edition is a reference work I've spent twice as much time with as I have all my other Zep books put together, about 70 total, Concert File included. I just don't much care for the way Rey dismisses what he doesn't understand or how he lets extant media reporting/legend influence his thinking. Blind acceptance of notions like Plant had the flu in '75 therefore he had to suck or Page hurt a finger or made a mistake is just so much bullshit. Every concert, like every album, should be judged on its own merits, not its timeline. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kdh Posted February 13, 2009 Share Posted February 13, 2009 I totally disagree with the looking into the Zeppelin crystal ball for the USA 1980 tour. The true professional musicians would have shown, as they all are. The Zeppelin in the United States in 1980 would have been the tour to top all tours. The band was going in a different direction. The live playing would have reflected it. Look at the Over Europe tour. The band was experimenting, hence In through the Out door. The clothes, hairstyles, music (remember the interviews talking about punk music), the stage show, the short USA tour run to begin with. No, No, No. That band would have put to rest any thought of the Led being past due. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZepFanatic Posted February 13, 2009 Author Share Posted February 13, 2009 One of the first things Page did was tailor his Zeppelin tunes to 're-play well' in the big boomy rooms the music was performed in. This helped the band deliver the big infrastucture of their music---even if some of the nuances flailed in the wind. Some of the '77 leads sound like chicken-scratchin' compared to leads in '75, especially on the soundboards and I'm not terribly keen on Plant's harmonizer---but Bonzo & Jonesy are stellar, even better than they were in '75. Better set-list too than '75. Believe it or not the acoustic set was a spirited romp and not a lull in the middle of the concert. Fanatic, do you think '77 was worse/better than '79/'80? I *do* think '77 was better than '79/'80, if not for the fact that Jimmy's playing, while erratic, still had a lot of the old magic. While I agree the Copenhagen 2nd night and the 1st Knebworth were good, overall in 1979 and especially in 1980 his well had run dry...just listen to the dreadful White Summer or how he couldn't even play the excrutiatingly simplistic lines in Hot Dog and All My Love... In 1977 his tone sounded like shit, and I'm not a HUGE fan of Jones' bass tone (he lost all his bottom end with the Alembic) but overall Plant was still into it. After Karac died I honestly think if he had never performed with LZ again he wouldn't have cared. Listen to how tired Stairway is in 1979 and 1980...supposedly he refused to sing it at Knebworth and when pressured by the band, wanted to do a reggae version. 1980 US Tour could have been good or it could have been shit but I don't think it would have been even as good as 1977, honestly. I think it would have been like the tours the Who did after Keith Moon died...well received by the fans but a sad shadow of former glory... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dirigible Posted February 13, 2009 Share Posted February 13, 2009 Jones' bass tone lost all its bottom end with the Alembic. A sad truth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZepFanatic Posted February 13, 2009 Author Share Posted February 13, 2009 A sad truth. I like the twangy metallic-sounding mids and highs he got, but he had NO BOTTOM...contrast with John Entwistle and Geddy Lee, who had that trebly twang but a low end that could rattle your bowels...THAT'S what JPJ was missing 1977 to the end... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dirigible Posted February 14, 2009 Share Posted February 14, 2009 If I had any say Mr. Johnny Baldwin would have a Precision fused to his hands. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strider Posted February 16, 2009 Share Posted February 16, 2009 Amen to that, Dirigible. As to what was better, '77 or '79/'80? Well, since I got to see them in '77 and didn't in '79/'80, obviously '77 hahaha. True, I do like the July 24 '79 Copenhagen show very much. But to this day, I still haven't listened to every date of the '80 Euro tour because the ones I have heard have sort of put me off that whole tour. Whereas I don't need to listen to '77 boots; I've got the memories of 5 ear-ravaging LA Forum shows rattling around my cranium as evidence that I would take 1977 over 1979/80 anyday. As to Luis Rey, I have 2 of his editions(I had no idea they were going for so much these days) and since I prefer reading books to reading a computer screen, they were handy guides. But I have to agree with others, his writing style kind of gets on your nerves with his endless repeating of certain adjectives and sometimes mischaracterizing certain concert's performance and atmosphere. To be fair, it might not be his fault...if he wrote the book in his native language it might have been poorly translated when published. