Led Zeppelin North American Tour 1977 - Problems Experienced

Problems Experienced

Though profitable financially, the tour was beset with difficulties. On 19 April, over 70 persons were arrested as about 1,000 ticketless fans tried to gatecrash Cincinnati Riverfront Coliseum for two sold out festival seating/general admission concerts while some gained entry by throwing rocks and bottles through glass entrance doors. On 3 June, after an open-air concert at Tampa Stadium was cut short because of a severe thunderstorm, a riot broke out amongst the audience, resulting in 19 arrests and 50 fans being injured. Police ultimately resorted to tear gas to break up the crowd. Guitarist Jimmy Page's ongoing heroin addiction also caused him to lose a noticeable amount of weight on this tour, and arguably began to hamper his on-stage playing performances. During a performance in Chicago on 9 April, Page fell ill and needed to sit in a chair to play "Ten Years Gone" before leaving the stage with severe stomach cramps. The show was concluded after only sixty-five minutes, with Page's illness later being attributed to a case of food poisoning. The Greensboro, NC show began one hour late, with Plant stating, "Sorry, we left somebody in New York."

The tour also experienced some unsavory backstage problems, exacerbated by the hiring of London gangster John Bindon as Led Zeppelin's security coordinator. After a 23 July show at the "Days on the Green" festival at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum in Oakland, California, Bindon, band manager Peter Grant and band member John Bonham were arrested after a member of promoter Bill Graham's staff was badly beaten during the performance. A member of the staff had struck Grant's 11-year old son when he was taking down a dressing room sign. This was seen by Bonham, who then walked over and kicked the man. Later, when Grant heard about this, he went into the trailer, along with Bindon and savagely assaulted the man with tour manager Richard Cole guarding the door and also roughing up another member of Graham's staff.

Led Zeppelin's second Oakland show took place only after Bill Graham signed a letter of indemnification absolving Led Zeppelin from responsibility for the previous night's incident. However, Graham refused to honour the letter and assault charges were laid against Grant, Cole, Bindon, and Bonham when the band arrived back at their hotel. The four received bail, whereupon a suit was filed against them by Graham for $2 million. Led Zeppelin offered to settle and all four pleaded nolo contendere, receiving suspended sentences and fines. Later, Graham went on San Francisco rock stations KSAN and KMEL and flatly announced that he would never book Led Zeppelin again.

The following day's second Oakland concert would prove to be the band's final live appearance in the United States. After the performance, news came that Plant's five-year-old son, Karac, had died from a stomach virus. The rest of the tour was immediately cancelled.

In recent years, Plant has reflected on the negative dynamics which increasingly became evident as the 1977 tour progressed:

By 1977, I was 29, just prior to Karac's passing, and that sort of wild energy that was there in the beginning had come to the point where we were showboating a bit. Unfortunately, we had no choice. We were on tours where places were going ape-shit. There was no way of containing the energy in those buildings. It was insane. And we became more and more victims of our own success. And the whole deal about the goldfish bowl and living in it, that kicked in.

According to Jack Calmes, the head of Showco (the company that had provided lights, sound, staging, and logistics for the band's American tours since 1973):

There was an extraordinary amount of tension at the start of that tour ... It just got off to a negative start. It was definitely much darker than any Zeppelin tour ever before that time ... The kind of people they had around them had deepened into some really criminal types. I think Richard Cole and perhaps some of the band and everybody around the band was so far into drugs at that point, that the drugs turned on them. They still had their moments of greatness (but) some of the shows were grinding and not very inspired ... The Bindon brothers were the thugs that were friends of Peter Grant’s and were on this whole tour as security guards. And they kind of brought an element of darkness into this thing.