Led Zeppelin Scandinavian Tour 1968 - Overview

Overview

Led Zeppelin's debut tour was an outstanding contractual commitment left over from The Yardbirds. The band's first concert at Teen Club, a school gymnasium in Gladsaxe, Denmark, was performed exactly two months to the day after The Yardbirds' final concert. The band's manager, Peter Grant, later said of this first concert: "Standing by the side of the stage, it was obvious that there was special chemistry."

Guitarist Jimmy Page recalled that "the tour went fantastically for us, we left them stomping the floors after every show." According to singer Robert Plant:

We made no money on the first tour. Nothing at all. Jimmy put in every penny that he'd gotten from the Yardbirds and that wasn't much. Until Peter Grant took them over, they didn't make the money they should have made. So we made the album and took off on a tour with a road crew of one.

Plant also recalled the following:

In Scandinavia we were pretty green; it was very early days and we were tiptoeing with each other. We didn't have half the recklessness that became for me the whole joy of Led Zeppelin. It was a tentative start.

For these early shows, the band was billed as the "Yardbirds" or "New Yardbirds", despite the fact that Jimmy Page was now the only surviving link with the previous band. Page later said:

We realised we were working under false pretences, the thing had gone quickly beyond where The Yardbirds had left off. We all agreed there was no point in retaining the New Yardbirds tag so when we got back from Scandinavia we decided to change the name . It was a fresh beginning for us all.