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dirigible Posted February 16, 2009 Share Posted February 16, 2009 Let's assume everyone who's met Luis Rey at conventions and concerts have found him conversant in English, or we've got a whole lotta bilinguals up in heah. I never gave a thought to his book having suffered from a bad translation. 'Jimmy scrubbed his strings' and 'got his fingers caught in the strings' and 'Bonzo had the machine gun out' could be mangled translated phrases, but I think not. Considering English is the lingua franca of the global business world, and is likewise recognized as the language of rock & roll, I believe the book was written in English. To add weight to that belief, I see no "Translated by . . ." in the front of Rey's LIVE. Not that that matters, the major strengths of Luis Rey are cataloging songlists, arranging tour dates chronologically and rating sound quality, not evaluating the band's prowess on a given night or their mental state at the time. Strider, I identify with what you wrote---I saw Zep in '77 but did not in '79/'80. Same with 1975; it's the ageold story of just having to have been there. (Had I not had the gig with the USN I'd've seen three more Zeppelin shows than I got to.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZepFanatic Posted February 17, 2009 Author Share Posted February 17, 2009 Hard to say what was better, 77 or 79/80...in 79 really only the 2nd Copenhagen show and the 1st Knebworth were really good...in 1980 they were all decent but some shows were excellent (the first 3 of the tour, Zurich...). Robert's voice was stronger in 1980, I feel, than for most of '77, but Page was even more erratic in 1980. However Page's stage presence was better in '79/'80...he seemed to be actually having fun, smiling, etc (watch the Knebworth vids)...in 1977 he was like a ghost up there, going through the physical motions with little or no expression... Tough call! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dirigible Posted February 17, 2009 Share Posted February 17, 2009 I never understood why Zeppelin bothered touring Germany. On three different tours the crowds seemed restless, noisy, inattentive and indifferent to the music. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZepFanatic Posted February 17, 2009 Author Share Posted February 17, 2009 I never understood why Zeppelin bothered touring Germany. On three different tours the crowds seemed restless, noisy, inattentive and indifferent to the music. Agreed, and they never changed...1970, 1973, 1980...all the same, which is incredible given some of the scorching performances Zeppelin put on (1973 in particular!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kdh Posted February 18, 2009 Share Posted February 18, 2009 Maybe had to with Peter Grants management relationship with certain German promoters or the sex clubs in Germany Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZepDomi Posted February 18, 2009 Share Posted February 18, 2009 Maybe had to with Peter Grants management relationship with certain German promoters or the sex clubs in Germany And the large sums of money the received for playing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dirigible Posted February 18, 2009 Share Posted February 18, 2009 I believe a simple examination of the facts can shed a different light on the 'sex clubs' and 'large sums of money' theories. Money and sex are powerful human motivators without question, but we weren't members of Led Zeppelin either. Would money or sex tempt them more than the average man-on-the-street? Wealthy powerful individuals historically eat all the steak dinners and have the maximum number of nubile back-scratchers their wives and the media will allow. Led Wallet and his bandmates were high rollers by March 1970 who could probably crook a finger and have a large part of the female population flock to their sides. The eleven date European tour was just a warm-up in a minor market for the long string of USA major market dates the band undertook a week after the last European show. The money on that warm-up European tour? The halls in 1970 weren't the larger ones they played in '73 or '80. Even in the later tours if I'm not mistaken none of those venues seated more than 10,000 to 12,000 people, one of the halls seated 4000. Zep's management always took the public stance that they tried to keep ticket and record prices down too. Could Grant command their $25,000 minimum in the smaller halls of Europe like he could in America? For those who don't know how minimums work in the touring industry let me try to explain. Promoters pay up front for the hall rental plus insurance, ticket-takers, ushers, electricity, backstage furniture, telephones, food and drink, etc. Grant's deal in America meant the promoters paid Zep 25 large per show whether ticket