Led Zeppelin North American Tour 1972

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North America 1972

Poster for Led Zeppelin's concerts at San Diego, used to help promote its 1972 North American tour
Concert tour by Led Zeppelin
Locations North America
Start date May 27, 1972
End date June 29, 1972
Legs 1
Shows 19 (including two European warm-up shows)
Led Zeppelin tour chronology
Australasia 1972
 North America 1972
 Japan 1972

Led Zeppelin's 1972 North American Tour was the eighth concert tour of North America by the English rock band. The tour was divided into two legs, with performances commencing on May 27 and concluding on June 29, 1972. It included two warm-up shows in Europe.

Contents

[edit] History

Guitarist Jimmy Page considers Led Zeppelin at this point to have been at their artistic peak.[1] However, despite selling out their concerts, the tour had the lowest profile of all of the band's eleven North American concert tours, being vastly overshadowed by the Rolling Stones' tour of the same period, much to the annoyance of Led Zeppelin.[2][3][4] In order to prevent this from happening again, the band's manager, Peter Grant, decided to hire PR consultants to help promote subsequent tours.

During this concert stint the band stopped at New York to mix tracks that had been recorded at Olympic Studios in London the previous month, for their forthcoming fifth album.[2]

According to Led Zeppelin experts Dave Lewis and Simon Pallett, it was at around this period in time that Grant began to implement the unprecedented policy of asking concert promoters for 90% of all gate receipts:

“ The group's stature was such that he was able to pull off this major swing with little resistance from the agents and promoters. Any deal with Led Zeppelin was better than no deal at all, they decided. As a consequence Led Zeppelin's fortune began to pile up at an even faster rate [than before].[2] ”

For this tour, and all of Led Zeppelin's subsequent American tours, the band hired Dallas-based company Showco to provide its lighting and sound.[5]

[edit] Recordings

Like many other Led Zeppelin concert tours, several of the concerts performed by the band on this tour were recorded by fans as unofficial bootlegs. Some of these were subsequently released on bootleg titles such as Burn Like a Candle.

In 2003 soundboard recordings from two of the concerts from this tour, at the L.A. Forum on June 25 and the Long Beach Arena on June 27 respectively, were remastered by Page and officially released on the album How the West Was Won

[edit] Tour set list

This was the last concert tour on which Led Zeppelin included an acoustic section until 1975, when it was revived for their Earl's Court performances. The decision to drop the acoustic set was perhaps made because their live concerts were regularly extending into three hour long marathons (and sometimes up to four and a half hours), which were becoming taxing on all four band members.[2][3]

The fairly typical set list for the tour was:

  1. "Immigrant Song" (Page, Plant)
  2. "Heartbreaker" (Bonham, Page, Plant)
  3. "Black Dog" (Page, Plant, Jones)
  4. "Over the Hills and Far Away" (Page, Plant)
  5. "Since I've Been Loving You" (Page, Plant, Jones)
  6. "Stairway to Heaven" (Page, Plant)
  7. "Going to California" (Page, Plant)
  8. "That's the Way" (Page, Plant)
  9. "Tangerine" (Page)
  10. "Bron-Yr-Aur Stomp" (Page, Plant, Jones)
  11. "Dazed and Confused" (Page)
  12. "What Is and What Should Never Be" (Page, Plant)
  13. "Dancing Days" (Page, Plant)
  14. "Moby Dick" (Bonham)
  15. "Whole Lotta Love" (Bonham, Dixon, Jones, Page, Plant)

Encores (variations of the following list):

There were some set list substitutions, variations, and order switches during the tour.

[edit] Tour dates

[edit] European warm-up shows

[edit] North America

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ How the West Was Won liner notes
  2. ^ a b c d Lewis, Dave and Pallett, Simon (1997) Led Zeppelin: The Concert File, London: Omnibus Press. ISBN 0-7119-5307-4, pp. 76-77.
  3. ^ a b Luis Rey (1997) Led Zeppelin Live: An Illustrated Exploration of Underground Tapes, Ontario: The Hot Wacks Press, p. 186.
  4. ^ Interview with Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, January 1975, http://www.iem.ac.ru/zeppelin/docs/interviews/pp_75.rs
  5. ^ Lewis, Dave (2003). Led Zeppelin: The Tight But Loose' Files: Celebration II, 1st Edition, London: Omnibus Press, p. 32. ISBN 1-84449-056-4. 

[edit] Sources

  • Lewis, Dave and Pallett, Simon (1997) Led Zeppelin: The Concert File, London: Omnibus Press. ISBN 0-7119-5307-4.
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