sales reached that mark or not. It was a safe bet Led Zep ticket sales would exceed that, as one promoter remarked after hearing Grant's minimum: "I wish I had the problem of making money off Led Zeppelin's talent." Zep gets their money first, then the promoter gets his costs back and, ideally, makes a profit. Let's crunch some numbers. Example: a gig generates $60,000 and the promoter's total costs were $38,000 after he pays the band and the hall expenses. That leaves twenty two thou the promoter and the band gets to split at the percentage agreement Grant negotiated, usually 90% for Zep. The promoter's profit for making all the phone calls and putting up the venture capital would be $2200. Say that promoter promotes an entire tour of 16 gigs and now we're talking some REAL coin. Promoters like Concerts West in America were doing business like that with dozens of acts in the seventies. It's a fiscal impossibility to make more money than the total amount of ticket sales. Zep gets their minumum regardless and if a tour sold poorly the promoter had to suck it up. In 1970 top ticket prices were six bucks a seat, in 1980 approximately ten. If the band cleared every penny of the eleven concerts of the March 1970 European tour and sold 10,000 seats at every venue at six bucks per, which we know is inflated in both cases, the total is $660,000. If they only made their minimum Zep grosses considerably less: $275,000. The following numbers are based on the larger amount. Zeppelin had their own expenses on the road too. Promotion costs, equipment depreciation, transporting the gear across the continent in trucks and feeding and housing the band and crew in hotels is reasonably going to take a 50% bite out of the money generated and probably more. The leftover road work profits were supposedly split equally between Grant, Page, Plant, Jones & Bonham. Divide $330,000 by five and the sum is $66K apiece, chicken feed compared to the yield of the plethora of 20,000 seat halls in the States the band began to play in early 1970. Not bad for a month's work, but the estimates use the highest numbers possible. The individual profits were very likely not as high as estimated for the March 1970 tour. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZepFanatic Posted February 19, 2009 Author Share Posted February 19, 2009 The Who also toured Germany extensively in the mid 1960s as well as in 1972 and 1975, so it's not shocking they went. It's just odd the German crowds were so lame...not what I'd expect given the Germans I've known in person over the years! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
georgio Posted February 21, 2009 Share Posted February 21, 2009 Yeah I've done this...he fucking HATES most of the post-1973 shows, and his constant digs at American audiences (especially in the 1975 and 1977 tours) is annoying. He always also seems to find Spanish pieces of music played during Dazed and Confused and No Quarter...I have no doubt Page and Jones may well have thrown snippets of Spanish pieces in, but I have a hard time believing they'd do it for 3-6 DIFFERENT ones the way Luis claims in his book! Going off the sex and money and back to Luis Rey - I think anyone who listens to virtually every Zep recording could at some points get a little jaded. I know it sounds improbable, but things might start to blur...if you know what I mean....wonder why they didn't reprint the book? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZepFanatic Posted February 23, 2009 Author Share Posted February 23, 2009 ^That's a good point, and I suppose it could be the case with him. But he seems to love the early days and really detests (with exceptions) post-73...*shrug* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moonson Posted March 5, 2009 Share Posted March 5, 2009 Fritz Rau, of the concert organizers Lippmann & Rau, succeeded in getting many of the United States' largest acts to play in Germany for the first time, from the Doors to Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin and Frank Zappa. He enjoyed similar success with top UK acts, to include Led Zeppelin. Nearly every large German city had an array of suitable concert venues to choose from and there was a large American contingent attending their concerts in Berlin & Frankfurt on account of the many U.S. military installations in the vicinity. It's also a beautiful country for one to experience, musician or not. The Who also toured Germany extensively in the mid 1960s as well as in 1972 and 1975, so it's not shocking they went. It's just odd the German crowds were so lame...not what I'd expect given the Germans I've known in person over the years! Yes, it has a lot to do with the good relation LZ had with Fritz Rau, who is a concert organiser legend here in Germany. Rau also had organised some Blues festivals over here in the mid 1960s, bringing over black u.s. artists for the first time to europe, some of these were recorded and it´s been reported that esp RP and JP were great admirers of these recordings. they were psyched to be able to work with somone who in their perception had written Blues history. i am not old enough to have visited any of their german gigs, but my older brother was at a 1980 Mannheim gig, he kept telling me about boozed up GIs not paying much attention to the music and sceaming silly things during the concert. I saw The Firm live in 85 in Frankfurt and the sold out hall was perhaps half filled again with boozed up noisy american soldiers, feeling free to go wild, far from home, quite ridiculous. when i go to see concerts in germany, many is the number i experience audiences to enjoy the performance and honor the artist with warm applause and positive cheering. i cannot speak for the 70s tho, just for the mid/late 80s and on. oh, the american soldiers finally left the country in the early 90s as you might want to notice. about Luis Rey, i have the 2nd edition and it has been very helping & insightful for me over the years, been using it at frequently and finding it accurate at many times. yes, sometimes i disagree a bit about what he writes about certain performances, but overall he has his facts right. Thank you mucho, Luis for providing us with such a fantastic book (series) in times of pre internet information overflow! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moonson Posted March 6, 2009 Share Posted March 6, 2009 Their numbers have been significantly reduced but there are still a considerable amount within Germany. Many have been moved to Grafenwoehr, on the German/Czech border. Elvis Presley himself went there on training maneuvers during his two years of U.S. Army service in Germany 40+ years ago. you are right, as usual Steve - there are still US troops in Germany. i was not too accuate with my statement, but i was mainly aiming at setting the picture more straight about the "weird" german audiences. not all of us are barabarians;) but i now feel like i live in an occupied country .. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strider Posted March 6, 2009 Share Posted March 6, 2009 Depending on the source, there are anywhere between 57,000 to 68,000 U.S. military personnel stationed in Germany at the moment. I was stationed in Nürnberg, Germany from 1982-1985 and I have nothing but fond memories from my time there. The people were fantastic and the country beautiful. And there was only ONE McDonalds in Nürnberg then, and no other fast food joints. Unlike the sad state of affairs now. As for concerts, I saw plenty there and while there definitely was a large presence of American military at some(mostly the metal shows) shows, I don't recall them being any drunker or unruly than the Germans. Judas Priest/Ted Nugent in 1984, Def Leppard @ Erlangen in 1983, Iron Maiden @ Stuttgardt in '84, various metal fests including the Monsters of Rock '84 @ Nürnberg (at the very place Hitler had his rallies) with AC/DC, Van Halen, Ozzy, Gary Moore, Motley Crüe...all of these had enthusiastic crowds with none of the lameness exhibited by the German crowds on the Zeppelin boots. In some ways they were more enthusiastic than US crowds, cheering for encores long after most American crowds would have gone home. I also enjoyed the German(hell, I experienced the same in England and France so maybe it is a European trait) ritual of singing songs...football songs, beer songs, whatever...at the end of shows. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ro_a Posted March 6, 2009 Share Posted March 6, 2009 Hey all, just wondering what the general opinion of Luis Rey is on this board? I have his Zeppelin bootleg books and on the whole find them very informative and helpful, although there are some SUPER irritating things (at least to me) about the reviews and how he writes and sometimes what he thinks. Just wondering what other people think? I bought the first 2 or 3 of these, and it was a sea change in my Zep knowledge up until that time. Now what Led Zeppelin is to me is at least 50% bootleg. I think Luis Rey is swell Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moonson Posted March 6, 2009 Share Posted March 6, 2009 Why, because of the U.S. military presence? I think it's less of an occupation and more of a strategic partnership. The Marshall Plan has definitely helped to shape post-WWII Germany and IMHO for the better. a LOT has happened in germany since 1945.. it´s only the echo of a feeling i had when i was growing up in the 80s in west germany.. cold war, foreign soldiers and - this is really frightening - NUKES planted all over the place. didnt make me feel too safe back then, being squeezed in between 2 superpowers. i enjoyed the period of nuclear disarmament, but the ones in power do think different again. i´ve no idea what Luis Rey would say to all of this tho;) does he ever get on this board ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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